wdlittle6
Smart Contract And Zk Engineer
Wade Little is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Information Systems with minors in Business Information Management and Data Science at the University of South Carolina, with an expected graduation date of May 2027. In Summer 2025, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at the University of Alabama, where, under the mentorship of Dr. Ahmad Alsharif, he developed expertise in zero-knowledge proofs and contributed to research on secure, decentralized data marketplaces. Upon returning to his home institution, he joined the Future Factories Lab under Dr. Thorsten Wuest, expanding his research on blockchain applications to the manufacturing industry. Recognized for his achievements as an undergraduate researcher, he was selected for the inaugural cohort of the Savannah River National Laboratory Emerging Talent and Innovation Program as well as the Magellan Scholar Research Grant. His research interests include zero-knowledge proofs, data marketplaces, blockchain technology, and federated learning. He is also active in professional communities, including serving in a leadership role with the Carolina Sales Institute for Engineering and Technology.
Experience: 1 year
Yearly salary: $46,000
Hourly rate: $30
Nationality: 🇺🇸 United States
Residency: 🇺🇸 United States
Experience
Undergraduate Researcher
NSF REU 2025 - 2025
From the National Science Foundation (NSF), selected among 9 out of 300+ students to participate in a fully funded research experience, where I focused on blockchain applications in autonomous vehicles and the energy sector. Accelerated zk-SNARK proof generation by 30% and achieved sub-200ms verification times by engineering proof systems in Rust with Arkworks. Reduced Ethereum gas costs by 20% by deploying optimized Solidity smart contracts for reverse auctions and fair trading mechanisms. Automated benchmarking scripts in JavaScript, cutting evaluation overhead and improving reproducibility of results.
Skills
cloud-engineer
cryptography
python
rust
smart-contract
solidity
zk-snark
english