Mahdi Cheraghchi teaches computer science and engineering as an associate professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s EECS Department. His work focuses on the mathematical underpinnings of dependable, private, and effective computation at the nexus of theoretical computer science, coding and information theory, and cryptography.
He worked in the Laboratory of Algorithms under Professor Amin Shokrollahi at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland, where he obtained his PhD in Computer Science. After earning his PhD, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and UT Austin before becoming a faculty member at Imperial College London and then the University of Michigan. The US National Science Foundation is providing funding for his research (NSF CCF-2107345 and NSF CCF-2006455).
Several related fields of theoretical computer science are covered by Mahdi Cheraghchi’s research:
Coding and information theory, including capacity bounds for deletion-type channels and non-malleable codes
Sparse recovery, compressive sensing, and combinatorial group testing
Information-theoretic privacy and cryptographic security
Randomness in computation and derandomisation
Approximation algorithms and hardness of approximation
High-dimensional geometry and sparse Walsh–Hadamard transforms
A Selection of Publications
Mahdi Cheraghchi’s research has been published in prestigious conferences like STOC, SODA, ITCS, and TCC, as well as the Journal of the ACM, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, SIAM Journal on Computing, ACM Transactions on Algorithms, and Journal of Cryptology.
- Mahdi Cheraghchi. Capacity Upper Bounds for Deletion-Type Channels. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 66(2)9, 2019. Extended abstract at STOC 2018.
- Mahdi Cheraghchi, Piotr Indyk. Nearly Optimal Deterministic Algorithm for Sparse Walsh-Hadamard Transform. ACM Transactions on Algorithms (TALG), 13(3), pp. 1–36, 2017. Extended abstract at SODA 2016.
- Mahdi Cheraghchi, Venkatesan Guruswami. Capacity of Non-Malleable Codes. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 62(3), pp. 1097–1118, 2016. Extended abstract at ITCS 2014.
- Mahdi Cheraghchi, Venkatesan Guruswami. Non-Malleable Coding Against Bit-wise and Split-State Tampering. Journal of Cryptology, 30(1), pp. 191–241, 2015. Extended abstract at TCC 2014.
- Mahdi Cheraghchi, Venkatesan Guruswami, Ameya Velingker. Restricted Isometry of Fourier Matrices and List Decodability of Random Linear Codes. SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP), 42(5), pp. 1888–1914, 2013. Extended abstract at SODA 2013.
Citation metrics (Google Scholar, late 2025): 1,584 total citations · h-index 21 · i10-index 36
Full publication list: cheraghchi.info/publications
Teaching
EECS 475 Introduction to Cryptography (2020–2023), EECS 572/598 Randomness and Computation (2020, 2022), EECS 574 Computational Complexity (2021), and EECS 498/598 Coding Theory for Theoretical Computer Science (2019) are the courses taught at the University of Michigan.
CO-349 Information and Coding Theory (2015–2018), CO484 Quantum Computation (2016–2017), CO202 Algorithms II (2018), and CO-145 Mathematical Methods (2015–2017) are courses offered by Imperial College London.
MIT: Automata, Computability, and Complexity (2014), 6.006 Introduction to Algorithms (2014).
Information Theory and Its Applications in Theory of Computation, Carnegie Mellon University, 15-859 (2013).
Disclaimer:
This is Mahdi Cheraghchi’s personal academic website. The views he expresses here are entirely his own and do not speak for the University of Michigan or any other organization.
2260 Hayward St., Room 3603
Department of EECS, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Email: mahdich@umich.edu
Phone: +1 (734) 763-9165