
About Me
My research centers on the foundations of privacy for machine learning and statistics, in particular differential privacy and its surprising interplay with other topics such as statistical validity, robustness, cryptography, and fairness. My background is in theoretical computer science, but increasingly my work spans machine learning, statistics, cryptography, and cybersecurity. My research and teaching have been recognized with an NSF CAREER award and the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teaching Award.
At Northeastern, I am a member of the Theory Group, the Cryptography and Privacy Group and the Cybersecurity & Privacy Institute. I am also a member of the Boston-Area Data Privacy Group
Current Events
In Spring 2025 I am teaching a CS 7880: Seminar on Foundations of Trustworthy ML.
- 04-15-2025 I will be PC co-chair for ALT 2026! Submit your best work!
- 04-14-2025 Congratulations to lab alum Nico Berrios, who will be starting his PhD at Georgia Tech in the Fall!
- 04-11-2025 I joined the editorial board of the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality! Submit your best work!
- 04-03-2025 Kongratulations to Konstantina on her thesis proposal! Konstantina will be looking for postdocs soon!
- 01-22-2025 Kongratulations to Konstantina on her AISTATS paper!
- 01-21-2025 I was appointed to the Census Scientific Advisory Committee (CSAC)!
- 12-18-2024 New paper on private personalized learning!
- 12-10-2024 Our paper on bias-variance tradeoffs in DP was accepted to JASA—my first stats journal paper!
- 11-22-2024 We hosted a successful Privacy Day at BU!
- 10-04-2024 Congratulations to Rose on her SODA paper
- 09-26-2024 Congratulations to Mahdi on his NeurIPS paper
Students
I'm fortunate to work with an amazing group of students and postdocs. Currently I work with:
- Mahdi Haghifam, Postdoc
- Konstantina Bairaktari, PhD Student, co-advised with Huy Nguyen
- John Abascal, PhD Student, co-advised with Alina Oprea
- Rose Silver, PhD Student at CMU, co-advised with Elaine Shi