Ghous Amjad
I am a fifth year PhD student at Brown CS where I work on problems in the area of Cryptography and Applied Cryptography with Seny Kamara and Tarik Moataz. I am a member of the Encrypted Systems Lab and CAPS group at Brown. Recently, my research has been particularly focused on Encrypted Search and Structured Encryption where I work on designing and implementing provably secure, efficient and usable schemes with well defined leakage profiles, that also guarantee various desirable security properties of Searchable Symmetric Encryption schemes such as Forward Privacy, Snapshot Security, Volume-Hiding, Past-Hiding etc. Currently, I am working on new efficient designs for Structured Encryption schemes and Private Data Structures.
Before coming to Brown, I was an undergrad at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and was advised by Fareed Zaffar. In LUMS, I worked on projects in different areas of Computer Science such as Privacy, Networks and Graphics etc.
Please email me for a detailed list of my research and other projects!
Recent News:
[August 2021] I am very happy to announce that I will be joining the Private Computing team at Google NYC in a full-time role.
[May 2021] I successfully defended my PhD Dissertation titled "Theoretical and Practical Advances in Structured Encryption". Special thanks to Seny Kamara & Tarik Moataz for all the help over the years and to my committee Moti Yung & Giuseppe Persiano!
[September 2020] I will be a Teaching Assistant for Algorithms For The People this Fall.
[September 2020] I was an intern at Google NYC this summer with the Private Computing team! I was hosted by Kevin Yeo and Joon Young Seo.
[September 2019] I will be a Teaching Assistant for Topics in Applied Cryptography: Crypto for Social Good this Fall. I will be consulting on and be a part of many amazing projects that are expected to come out of his class. Stay tuned!
[September 2019] I was an intern at Google NYC this summer with the Private Computing team! I was hosted by Kevin Yeo and Sarvar Patel.
[July 2019] I presented my paper titled "Breach Resistant Structured Encryption" at PETS 2019. Video link to the talk is available here.
[March 2019] I presented my paper titled "Forward and Backward Private Searchable Encryption with SGX" at EuroSec 2019
[September 2018] Nominated for Microsoft Research Fellowship by Brown Computer Science.
[March 2018] Won the Award for the best Poster at ACM CODASPY 2018. Also presented our paper on the same work there.
Publications
Forward and Backward Private Searchable Encryption with SGX [Paper]
Forgetting with Puzzles: Using Cryptographic Puzzles to support Digital Forgetting [Paper]
ACM CODASPY '18
Past-Hiding Dynamic Encrypted Storage: Securing Cloud Data Before and After Server Breaches
Correlation-Secure Leakage: Revisiting Forward Privacy and Achieving Injection Security
Self Erasing and Auditable Databases
Experience / Education
Summer Intern at Google NYC
- Integrated the backend service I developed last year at Google, with an existing API within Google.
- Implemented a proof of concept prototype for clients within Google, in C++.
- Vetted the privacy guarantees of the integration and helped flesh out the protocols.
PhD Candidate at Brown
- Major: Computer Science.
- Recieved my Master of Science degree in May 2018.
- Primarily working on designing and implementing Searchable Encryption Schemes.
- Serving as a Teaching Assistant for Algorithms For The People
Summer Intern at Google NYC
- Implemented a general backend service for Chrome Password Breach Checker.
- Vetted the privacy guarantees of the service and helped flesh out the protocol.
- Implemented load-tests for the service using Google’s various load testing frameworks and programmatically generated queries for the load-tests and end to end latency tests.
Research Assistant at NYU Abu Dhabi
- Our Research was focused on the area of Digital Forgetting.
Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant and Undergrad at LUMS
- Major: Computer Science. Graduated with the NMF Gold Medal and the Award of Distinction.
- I have served as a Teaching Assistant for Discrete Mathematics, Data Structures, Operating Systems and Digital Image Processing.
Selected Coursework
Advanced Programming, Algorithms, Data Structures (Class Rank: 1), Software Security and Exploitation, Topics in Advanced Cryptography, Topics in Applied Cryptography, Topics in Software Security, Probabilistic Methods in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Computer Vision, Digital Image Processing, Operating Systems (Class Rank: 1), Network Security, Software Engineering, Databases, Network Security, Cryptography: Classical and Quantum, Topics in Internet Research, Applied Probability
Skills
C/C++, Java, Python, Rust, MATLAB, SGX, Clusion, SQL, Android, HTML, Network Simulator, Bash Scripting, Spark, R, Pyret, Ruby on Rails, Emulab, TCL, MIPS, JSP
Other Interests / Random Things
I love to travel. I have been to a few different countries and a lot of cities in the United States. For me, the best thing about travel is that I get to sample and relish in the local cuisine.
One of the notable trips I took was my trip to Japan. Majority of my time was spent in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. I did take day trips to Yokohama and Nara. I miss the food I had there everyday.
I love New York!
Lahore is the best city ever though! Well, you can say I am a little biased.
I served as the Chair of Technology on the Brown Graduate Student Council from 2016 to 2018. I also served on the GSC International Committee led by the Chair of International Advocacy.
Contact Me
Get in touch for a detailed CV, a short resume or for any other queries. I can be reached either by phone (+1 401-837-4081) or email.