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• Jul

  13

  Wenhao Zhang CS PhD Prospectus: Hardware Co-Design Approach for Modern Cryptography

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  9:00 AM

  EVENT DETAILS

  Modern cryptography, including multi-party computation, zero-knowledge
  proofs and fully homomorphic encryption, offers provable privacy for
  computations over sensitive data and enables a new generation of
  applications. Applications span from privacy-preserving machine
  learning and secure financial analytics to privacy-respecting
  decentralized systems. Despite decades of progress, a persistent gap
  remains between the theoretical efficiency of these protocols and the
  performance demands of real-world deployments. This gap arises from a
  disconnect between hardware-agnostic protocol design and how modern
  hardware actually operates. Asymptotically optimal protocols routinely
  rely on primitives that hardware executes slowly, and even hardware
  aware protocols perform poorly when implementations ignore instruction
  pipelines, memory hierarchy, and vector units. My work is motivated by
  a core goal: to build secure computation primitives and systems that
  are provably secure while remaining concretely practical on real
  hardware.
  In this talk, I will summarize my prior work spanning pseudorandom
  correlation generators, garbled circuits, RAM-based MPC, oblivious
  RAM, threshold FHE, and anonymous messaging. I will focus on three
  examples of the co-design philosophy at the primitive level: a
  maliciously secure distributed point function that closes the semi
  honest–active gap at 50× less communication; a mixed-mode oblivious
  RAM that allows public accesses and shaves the log factor and concrete
  overheads for these operations, while matching the fully-private lower
  bound; and a concretely efficient succinct garbling scheme that turns
  rate-one garbled circuits from a theoretical curiosity into a
  deployable tool. I will then present the forward-looking direction for
  my ongoing and future research: extending the co-design methodology
  from the CPU down to specialized accelerators, targeting large-scale
  FHE workloads.

  more less

  TIME Monday, July 13, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM

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  CONTACT Jensen Smith    jensen.smith@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Jul

  13

  Haotian Chu CS PhD Prospectus: Secure Multi-Party Computation: From Cryptographic Techniques to Real-World Privacy-Preserving Systems

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  8:00 AM

  EVENT DETAILS

  Secure computation lets mutually distrusting parties compute over private data while revealing nothing beyond the result, but a persistent gap separates the cryptographic techniques that make it efficient from the demands of deploying it against realistic, actively malicious adversaries. This proposal works at both ends of that gap. At the technique level, I develop a generic compiler that transforms any zero-knowledge (ZK) proof for SIMD circuits into one for general circuits while preserving efficiency, with concrete gains across several proof systems. At the system level, I show how privacy-preserving applications can be secured under active corruption: I enable an efficient way to fetch an encrypted entry from a secret database through a TEE-free, simulation-secure protocol tolerating actively corrupted adversaries. Together these results support a broader thesis: that advances in the cryptographic building blocks of secure computation can be systematically channeled into deployable systems. Looking ahead, the proposed work extends this methodology toward emerging multi-agent settings, where autonomous agents must compute over sensitive data without trusting one another.

  more less

  TIME Monday, July 13, 2026 at 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM

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  CONTACT Jensen Smith    jensen.smith@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Jul

  20

  Workshop on Advancing Theory, Research, and Practice for Generative AI in University-Level Computing Education

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  8:00 AM Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILSmore info

  We invite you to register for our upcoming Workshop on Advancing Theory, Research, and Practice for Generative AI in University-Level Computing Education, July 20, 2026 from 8 AM to 7 PM at Northwestern University’s Evanston Campus.

  Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies are rapidly changing how we learn and engage with computing. As we learn and teach in these changing times, what are the questions that we must be asking and what considerations do we need to keep in mind to support just, inclusive, and caring learning environments for students of all backgrounds and interests?

  We invite researchers and practitioners who study or teach computing at the university-level to join us for an interactive one-day workshop. The workshop will consist of talks from four invited speakers interspersed with breakout sessions to continue discussion, plan changes to your classes, and foster new research projects and collaborations.

  Our invited speakers are:

  Kevin Lin (University of Washington)
  Benji Xie (University of Denver)
  Jamie Gorson Benario (Google)
  Sepehr Vakil (Northwestern University)

  Register here by July 10.

  More information about the workshop: https://sites.northwestern.edu/genaicomputinged/. This workshop is supported by the Northwestern Computer Science Department and Dolby Laboratories. Please contact Melissa Chen (melissac @ u.northwestern.edu) with questions.

  Best,
  Melissa Chen and Mike Horn, on behalf of the workshop organizers

  Register Now

  more less

  TIME Monday, July 20, 2026 at 8:00 AM - 7:00 PM

  LOCATION Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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  CONTACT Melissa Chen    melissac@u.northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Sep

  24

  Bagel Thursday + Discussion

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  9:00 AM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILS

  tba

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  TIME Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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  CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Sep

  28

  CS Seminar

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILS

  Monday / CS Seminar
  September 28 / 12:00 PM
  Hybrid / Mudd 3514

  Speaker
  TBA

  Talk Title
  TBA

  Abstract
  TBA

  Biography
  TBA

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  Zoom Link
  Panopto Link

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  TIME Monday, September 28, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

  LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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  CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Oct

  5

  CS Seminar: Formal Relational Equivalence for SQL, GenAI, and Beyond (Brian Suchy)

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  12:00 PM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILS

  Monday / CS Seminar
  October 5 / 12:00 PM
  Hybrid / Mudd 3514

  Speaker
  Brian Suchy, Software Engineer Google DeepMind

  Talk Title
  Formal Relational Equivalence for SQL, GenAI, and Beyond

  Abstract
  Verifying that complex query rewrites from database optimizers or AI-driven generators preserve exact bag semantics under three-valued logic is an NP-hard challenge. To address this, we present an MLIR-native compiler framework that formally reasons about relational algebra. By decoupling query semantics from specific execution engines and lowering queries into a unified Relational Algebra Intermediate Representation, our language-agnostic methodology definitively proves semantic equivalence across all possible database states.

  The core of the presentation will deep-dive into our multi-tiered proving architecture, which synthesizes several advanced academic methodologies. First, we utilize E-Graphs and Equality Saturation to rapidly explore the equivalence space and detect structural congruence between query abstract syntax trees using fast, algebraic rewrite rules. Second, we employ Semiring Arithmetic, treating relational algebra as expressions over K-relations to leverage algebraic simplification and canonical forms under semiring laws. Finally, we implement a First-Order Logic and SMT translation path, lowering Relational Algebra into Relational Calculus and then into First-Order Logic to evaluate constraints and domain-specific axioms using parallel solvers like Z3 and CVC5, which either formally proves equivalence or synthesizes concrete counter-examples.

  Finally, we will discuss the practical implications of combining these formal mathematical methods with modern compiler design. Attendees will leave with a comprehensive understanding of how bridging database theory, equality saturation, and SMT solving can create robust solutions for verifying query optimizers, enforcing semantic correctness, and validating automated SQL generation at scale.

  Biography
  Brian Suchy is a Software Engineer within Google DeepMind.
  In his time at Google he has worked on F1 Query (Google's internal SQL query engine), hardware development, and (of course) AI.
  Prior to joining Google, Brian received his PhD student at Northwestern University, advised by Peter Dinda, with a focus on hardware/software codesign and memory management.

  Research Interests: Artificial Intelligence, Query Processing and Formal Logic

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  Zoom Link
  Panopto Link

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  TIME Monday, October 5, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

  LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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  CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Oct

  29

  Bagel Thursday + Discussion

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  9:00 AM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILS

  tba

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  TIME Thursday, October 29, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

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  CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)

• Nov

  19

  Bagel Thursday + Discussion

  Department of Computer Science (CS)

  9:00 AM 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)

  EVENT DETAILS

  tba

  more less

  TIME Thursday, November 19, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

  LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library)    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Wynante R Charles    wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)