CIS

In classical auction design, we take it for granted that the auctioneer is trusted and always implements the auction's rules honestly. This assumption, however, no longer holds in modern auctions based on blockchains, or those mediated by third-party platforms such as Google. For example, in blockchain-based auctions, the consensus nodes that partly act as the […]

Scalable and efficient machine learning (ML) systems have been instrumental in fueling recent advancements in ML capabilities. However, further scaling these systems requires more than simply increasing the number and performance of accelerators. This is because modern ML deployments rely on complex pipelines composed of many diverse and interconnected systems.  In this talk, I will […]

Over the past decade, networked systems have consolidated under just a handful of hyperscale cloud providers (e.g., AWS, Azure). While this offers logistical and economic advantages, attackers specifically target providers and their customers, a shift that has left traditional network vantage points blind to the most sophisticated adversaries. In this talk, I’ll explore how we […]

Neural language models have opened a fascinating, flexible platform for reasoning in mathematics, programming, and beyond. This talk will explore the intersection of these models and the rigor of formal reasoning. First, I discuss my work on building foundation models for mathematics and using language to guide the search for formally verified proofs. Then, I […]

The PCP theorem, proved in the 90’s, shows how to encode a proof for any theorem into a format where the theorem's correctness can be verified by making only a constant number of queries to the proof. This result is a significant milestone in computer science and has important implications for approximation algorithms, cryptography, and […]

In this talk, I will explain how fundamental problems in computational learning theory are at the heart of modern problems in machine learning and scientific applications and how algorithmic insights in mathematically tractable models can inspire new solutions in a wide variety of domains. I will explore two directions. First, I will explore algorithmic foundations […]

Promises are cheap. Software vendors routinely describe their offerings as “secure”, but few are based on designs that can guarantee even the most basic security properties. To address this problem, services like Cloudflare, Android, and Firefox are increasingly relying on languages like Rust and WebAssembly to provide safety by design. But these promises too can […]