Colloquium with Kurt Rohloff

Title: Enabling Computing on Encrypted Data

Abstract: 

One of the first major breakthroughs of computer science in the 21st century has been the discovery and practical demonstration of encrypted computing technologies such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). FHE allows sensitive data to be encrypted such that arbitrary programs can be securely run over the encrypted data where the output, when decrypted, is equivalent to the result of running the original algorithm on the unencrypted data. FHE is ground-breaking in its ability for privacy-preserving data science on sensitive data sets.  As part of academic work supported by DARPA, the NIH and private investors, we discuss theory, algorithmic, software engineering and systems research that has enabled the application of FHE in practical military, medical and financial applications, such as secure end-to-end encrypted VoIP teleconferencing on stock iPhones, Genome-Wide Association Studies on encrypted genomic data and Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) applications.  Enabling these research and application activities is the PALISADE open-source lattice encryption library.

Bio: 

Kurt Rohloff is an associate professor of computer science at NJIT in Newark, USA where is is also director of the NJIT Cybersecurity Research Center.  He is the co-founder and CTO of Duality Technologies, a start-up commercializing encrypted computing technologies.  He is a recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award and has been the PI on several DARPA and IARPA projects.  Prior to joining NJIT he worked for 9 years in the US defense industry as a senior scientist in the Distributed Systems research group at Raytheon BBN Technologies.  He maintains close ties to the US defense industry and has been involved with multiple DARPA projects that have transitioned technologies into operational use and programs of record. His areas of technical expertise include distributed information management, secure computing and high assurance software design. He is the co-founder of the PALISADE open-source lattice encryption library. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and his Master’s and PhD. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan.