Aparna Krishnan talks about her research company Mechanism Labs, mentoring women in blockchain at She(256), dealing with the bro culture in the blockchain space, her experience growing up under Internet censorship and how it shaped her interest in cryptography, building up the education department at Blockchain at Berkeley, what she observed teaching introductions to the technology, takeaways from her Thiel Fellowship, and much more. Aparna is a Thiel Fellow and the co-founder of Mechanism Labs, an open source blockchain research lab. She studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, works on cryptography research and was the Head of Education and Executive VP at Blockchain at Berkeley where she founded the Education Department. She has taught the world's largest university accredited blockchain course, and she is a mentor at She(256), a movement to increase diversity and break down barriers to entry in the blockchain space. Aparna Krishnan: https://github.com/aparnakr, https://twitter.com/aparnalocked, https://medium.com/@aparnalocked, https://www.linkedin.com/in/aparna-krishnan Mechanism Labs: https://mechanismlabs.io, https://github.com/Mechanism-Labs, https://medium.com/mechanism-labs  She(256):https://www.she256.io, https://twitter.com/SHE_256  Thiel Fellowship: https://thielfellowship.org  Blockchain at Berkeley: https://blockchain.berkeley.edu, https://twitter.com/CalBlockchain Blockchain at Berkeley YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5sgoRfoSp3jeX4DEqKLwKg/videos  Also mentioned in the episode: Manush Movahedi: www.cs.yale.edu/homes/movahedi, https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3iOahLIAAAAJ&hl=en  Elaine Shi: http://elaineshi.com, https://twitter.com/ElaineRShi  The Blockchain and Us newsletter To stay up to date about what blockchain pioneers, innovators and entrepreneurs from all around the world think about the future of this space, sign up for the newsletter on http://www.theblockchainandus.com.