MC2 Graduate Student Named Google Ph.D. Fellow

A graduate student studying privacy and security in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) was just named a Google Ph.D. Fellow.

Kartik Nayak, a third-year doctoral student in computer science, was one of only 39 doctoral students in North America, Europe and the Middle East to receive the prestigious award.

Google established the program in 2009 to recognize and support outstanding graduate students doing exceptional research in computer science and related disciplines.

Nayak’s research is directed toward improving the efficiency of privacy-preserving computation. He is working on techniques for ensuring that secure computation can be parallelized to the extent possible, and designing efficient oblivious data structures.

He also wants to improve the efficiency of oblivious RAMs and secure multiparty computation, as well as design more secure processors.

Jonathan Katz, professor of computer science and director of MC2, and Elaine Shi, a former MC2 faculty member now at Cornell University, are Nayak’s advisers.

MC2 is supported by the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences and the A. James Clark School of Engineering. It is one of 16 centers and labs in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.