Hi!
I’m Wiktoria Szitenhelm, a Computing Science this year master's graduate from Scotland, originally from Poland. I’m a highly ambitious and curious person, passionate about blockchain, cryptography, and solving complex problems. What drives me is the excitement of "brain-cracking" technical challenges—and the thrill that comes when things finally click and work. I thrive in team settings, love collaborating, and bring strong communication, creativity, and problem-solving skills to every project I take on.
Things I’m good at:
I excel at learning new technologies quickly, breaking down complex systems, and implementing secure and efficient solutions. My strengths include smart contract development, blockchain security, full-stack engineering, and research. I’m also a natural communicator and creative thinker—someone who enjoys both deep technical work and bringing ideas to life through teamwork.
What drives me:
My will to grow and evolve as an engineer but also individual is what keeps me going. I'm especially drawn to projects that combine cryptography, decentralization, and real-world impact. When I came across this hackathon focused on ZK and blockchain, I instantly knew it was for me—because I’ve been eager to explore ZK proofs in depth after completing my dissertation on blockchain privacy.
Interesting Projects:
-Master’s Dissertation – Solidity vs Rust in Smart Contract Development (2025)
For my dissertation, I compared smart contract development in Solidity and Rust through a real-world e-voting use case with financial staking. Users voted based on their stake, and I implemented a commit-reveal scheme using cryptographic hashing and asymmetric encryption to keep votes private until the reveal phase. I developed the contracts on Ethereum (Solidity) and Solana using Anchor (Rust), explored each language’s account model, and evaluated them in terms of security, developer experience, and scalability. I also gathered industry insights from a blockchain conference to enrich my findings. I initially considered using zero-knowledge proofs but had to scope it down due to time—though that’s exactly what sparked my interest in joining this hackathon to finally explore ZK more deeply. (https://github.com/wszitenhelm/E-voting_Rust)
-Bubble Sort vs QuickSort Performance Analysis (2024)
A Python-based research project evaluating algorithm performance in varied conditions (random, sorted, small datasets), focusing on both empirical and theoretical insights.
-NLP Analysis with spaCy and NLTK (2024)
Used NLP techniques to process datasets, extract patterns, and train a binary logistic regression model. Measured similarity and accuracy using metrics like BLEU and BERTScore.
-Hash-Cracking in Python (2024)
Implemented brute-force, dictionary, and rainbow table attacks, including salted hash cracking, and compared their performance.
-Virtual Disk & Memory Management in C (2022)
Created an in-memory file system and custom memory allocator with malloc, free, and defrag() logic, building low-level system functionality from scratch.
-Automated Planner & Moving Home Algorithm (2022)
Designed an A* search planner and an optimised 2D/3D box-packing and unpacking system using Dijkstra’s algorithm, recursion, and dynamic programming.