Enabling New Applications via Cryptographic Tools for Data In-Use

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Cryptography is a foundational science that enables the design of tools, protocols, and systems that protect communications, data, programs, financial transactions, and more. Classical cryptographic mechanisms served us well to transmit data securely from one user to another even when an adversary compromises the communication medium between the users. However, in recent years, we are seeing a fundamental shift in the global computing model. In the new model, users have lightweight mobile devices, laptops, or Internet-of-Things devices. These devices feed data from remote agents (e.g., cloud providers, public ledgers) and query these agents to perform computations over the data. But can these models truly scale to their potentials without data and computations privacy? Can we enable new types of applications if trust and privacy features were enabled by default into these environments? My long-term research program is to develop new theoretical models, constructions, and systems that enable new applications by protecting data in-use and computations in untrusted and distributed environments. These new applications will have built-in privacy and security properties and empower users and organizations to gain control of their personal data, share, and operate on it in securely. In this project I will: (1) design new security models, methods and algorithms for secure computation over encrypted data, (2) construct new algorithms for secure processing of machine learning and AI, and (3) build systems and new applications that enable secure data and program processing in untrusted environments. Research is still at the frontiers of what modern cryptography can offer to protect future systems. The algorithms and systems built during this research will enable researchers and industry practitioners to construct new types of applications with build-in trust and security guarantees. Applications of these solutions will span domains classifying from secure machine learning processing to databases, distributed systems, and distributed ledger technologies. During the course of this research, I will train undergraduate and graduate students to build new cryptographic primitives, develop new models and systems, and enable them to help secure the national infrastructure and data of Canadian citizens.