More than 60 convene at BU for differential privacy, multi-party computation workshop

Mayank Varia (BU) presents a survey of MPC Offerings.

The Differential Privacy Meets Multi-Party Computation (DPMPC) Workshop brought together over 60 attendees from 13 different universities and sparked groundbreaking discussion about differential privacy and multi-party computing.

Organized by Ran Canetti, professor of computer science & director of the Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security, and Shafi Goldwasser, RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a co-leader of the cryptography and information security group, the two-day workshop featured eight speakers each day as well as a panel discussing differential privacy (DP) and multi-party computing (MPC) in the eyes of the law, with panelists Ahmed Ghappour (BU Law), Paul Ohm (Georgetown Law),  Salil Vadhan (Harvard), Ran Canetti, and Shafi Goldwasser. 

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Panelists (from left to right) Ahmed Ghappour (BU Law), Salil Vadhan (Harvard), Paul Ohm (Georgetown Law) and Ran Canetti (BU).

Attendees engaged in discussion with speakers following talks, which covered a wide range of topics such as Privacy in Genomics research, Foundations of Differentially Oblivious Algorithms, and  Applying Modern Crypto to Advance Social Science.

Andrei Lapets (BU) during his talk “JIFF: Platform for MPC Protocol Prototyping and Privacy-Preserving Web Application Development”

Speakers even addressed current setbacks and roadblocks such as Trading Off Accuracy, Privacy, and Efficiency in Secure Joins using Differential Privacy and The Limits of Locally Differentially Private Mechanisms, concluding with possible solutions and potential collaborations in the future.

[Recordings will be available for all presentations from the workshop.]