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Upcoming Events

Mar
19
Tue
IAA Seminar Series – Mingyuan Wang
Mar 19 @ 10:45 am – 11:45 am

Title: Towards Scalable Decentralized Systems

Abstract: Decentralized systems enable mutually distrusting parties to collaboratively control a system; this fosters trust as no single corrupted party can break the system, while utility is ensured through collective participation. In recent years, decentralized systems have found many applications, particularly within the blockchain ecosystem. Traditionally, the robustness and security of a decentralized system increase with the number of participating parties. Consequently, the primary objective of decentralization is to scale the system to accommodate as many parties as possible. However, the existing framework for realizing threshold cryptography, the core cryptographic primitive enabling decentralization, still relies on interactive setup processes, posing significant scalability challenges in real-world scenarios. Additionally, it lacks the flexibility to handle advanced features such as weights, dynamism, and multiverse, which are highly desired in practice. In this talk, Mingyuan Wang will discuss his research work that proposes new techniques to address these issues, which pave the way for truly scalable decentralized cryptographic systems. He will conclude the talk by briefly discussing other research problems that he is interested in.

Bio: Mingyuan Wang is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, hosted by Sanjam Garg. He received his PhD from Purdue University, where he was advised by Hemanta K. Maji. Wang is interested in cryptography and its interplay with theoretical computer science and security. His research covers a wide range of topics, including threshold cryptography, secure multiparty computation, leakage-resilient cryptography, and cryptographic applications in machine learning. His work has been published at top venues, such as Crypto, Eurocrypt, the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, the Theory of Cryptography Conference, the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, and more.

Zoom: https://wse.zoom.us/j/97110035435

Apr
16
Tue
IAA Seminar Series – Tom Dietterich
Apr 16 @ 10:45 am – 11:45 am

Details coming soon.

May
21
Tue
IAA Seminar Series – Tianmin Shu
May 21 @ 10:45 am – 11:45 am

Details coming soon.

How Do We Create an Assured Autonomous Future?

Autonomous systems have become increasingly integrated into all aspects of every person’s daily life. In response, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy (IAA) focuses on ensuring that those systems are safe, secure, and reliable, and that they do what they are designed to do.

Pillars of the IAA

Technology

Autonomous technologies perform tasks with a high degree of autonomy and often employ artificial intelligence (AI) to simulate human cognition, intelligence, and creativity. Because these systems are critical to our safety, health, and well-being as well as to the fabric of our system of commerce, new research and engineering methodologies are needed to ensure they behave in safe, reasonable, and acceptable ways…

Ecosystem

Autonomous systems must integrate well with individuals and with society at large. Such systems often integrate into—and form collectively into—an autonomous ecosystem. That ecosystem—the connections and interactions between autonomous systems, over networks, with the physical environment, and with humans—must be assured, resilient, productive, and fair in the autonomous future…

Ethics and Governance

The nation must adopt the right policy to ensure autonomous systems benefit society. Just as the design of technology has dramatic impacts on society, the development and implementation of policy can also result in intended and unintended consequences. Furthermore, the right governance structures are critical to enforce sound policy and to guide the impact of technology…

  • In recent years, we have learned that the most important element about autonomous systems is – for humans – trust. Trust that the autonomous systems will behave predictably, reliably, and effectively. That sort of trust is hard-won and takes time, but the centrality of this challenge to the future of humanity in a highly autonomous world motivates us all.
    Ralph Semmel, Director, Applied Physics Laboratory
  • In the not too distant future we will see more and more autonomous systems operating with humans, for humans, and without humans, taking on tasks that were once thought of as the exclusive domains of humans. How can we as individuals and as a society be assured that these systems are design for resilience against degradation or malicious attack? The  mission of the Institute is to bring assurance to people so that as our world is populated by autonomous systems they are operating safely, ethically, and in the best interests of humans.
    Ed Schlesinger Benjamin T. Rome Dean, Whiting School of Engineering