Events Calendar

CS Colloquium: Amir Houmansadr (UMass Amherst) - Communication Secrecy in the Age of AI

Speaker: Amir Houmansadr, UMass Amherst

Talk Title: Communication Secrecy in the Age of AI

Series: CS Colloquium

Abstract: Internet users face constant threats to the secrecy of their communications: repressive regimes deprive them of open access to the Internet, corporations and surveillance organizations monitor their online behavior, advertising companies and social networks collect and share their private information, and cybercriminals hurt them financially by stealing their private information. In this talk, I will present the key research challenges facing communication secrecy in a world overtaken by the AI. In particular, I will introduce new ML-specific mechanisms to defeat AI-enabled surveillance. I will also discuss crucial AI trustworthiness research problems that are essential to the secrecy of Internet communications in the age of AI.

This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium

Biography: Amir Houmansadr is an associate professor of computer science at UMass Amherst. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012, and spent two years at the University of Texas at Austin as a postdoctoral scholar. Amir is broadly interested in the security and privacy of networked systems. To that end, he designs and deploys privacy-enhancing technologies, analyzes network protocols and services (e.g., messaging apps and machine learning APIs) for privacy leakage, and performs theoretical analysis to derive bounds on privacy (e.g., using game theory and information theory). Amir has received several awards and recognitions including the 2013 IEEE S&P Best Practical Paper Award, a 2015 Google Faculty Research Award, an NSF CAREER Award in 2016, a CSAW 2019 Applied Research Competition Finalist, an IMC 2020 Best Paper Award Runner-up, and a Facebook 2021 Privacy Enhancing Technologies Award Finalist. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE TDSC and frequently serves on the program committees of major security conferences.

Host: Barath Raghavan

Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132

Audiences: By invitation only.

Contact: Assistant to CS chair