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Information about individuals is collected by a variety of organizations including government agencies, banks, hospitals, research institutions, and private companies. In many cases, sharing this data among organizations can bring benefits in social, scientific, business, and security domains, as the collected information is of similar nature, of about similar populations. However, much of this collected data is sensitive as it contains personal information, or information that could damage an organization's reputation or competitiveness.

The proliferation and increasing sophistication of censorship warrants continuing efforts to develop tools to evade it. Yet, designing effective mechanisms for censorship resistance ultimately depends on accurate models of the capabilities of censors, as well as how those capabilities will likely evolve. In contrast to more established disciplines within security, censorship resistance is relatively nascent, not yet having solid foundations for understanding censor capabilities or evaluating the effectiveness of evasion technologies.

Increasingly, decisions and actions affecting people's lives are determined by automated systems processing personal data. Excitement about these systems has been accompanied by serious concerns about their opacity and the threats that they pose to privacy, fairness, and other values. Recognizing these concerns, the investigators seek to make real-world automated decision-making systems accountable for privacy and fairness by enabling them to detect and explain violations of these values. The technical work is informed by, and applied to, online advertising, healthcare, an

Crypto-currencies and smart contracts are a new wave of disruptive technology that will shape the future of money and financial transactions. Today, crypto-currencies are a billion-dollar market, and hundreds of companies are entering this space, promising exciting new markets and eco-systems. Unfortunately, usage of crypto-currencies outstrips our understanding. Currently most crypto currencies rely on heuristic designs without a solid appreciation of the necessary security properties, or any formal basis upon which strong assurance of such properties might be achieved.

This project addresses how semiconductor designers can verify the correctness of ICs that they source from possibly untrusted fabricators. Existing solutions to this problem are either based on legal and contractual obligations, or use post-fabrication IC testing, both of which are unsatisfactory or unsound. As a sound alternative, this project designs and fabricates verifiable hardware: ICs that provide proofs of their correctness for every input-output computation they perform in the field.