Trevor Perrin worked at Cryptography Research (I mean, the domain name is cryptography.com!) for six years, which alone should probably be enough to call yourself a cryptographer. His other work outside of CRI is also really quite prolific.

> Again, I have the utmost respect for their research, it's just that from the side of a non-crypto-versed user/coder, Telegram and TextSecure look the same.

Yep, it's frustrating to be the quixotically genuine seller in a market for lemons.