Data for Good Seminars invite leading academics from around the world to share how they are using data to address societal challenges.

Co-Hosted by the DSI Cybersecurity Center and Barnard Computer Science


Guest Speaker

Mayank Varia, Associate Professor, Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, Boston University; and Co-Director of the Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security (RISCS)

Cybersecurity Center Chair: Rebecca Wright, Druckenmiller Professor of Computer Science; and Director, Vagelos Computational Science Center, Barnard College


Details & Recording

Tuesday, March 22, 2022 (3:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET) – Virtual


Abstract & Biography

Data Science Without Data

In a data-driven society, cryptography offers the promise of allowing data scientists to work with data that they cannot see. In this talk, I will present research on cryptographically protected data science and its social, legal, and public policy impacts. I will describe the design of scalable and flexible systems for protecting data analysis, as well as the deployment of empowering and equitable systems for specific analytics that benefit society while respecting personal privacy.

Bio: Mayank Varia, Research Associate Professor and Co-Director for the RISCS Center, leads the NSF Frontier MACS project. Prior to joining BU, he worked for four years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. At MIT Lincoln Lab, he designed and evaluated high performance privacy-enhancing data search technology, created information theoretic metrics to quantify privacy, and developed algorithms to capture linguistic provenance automatically.