Secure the crypto world

Founded in 2018 by professors of Yale University and Columbia University, CertiK is a pioneer in blockchain security, utilizing best-in-class AI technology to secure and monitor blockchain protocols and smart contracts. CertiK’s mission is to secure the cyber world. Starting with blockchain, CertiK applies cutting-edge innovations from academia into enterprise, enabling mission-critical applications to be built with security and correctness.

Leadership Team

Prof. Zhong Shao
Cofounder
Thomas L. Kempner Professor and Chair of Computer Science Department at Yale University. Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University. Leading figure in research fields such as cybersecurity, operating systems, and certified software. Shao and his Yale FLINT group have developed the world’s first hacker-resistant and concurrent operating system – CertiKOS.
Prof. Zhong Shao
Cofounder
Prof. Ronghui Gu
Cofounder
Tang Family Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University and Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University. Primary designer and developer of CertiKOS and SeKVM. Gu has received: an SOSP Best Paper Award, a CACM Research Highlight, and a Yale Distinguished Dissertation Award.
Prof. Ronghui Gu
Cofounder
Dr. Yaxin Cao
Chief Operating Officer
Yaxin (Jason) Cao has held various senior leadership roles in IoT, semiconductor, and wireless technology companies in both U.S. and China. He was formerly the CEO of Shenzhen Biomedical Instruments, Vice President of Tsinghua Unigroup, and Director of Broadcom. He had close to 20 years of industry experience across multiple functions, including engineering, production management, strategic business development, and operations. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, and B.S. from Tsinghua University.
Dr. Yaxin Cao
Chief Operating Officer
Dr. David Tarditi
VP of Engineering
David has over 16 years of experience growing and leading engineering and research teams. Before joining CertiK, he had a 25-year career at Microsoft. His last role was as a Principal Group Software Engineering Manager leading development of a secure IoT operating system. Other roles at Microsoft included researcher, development manager, development lead, research group manager, and software developer. David has worked on compilers, programming languages, operating systems, and security. He is an expert at building software development tools for enabling the development of secure software. He created the Checked C extension for C, which enables more secure C code to be written. He led the creation of an ahead-of-time compiler for C# so that C# could be used for systems software development, eliminating classes of errors. He did pioneering work on typed intermediate languages, which allow the outputs of compilers to be verified for correctness. David is inventor or co-inventor on 22 patents. He has a bachelor's degree in engineering from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
Dr. David Tarditi
VP of Engineering
Dr. Zhaozhong Ni
Chief Technology Officer
Zhaozhong Ni was formerly an engineering lead at Google and HP / 3PAR and a researcher at Microsoft Research. He is an expert in systems software and formal verification and has extensive experience in building operating systems kernels and mission-critical enterprise systems. Dr. Ni was a founding member of gVisor, Google’s new security focused OS with cloud-scale production. He holds multiple patents on distributed storage systems. He obtained his BS from Tsinghua University and his PhD in Computer Science from Yale University.
Dr. Zhaozhong Ni
Chief Technology Officer
Muhan Zou
Chief Strategy Officer
Muhan Zou serves as the founding member of CertiK from company inception, where he contributes with both his engineering abilities and team leadership. Muhan has years of experience in designing and developing enterprise level SaaS products. Prior to joining, he worked as the engineering lead at Comcast to monetize large-scale ads and settop-box/linear raw data into business insights deliverables. He also worked at Oracle where he built the social cloud platform as a Full Stack Engineer after graduation at Yale University.
Muhan Zou
Chief Strategy Officer

Jason Jiang
VP of Business Development
Jason Jiang
VP of Business Development
Monier Jalal
VP of Marketing
Monier Jalal has over 20 years of leadership in the cybersecurity space. He has helped companies successfully market and launch products, and has been part of the founder and executive leadership team driving the growth, acquisition and IPO for a number of successful cybersecurity startups; most recently WhiteHat security (acquired by NTT Security), Sift security (acquired by Netskope), & Vyatta (Acquired by Brocade, later Broadcom). He has also worked for larger cybersecurity companies like Check Point Software Technologies, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Fortinet. Monier earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electronics and Computer Science from the University of Bradford in the UK.
Monier Jalal
VP of Marketing
Dr. Vilhelm Sjöberg
Sr. Principal Scientist
Vilhelm Sjöberg was a former associate research scientist at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015. He is an industry-leading expert in software verification, programming languages, and type systems. His research is focusing on language support for layered verified systems like CertiKOS, and currently he is developing DeepSEA which is a language to write verified smart contracts. Dr. Sjöberg is the winner of 2016 ACM SIGPLAN John C. Reynolds Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Dr. Vilhelm Sjöberg
Sr. Principal Scientist
Connie Lam
Head of CertiKShield
Connie Lam
Head of CertiKShield
Erin ImHof
Director of Human Resources
Erin ImHof has over 14 years of experience in Human Resources in technology, education, healthcare and manufacturing industries. Her experience includes corporate strategy, employee engagement, total rewards, Affirmative Action Planning, management training, employee relations and overseeing functions such as recruiting, benefits, payroll, onboarding, reporting and safety. Erin has her bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University, two master’s degrees in Human Resources Management and Public Administration and several HR certifications, including the SPHR.
Erin ImHof
Director of Human Resources
Yu Chen
Head of China
Yu Chen was the former CTO at Taopaipai, the biggest platform for professional wedding photography in China. He later became the technical VP/CTO at the WD Group and YouLanW and managed the technical team of apps and O2O system to help millions of blue-collar workers find their jobs. As one of the very first iOS developers, he released 2 apps out of 300 on the first day of iOS AppStore and latered founded Teemsoft, Inc, a game development company with 100+ employees. He obtained his BS from Xi’an Jiao Tong University and his Master in Computer Science from Loyola University Chicago.
Yu Chen
Head of China