Mirza Ahad Baig

Office 110

Institute of Computer Science

Neubrückstrasse 10

3012 Bern, Switzerland

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Cryptology and Data Security Group at the University of Bern under Christian Cachin.

I am primarily interested in cryptography and distributed computing, but more broadly, I am interested in practically motivated problems in Theoretical Computer Science. Recently, I have been working on theoretical aspects of blockchains with a particular emphasis on security and efficiency. I have also started exploring the intersection of machine learning with cryptography and distributed computing.

Before my current position, I was a PhD student in the Pietrzak Group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), where I was fortunate to be advised by Krzysztof Pietrzak. Before starting my PhD, I earned an MSc at Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI) in 2019, advised by Alessia Milani for my MSc thesis. Even before that, I earned a BSc (Hons) at CMI in 2017.

Research interests: consensus protocols (security and efficiency), distributed systems, and privacy-preserving computation.

My full list of publications is available on DBLP and Google Scholar.

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selected publications

Preprint

The Tragedy of Chain Commons

Ignacio Amores-Sesar, Mirza Ahad Baig, Seth Gilbert, and 2 more authors

arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20341, 2026

arXiv Bib

@article{baig2026tragedy,
  title = {The Tragedy of Chain Commons},
  author = {Amores-Sesar, Ignacio and Baig, Mirza Ahad and Gilbert, Seth and Neiheiser, Ray and Yeo, Michelle},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20341},
  year = {2026},
}

AFT

Nakamoto Consensus from Multiple Resources

Mirza Ahad Baig, Christoph U. Günther, and Krzysztof Pietrzak

In 7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT), 2025

DOI arXiv Bib

@inproceedings{baig2025nakamoto,
  title = {Nakamoto Consensus from Multiple Resources},
  author = {Baig, Mirza Ahad and G{\"u}nther, Christoph U. and Pietrzak, Krzysztof},
  booktitle = {7th Conference on Advances in Financial Technologies (AFT)},
  series = {LIPIcs},
  volume = {354},
  pages = {16:1--16:23},
  publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.AFT.2025.16},
}

On the (in)security of Proofs-of-Space Based Longest-Chain Blockchains

Mirza Ahad Baig and Krzysztof Pietrzak

In Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC), 2025

DOI arXiv Bib HTML

@inproceedings{baig2025pospace,
  title = {On the (in)security of Proofs-of-Space Based Longest-Chain Blockchains},
  author = {Baig, Mirza Ahad and Pietrzak, Krzysztof},
  booktitle = {Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC)},
  series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
  volume = {15752},
  pages = {127--142},
  publisher = {Springer},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1007/978-3-032-07035-7_8},
}

ITCS

Efficiently Testable Circuits

Mirza Ahad Baig, Suvradip Chakraborty, Stefan Dziembowski, and 3 more authors

In 14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS), 2023

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{baig2023etc,
  title = {Efficiently Testable Circuits},
  author = {Baig, Mirza Ahad and Chakraborty, Suvradip and Dziembowski, Stefan and Ga{\l}{\k a}zka, Ma{\l}gorzata and Lizurej, Tomasz and Pietrzak, Krzysztof},
  booktitle = {14th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS)},
  series = {LIPIcs},
  year = {2023},
}

Distr. Comput.

Long-lived counters with polylogarithmic amortized step complexity

Mirza Ahad Baig, Danny Hendler, Alessia Milani, and 1 more author

Distributed Computing, 2023

Preliminary version at DISC 2019 (invited to special issue)

Bib PDF

@article{baig2023counters,
  title = {Long-lived counters with polylogarithmic amortized step complexity},
  author = {Baig, Mirza Ahad and Hendler, Danny and Milani, Alessia and Travers, Corentin},
  journal = {Distributed Computing},
  volume = {36},
  year = {2023},
  note = {Preliminary version at DISC 2019 (invited to special issue)},
}