CSE's Marina Blanton Helps Organize Dagstuhl Seminar

By Mylous Hairston

Held in Wadern, Germany, the multi-day seminar focused on protecting data in use. This involves using private data in secure computation in such a way that the data is protected through strong cryptographic means while in use so no one has access to it.

Dagstuhl Seminars, dozens are held annually, are the flagship of the event program at Schloss Dagstuhl. Topics at the seminars are computer science related. Invitation-only attendees are scientists from academia and industry from across the globe. Dagstuhl Seminars are often praised by participants as the most productive academic events they have ever experienced. Because of this, participation is highly coveted.

Professor Blanton and co-organizer Liina Kamm, Cybernetica senior researcher in Estonia, commenced planning for their summer 2025 seminar more than a year in advance. Submitting a seminar structure proposal for review and approval, providing a list of invited senior and junior researchers, organizing participant talks and discussion sessions were among their responsibilities.

A the "Building Privacy-Preserving Technologies of Societal Impact" seminar co-organized by Professor Blanton, scientists concentrated on and discussed efforts to deploy developed research to build practical applications of societal impact. It included finding use cases, working with domain experts on integrating privacy-preserving solutions into their work-flow, addressing legal concerns, and improving usability for end users of the technology.

Here, participants shared their experience as well as identified trends of successful applications and deployments. They were also able to seek solutions to overcoming roadblocks.

One real life situation where privacy-preservation is applicable is kidney exchange. Often times, privacy is not the primary concern for dying people and their relatives. However, it is a different story for living donors. The goal is to develop kidney exchange computation without having one's medical data in the clear. Ultimately, such a development would change current processes and regulations-ultimately saving lives. Bringing people together to identify obstacles and solutions was the foundation of the seminar.

Professor Blanton is passionate about the research and its applications. She adds, "The technology that I am working on helped to fight human trafficking, to identify money laundering, to measure and act to reduce the pay gap in Boston by gender and races, to fight disease, and more. I believe this technology has a lot of potential that hasn't been fully explored."