Bestavros Presents on MPC at National Academy of Sciences Sackler Colloquium

Institute Director Azer Bestavros was a featured presenter at the December 2017 Sackler Colloquium on Modeling and Visualizing Science and Technology Developments. 

The high-profile Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia address scientific topics of broad and current interest that cut across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, three to four colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Each colloquium is organized by a member of the National Academy of Sciences, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions among one hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia are held at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, California. 

Bestavros, the Hariri Institute’s founding director and a William Fairfield Warren Professor of Computer Science, presented on secure multi-party computation (MPC). His talk, titled, “Sharing Knowledge without Sharing Data: Platforms for Resolving the False Dichotomy Between Privacy and Utility of Information,” discussed how secure MPC platforms being developed by Hariri Institute researchers and software engineers allow information from multiple sources to be shared for aggregate use without  compromising the privacy of individual data sources. Bestavros and other BU researchers are currently working on applications of this technology in fields of automated assistance, medical data sharing, and pay transparency & equity. With additional projects and proposals in the works, secure MPC is emerging as a key research thrust of the Hariri Institute for Computing, with opportunities for engagement across medicine, business, law, social sciences, and many more fields.

BU was also represented by Paul Trunfio (Senior Research Scientist and Hariri Institute Fellow) and Gene Stanley (Professor of Physics and Hariri Institute Fellow), who each organized a session for the colloquium, “Modeling Needs, Infrastructures, Standards,” and “Rankings and the Efficiency of Institutions,” respectively.