ToTs & TiPs

Web-based Multi-Party Computation with Application to Anonymous Aggregate Compensation AnalyticsIn this talk, I will describe the definition, design, implementation, and deployment of a simple multi-party computation protocol and supporting web-based infrastructure. The protocol and infrastructure constitute a software application that allows groups of cooperating parties, such as companies or other organizations, to perform computation over their respective data assets for the purpose of obtaining aggregate analytics without the need to communicate or share their private data sets. The application was developed specifically to support a Boston Women’s Workforce Council (BWWC) study of the gender wage gap among employers within the Greater Boston Area. The application was deployed successfully to collect aggregate statistical data pertaining to compensation levels across genders and demographics at a number of participating organizations. Time permitting, I will summarize our experience with the rollout of this application, lessons learned, and future plans to extend the capabilities we developed by incorporating them into a programming environment that leverages popular cloud platforms for computing analytics over large private data sets.This work was done at Boston University in collaboration with Andrei Lapets, Eric Dunton, Kyle Holzinger, and Frederick Jansen. It was funded in part by NSF awards #1414119 and #1430145 and by the Initiative on Cities at Boston University.Speakers: Azer Bestavros (PhD 1992, Harvard University) is a Professor in the CS Department at Boston University, which he joined in 1991 and chaired from 2000 to 2007. He is the Founding Director of the BU Hariri Institute for Computing, which was set up in 2010 to "create and sustain a community of scholars who believe in the transformative potential of computational perspectives in research and education." His research contributions include pioneering the web push content distribution model adopted years later by industry, seminal work on Internet traffic characterization, game-theoretic approaches to cloud resource management, and safety certification of networked systems and software. Supported by over $20M of awards from government and industry, his work yielded 18 PhD theses, 6 issued patents, 3 startups, and hundreds of refereed papers that are cited over 15,000 times. His current research is focused on mechanism design for efficient and secure cloud computing. Azer served as chair of the IEEE Computer Society TC on the Internet and as chair or member of the editorial boards of major computer systems and networking conferences and journals. Currently, he co-chairs the Research, Education, and Outreach Committee of the MGHPCC, and is a board member of the Cloud Computing Caucus, a non-profit, non-partisan coalition of industry and key government stakeholders, focused on raising awareness and educating lawmakers and the public on issues associated with cloud computing. Azer received a number of distinguished service awards and best papers awards, most notably the ACM Sigmetrics Inaugural Test of Time Award for technical contributions "whose impact is still felt 10-15 years after initial publication." In 2010, he received the United Methodist Scholar Teacher Award in recognition of "outstanding dedication and contributions to the learning arts and to the institution" at Boston University.