Marcos Kiwi received his Bachelor and Engineering degree from the University of Chile in 1990 and 1991 respectively, and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from MIT in 1996. Afterward he moved to the School of Engineering of the University of Chile where he is now Full Professor at the Department of Mathematical Engineering and associate researcher at the Center for Mathematical Modelling.
Kiwi's research interests include computational complexity theory, algorithms, cryptography and random structures. He has served on numerous program committees for conferences in theoretical computer science, and was the program committee chair of the Latin American Theoretical Informatics Symposium (2006). Kiwi was Associate Editor of SIAM J. on Discrete Mathematics (2010-2015) and Theoretical Computer Science A (2011-2015). He currently serves in the Editorial Board of Computer Science Review. Kiwi is a recipient, among others, of the Marcos Orrego Puelma Award given by the Engineering Institute of Chile (1992), the AT&T Ph.D. Scholarship (1993-1996), chosen by the Chilean Academy of Sciences to be part of Frontiers of Science (2007-2009).
Kiwi has received four FONDECYT grants, led the group project Anillo en Redes (2006-2007), and was the alternate director of the group project Núcleo Milenio Information and Coordination in Networks (2012-2014). Also, he was Chair of the Department of Mathematical Engineeringof the University of Chile (2009-2010).
Kiwi was founding member and director of the Applied Cryptography and Security Laboratory (CASLAB) of the University of Chile and also of the Chilean Computer Emergency Response Team (CLCERT). In this latter role he created Chile's first continued education program in Computational Security in 2004 (was Director until 2007 and co-Directs until 2021). Also, he led the teams that drafted government regulation for the secure handling of electronic documents and also handling of spam by central government agencies.
Kiwi has two daughters and lives with his wife and younger daughter in Santiago, Chile.