Brian LaMacchia

Brian LaMacchia is an applied cryptographer. He is the President of Farcaster Consulting Group, LLC, and co-owner of Farcaster Films, an independent film production company.

Brian most recently served as the first Executive Director of the MPC Alliance, a consortium of over 50 companies and academic institutions formed to accelerate awareness, acceptance, and adoption of multi-party computation (MPC) technology. Brian retired from Microsoft Corporation in December 2022 after a 25+-year career with the company where he was Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineer for Cryptography and head of the Security and Cryptography team within Microsoft Research. Before retiring, his team’s main project was the development of quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms and protocols. Brian was also a co-founder of the Microsoft Cryptography Review Board and consulted on security and cryptography architecture, protocols, and implementations across the company. Before moving into Microsoft Research in 2009, Brian was the Architect for cryptography in Windows Security, Development Lead for .NET Framework Security and Program Manager for core cryptography in Windows 2000.

Brian is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University-Bloomington, and an Affiliate Faculty member of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Brian is also currently Treasurer of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), a member of the National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience, and a Vice President of the Board of Directors of Seattle Opera. From 2009-2019 Brian served on the Board of Directors of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF), including 2015-2016 as SIFF Board President.

Brian received S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1990, 1991, and 1996, respectively.