{"691805":{"#nid":"691805","#data":{"type":"news","title":"New Faculty Shows Where Cryptography Meets the Computer System","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETaking a \u003Cem\u003EWhere\u2019s Waldo?\u003C\/em\u003E book from his shelf, Assistant Professor \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/faculty.cc.gatech.edu\/~aozdemir\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAlex Ozdemir\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E posed a simple question: Is it possible to prove Waldo is somewhere on the page without showing anyone where he is?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe answer is yes. Ozdemir demonstrated the technique by taking a piece of paper with a small Waldo-shaped hole cut out and placing it over the page. The demonstration confirms that Waldo is on the page without revealing his location or other details and is a simple example of a concept called a zero-knowledge proof.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn computer science, zero-knowledge proofs allow one person to prove that something is true without revealing the information that makes it true.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThese types of problems sit at the center of Ozdemir\u2019s work. As a computer scientist and cryptographer, he studies ways to use mathematics and computer programs to protect information. But his work goes beyond creating new methods for keeping data secret. He is interested in connecting those methods to the computer systems that use them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI get excited about what no one else is working on,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I\u2019m excited about now is how you relate the security of a computer system to a crypto scheme.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETwo recent papers published at \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.usenix.org\/conference\/usenixsecurity26\u0022\u003EUSENIX Security\u003C\/a\u003E show how Ozdemir is applying this approach to real-world privacy and security problems.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne of these problems is how to handle sensitive information without revealing it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EImagine two organizations want to combine or analyze information, but neither wants to share its private data with the other. Cryptography can make this possible, but some of these privacy protections can be slow and difficult to use with large amounts of information.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOzdemir and his collaborators developed a new system called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eprint.iacr.org\/2026\/672\u0022\u003EFLOSS\u003C\/a\u003E (Fast Linear Online Secret-Shared Shuffling) to make one of these tasks much faster.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFLOSS allows two parties to mix a set of private information without either party seeing the original data or learning the final order. This process, known as shuffling, is useful in privacy-preserving applications such as data analysis, anonymous messaging, and private advertising.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn tests, FLOSS shuffled more than one million items in less than half a second, making it more than 800 times faster than previous leading methods.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFLOSS achieves much of this speed by doing some of the hard mathematical work in advance, before the actual data is available. When the data arrives, the system can complete the shuffle quickly, with very little communication between the two computers.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe system is designed to protect against cheating. If one of the parties tries to manipulate the process or access information it shouldn\u2019t, FLOSS can detect the problem and stop the computation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe researchers also used FLOSS to create a faster way to sort private information. Sorting is a basic computer task but doing it while keeping the information secret can be expensive. Making that process faster could allow privacy-preserving tools to handle much larger amounts of data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOzdemir tackled another problem through a project called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eprint.iacr.org\/2026\/213\u0022\u003EOrbit\u003C\/a\u003E: How can computers perform useful work on information that remains encrypted?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFully homomorphic encryption, or FHE, is a form of encryption that allows computers to perform calculations on protected data without first decrypting it. For example, a hospital could send encrypted medical information to a cloud service for analysis without the service seeing the patients\u0027 records.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe challenge is that this type of computing can be extremely slow.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOrbit is a computing tool called a compiler that helps make these encrypted calculations more efficient. A compiler takes computer code and turns it into instructions that a computer can run. Orbit examines an entire computation and identifies more efficient ways to handle some of the most expensive steps in fully homomorphic encryption.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERather than treating those steps separately, Orbit looks at how they work together and identifies opportunities to reduce the amount of work the computer must do.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn tests, Orbit was between 1.19 and 1.73 times faster than previous leading systems on the workloads studied, including complex tasks such as running artificial intelligence models. The calculations also remained within 0.3% of the accuracy of those performed on unencrypted data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor Ozdemir, projects like FLOSS and Orbit are part of a broader goal: making advanced cryptography practical enough to use with the computer systems people use every day.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENow at Georgia Tech\u2019s \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/scp.cc.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Cybersecurity and Privacy\u003C\/a\u003E (SCP), Ozdemir is recruiting Ph.D. students from across the computing stack to work with him. He was drawn to Georgia Tech in part for its multidisciplinary approach to security.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI also just love being around universities,\u201d he said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt SCP, Ozdemir plans to continue exploring programmable cryptography across the computing stack, integrating cryptography, compilers, and automated reasoning to address security problems from multiple angles. He received his Ph.D. at Stanford University and bachelor\u0027s degree from Harvey Mudd College.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAssistant Professor Alex Ozdemir is bringing an interdisciplinary approach to cryptography at Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. His research combines cryptography, compilers and automated reasoning to make advanced security tools faster and more practical. Using a simple \u003Cem\u003EWhere\u2019s Waldo?\u003C\/em\u003E example, Ozdemir explains how zero-knowledge proofs can allow someone to prove something is true without revealing the information behind the proof.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis recent research includes FLOSS, a system that allows private data to be securely shuffled while dramatically reducing the time needed to process large datasets, and Orbit, a compiler designed to make fully homomorphic encryption more efficient. Together, the projects reflect Ozdemir\u2019s broader goal of connecting the security guarantees of cryptography with the computer systems that use them. At Georgia Tech, he plans to continue this work while recruiting students to explore programmable cryptography across the computing stack.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Assistant Professor Alex Ozdemir is bringing an interdisciplinary approach to cryptography at Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. His research combines cryptography, compilers and automated reasoning to make advanced security tools faster "}],"uid":"36253","created_gmt":"2026-08-19 15:27:07","changed_gmt":"2026-08-20 19:50:43","author":"John Popham","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-08-19T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-08-19T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"680916":{"id":"680916","type":"image","title":"Alex-Ozdemir.jpg","body":null,"created":"1787153247","gmt_created":"2026-08-19 15:27:27","changed":"1787153247","gmt_changed":"2026-08-19 15:27:27","alt":"A man standing in front of a wooden wall. He is smiling and tilting his head. ","file":{"fid":"265249","name":"Alex-Ozdemir.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/08\/19\/Alex-Ozdemir.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/08\/19\/Alex-Ozdemir.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1750068,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/08\/19\/Alex-Ozdemir.jpg?itok=eRUu8UbK"}}},"media_ids":["680916"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"660406","name":"School of Cybersecurity \u0026 Privacy"},{"id":"660367","name":"School of Cybersecurity and Privacy"}],"categories":[{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"}],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"145171","name":"Cybersecurity"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJohn Popham\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECommunications Officer II at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jpopham3@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}