Neel Somani
University of California, Berkeley | Class of 2019
B.A. Mathematics | B.A. Computer Science | B.S. Business Administration
Major GPA: 4.0
Bio
Neel Somani is the Founder of Eclipse Labs and the original architect of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) Layer 2. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a triple major in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Business Administration, later serving on the Board of the Berkeley-Haas Alumni Network. His contributions to security and privacy have been recognized at top conferences such as USENIX Security and OOPSLA, where Duet received the ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award. He has raised $65M for Eclipse, backed multiple billion-dollar crypto protocols through Chord Ventures, and supports education through the Neel Somani Scholarship Program. He has been recognized as an Accel Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, and Cal Alumni Association Leadership Award recipient.
Research
Research Interests: Optimization, security, and blockchain. Auction theory and market optimization. Privacy-preserving machine learning. Blockchain and decentralized systems. Privacy and applied cryptography. Using LLMs to improve security and scale practical LLM usage.
Research Experience
- PrivGuard | 2022 | UC Berkeley, Prof. Dawn Song
"PrivGuard: Privacy Regulation Compliance Made Easier"
L Wang, U Khan, J Near, Q Pang, J Subramanian, N Somani, P Gao, et al.
31st USENIX Security Symposium, 2022 | NSF Award #1518899 - Data Capsule | 2019 | UC Berkeley, Prof. Dawn Song
"Data Capsule: A New Paradigm for Automatic Compliance with Data Privacy Regulations"
L Wang, JP Near, N Somani, P Gao, A Low, D Dao, D Song
Heterogeneous Data Management, Polystores, and Analytics for Healthcare, 2019 - Oasis Labs | 2019 | UC Berkeley, Prof. Dawn Song
Privacy-preserving ML using SGX enclaves and blockchain - Duet | 2017–2018 | UC Berkeley, Prof. Dawn Song
"Duet: An Expressive Higher-order Language and Linear Type System for Statically Enforcing Differential Privacy"
JP Near, D Darais, C Abuah, T Stevens, P Gaddamadugu, L Wang, N Somani, et al.
Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages (OOPSLA), 2019 | ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper Award - metaCurious | 2019 | Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Prof. JB Poline
"metaCurious: a web-application for meta-analytic datasets curation and annotation"
K Bottenhorn, A Keshavan, N Somani, S Ramesh, JB Poline, A Laird
BRAIN Initiative Investigators Meeting, 2019 - Cirrus | 2018 | UC Berkeley RISELab, Prof. Randy Katz
Serverless machine learning framework | GitHub - Brainspell | 2016–2018 | Berkeley Institute for Data Science, Prof. JB Poline
"Collaborative curation of articles collections for meta-analyses in brain imaging: Brainspell-neo"
N Somani, S Ramesh, A Keshavan, R Toro, JB Poline
Organization for Human Brain Mapping, 2018
Selected Honors and Awards
- Accepted to Y Combinator | S22 batch (declined) | 2022
- Phi Beta Kappa | 2019
- Magna Cum Laude | 2019
- Haas Undergraduate Scholarship | 2019
- Cal Alumni Association Leadership Award | 2019
- Kairos Fellow | Kairos Society | 2018
- Accel Scholar | 2018
- EECS Honors Program | 2017
- Upsilon Pi Epsilon | 2017
- Lipson Essay Prize | "Contemporary Stereotyping: Exploring the Seduction of Bias" | 2016
- Valedictorian | Venture High School | 2015
Teaching & Presentations
Teaching
- Head Lecturer | 2018–2019 | UC Berkeley, Prof. Thomas Lee
UGBA 198: Methods and Mathematical Foundations of Machine Learning for Business Decisions
Created and taught the first ML for business course at Haas with 200+ students per semester
Managed team of 9 TAs and graders
Selected Conference Presentations
- From High Fees to High Speeds: Optimizing the SVM For Ethereum | 2024: YouTube
- Challenges & Advantages of Parallel VM Layer-2s | 2024: YouTube
- Is Data Availability (DA) a Good Business Model | 2024: YouTube
- Rollups-as-a-Service Are Going To Zero | 2023: YouTube
- Design Trade-Offs for Persistent App-Specific Rollups | 2023: YouTube
Professional Activities
- Founder: Eclipse Labs - Raised $65M, architect of Solana Virtual Machine Layer 2
- Managing Partner: Chord Ventures - Backed multiple billion-dollar crypto protocols
- Donor: Neel Somani Scholarship Program - Supporting education
- Board Member: Berkeley-Haas Alumni Network, San Francisco Chapter
- Quantitative Researcher: Citadel - Commodities, electricity grid optimization
Job Openings
- Chord Ventures Summer Incubator: Program for high-achieving students in technical majors (CS, Math) with demonstrated software development ability. Applications open in spring.
- Eclipse Labs & Portfolio Companies: Hiring engineering talent. Priority given to candidates with experience at top-tier companies (web2 or web3).
Contact
- Email: ude.yelekreb@leen
- Website: neelsomani.com
- Blog: neelsomaniblog.com
- Twitter: @neelsalami
- Google Scholar: Publications