Security of data in the digital age has been a challenging problem. With the increase of cloud computing and data storage in remote locations, authenticity – the ability to determine whether interactions are genuine and place trust in the parties involved – is of paramount importance. Often communications occur over an untrusted channel so structuring data in an inherently secure manner becomes necessary which leads to the development of authenticated data structures (ADS). This project will examine the tradeoffs between security and efficiency for ADS large scale systems. The goal is then the theoretical design and practical implementation of efficient ADS.

I have done a UROP with the Whitehead Institute in Computational Genetics where I developed crowdsourcing techniques to examine heredity from social networks. I have also taken coursework in data structures which has provided me a solid foundation in preparation for this project.