Hey! I'm a uni student majoring in computer science. Am exploring cryptography, privacy and zk, so would love to know how I can contribute :)

You could start with reading getmonero.org/library/Zero-to-Monero-2-0-0.pdf to get up to speed with Monero's cryptography

Cool, thanks a lot!

How does research usually happen here? Since it's not a formal university lab or even a corporate research lab

Was curious to know how it works.

There are a few big research topics currently like Seraphis, you can read the last meeting's logs here: monero-project/meta #699

some research is funded via Monero CCS: ccs.getmonero.org/work-in-progress

Ok thank you! Will go through all of this. Truly grateful just for the fact that research isn't gatekept here. Can directly start contributing. Thank you🙏

Ameya Deshmukh: Welcome! A list of open research questions is here: monero-project/research-lab #94

Monero-related research papers are here: moneroresearch.info

Thanks a ton! Just one more thing, are there universities/labs/professors working on relevant research who are in this group whom I can contact and maybe explore research/work under in an intern capacity?

In MRL itself? I don't think so. There are several active researchers working on Monero outside of MRL though. For example, there are some people at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg who have recently written a few papers. See:

A given university research lab probably would not take you unless you are enrolled as a student at that university.

<Rucknium[m]> "In MRL itself? I don't think so...." <- Got it, thanks!

<Rucknium[m]> "A given university research..." <- Not even in a remote research assistant/collaborator role?

Ameya Deshmukh: Overall, it will depend on what skills and knowledge you're bringing to the table. I would recommend talking to the professors at your current university to see what way forward they may see.

Cool. The thing is that applied cryptography, zk proofs etc are things which haven't yet caught the eye of Indian University professors yet. The majority of research is still being done in ML/DL which I have little interest in.

Saravanan Vijayakumaran at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has been doing some work on Monero, e.g.

You may want to reach out to them.

Great, thank you