Sara Zafar Jafarzadeh

Synopsys Inc

Sara is a Cryptographer and Senior Staff Software Engineer at Synopsys with over 12 years of experience in hardware IP security, applied cryptography, and embedded firmware security. She has expertise in classical and post-quantum cryptography, quantum cryptography, cryptographic hardware IP design, modeling SoC and firmware threats, and translating standards from NIST, ISO, and ETSI into production-ready silicon and firmware.

She is known for driving security requirements, leading architecture reviews, and aligning hardware, firmware, verification, and product teams around secure, high-performance cryptographic solutions. Her experience also includes PQC product design, mobile banking security, and academic research in cryptography and secure communication.

Since 2020, Sara has been a research associate at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada. She earned her Ph.D. in quantum-safe cryptography under the supervision of Gilles Brassard, father of quantum information science, and the co-supervision of Louis Salvail at the Université de Montréal.