PhD Student
Palak is a PhD student in Theoretical Computer Science at Boston University. Their research uses the lenses of cryptography and differential privacy to design privacy-respecting systems and understand the downstream effects of those technologies on the individuals they intend to protect. They, along with others at BU, have been awarded a grant from the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research to study the downstream effects of differential privacy in the 2020 decennial census on marginalized communities. They also study (1) the absolute and game theoretic security guarantees of secure messaging systems in use today, (2) the connections between privacy notions from different disciplines and their interactions in real world applications, and (3) the accuracy of differentially private mechanisms in the continuous observation setting. Along with their research interests they’re also passionate about teaching, especially accessibility of teaching, and were awarded the 2021 CS Excellence Award for Teaching at Boston University.
Prior to joining their PhD program, they’ve worked on the front end development of an app, headed the play testing of a board game, and completed a graphic design internship at a branding and digital design studio. Palak earned their BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from Reed College in 2018 where they were a licensed nuclear reactor operator at the Reed Research Reactor and participated heavily in the training of new license candidates. They hope to support efforts to increase accessibility and equity in computer science research and also more broadly to have accessibility and identity inform their behavior in any context in which they are present.
Publications
https://dblp.org/pid/221/3845-4.html%3Chttps://dblp.org/pid/221/3845-4.html%3E