CEDA Distinguished Speaker Luncheon at ICCAD 2022

Each year, CEDA invites experts in EDA to present to the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) attendees. This year's IEEE CEDA Distinguished Speaker Luncheon was presented by Farinaz Koushanfar, Henry Booker Scholar Professor of ECE at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

Organized by Tsung-Yi Ho, CEDA Vice President for Activities.

Date: 1 November 2022
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Pacific Time
Location: San Diego Mission Bay 

Presenter: Farinaz Koushanfar, Henry Booker Scholar Professor of ECE at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).
Talk Title: Automated Cryptographically-Secure Private Computing: From Logic and Mixed-Protocol Optimization to Centralized and Federated ML Customization
Abstract: Over the last four decades, much research effort has been dedicated to designing cryptographically-secure methods for computing on encrypted data. However, despite the great progress in research, adoption of the sophisticated crypto methodologies has been rather slow and limited in practical settings. Presently used heuristic and trusted third-party solutions fall short in guaranteeing the privacy requirements for the contemporary massive datasets, complex AI algorithms, and the emerging collaborative/distributed computing scenarios such as blockchains.

In this talk, we outline the challenges in the state-of-the-art protocols for computing on encrypted data with an emphasis on emerging centralized, federated, and distributed learning scenarios. We discuss how in recent years, giant strides have been made in this field by leveraging optimization and design automation methods including logic synthesis, protocol selection, and automated co-design/co-optimization of cryptographic protocols, learning algorithm, software, and hardware. Proof of concept would be demonstrated in the design of COINN, the present state-of-the-art framework for cryptographically-secure deep learning on encrypted data. We conclude by discussing the practical challenges in the emerging private robust learning and distributed/ federated computing scenarios as well as the opportunities ahead.

Speaker Bio: 

Farinaz Koushanfar is the Henry Booker Scholar Professor of ECE at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where she is also the founding co-director of the UCSD Center for Machine-Intelligence, Computing & Security (MICS). Her research addresses several aspects of secure and efficient computing, with a focus on hardware and system security, robust machine learning under resource constraints, intellectual property (IP) protection, as well as practical privacy-preserving computing. Dr. Koushanfar is a fellow of the Kavli Frontiers of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of IEEE. She has received a number of awards and honors including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Obama, the ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award, Cisco IoT Security Grand Challenge Award, MIT Technology Review TR-35, Qualcomm Innovation Awards, Intel Collaborative Awards, Young Faculty/CAREER Awards from NSF, DARPA, ONR and ARO, as well as several best paper awards.