Distributed Cryptography as a Service

Speaker: Chen-Da Liu-Zhang, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts

Abstract: The Internet has played a pivotal role in the creation and growth of distributed systems. Today, rapid technological and societal changes are transforming this landscape at an unprecedented pace. Alongside these shifts, the demand for systems that are secure, privacy-preserving, and fault-tolerant continues to grow. How can we design large-scale distributed systems that uphold these guarantees? Distributed cryptography offers a powerful approach. It enables secure operations to be performed while preserving user privacy and tolerating faults even in adversarial or unreliable environments. In this talk, I will present how my research addresses core barriers to practical distributed cryptography. I will highlight a series of results that enable efficient cryptographic computations over asynchronous networks --networks where delays and disruptions are unpredictable-- addressing some of the key challenges in deploying these techniques at scale.

Biography: Chen-Da Liu-Zhang is Co-Head of the Information Systems Lab and the Blockchain Lab at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and a Research Scientist at the Web3 Foundation. His research lies at the intersection of applied cryptography and distributed computing, with a focus on addressing security and privacy challenges in decentralized systems. His recent work explores efficient protocols for secure computation in asynchronous networks, secure computation with dynamic committees, scalable consensus mechanisms, and peer-to-peer network design. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and NTT Research, and he earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.

Host: Prof. Marc Langheinrich