Program


Monday, May 1st    
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM Coffee  
10:30AM - 11:00 AM Juan Garay, Texas A&M Welcome & Blockchain Warm Up
11:00 AM - 11:30 PM Le Xie, Texas A&M Blockchain and Energy: Understanding the Impact of Cryptomining on the Electric Grid
11:30 PM - 12:00 PM Korok Ray, Texas A&M Banking in Bitcoin
12:00 PM - 1:15 PM Lunch (provided)  
1:15 PM - 2:15 PM Oshani Seneviratne, RPI Empowering Decentralization through Algorand’s Smart Contracts
2:15 PM - 2:30 PM Ishan Dhanani, TAMU Blockchain Club RevPass: Revolutionizing the Sports Passes
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM Coffee Break  
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM Tal Rabin, UPenn YOSO: You Only Speak Once – Secure MPC with Stateless Ephemeral Roles


Juan Garay

    Welcome & Blockchain Warm Up

    Abstract. Introducing a new paradigm for decentralization, blockchains have ignited much excitement, for both enabling novel financial instruments and applications as well as for offering alternative approaches for solving fundamental problems in fault-tolerant distributed computing and cryptography. In this presentation I will overview the basic technology and methods blockchains are based on, laying the ground for the rest of the program.
    Bio. Since Fall '17, Juan Garay is a full professor at Texas A&M University's Computer Science & Engineering Department. Previously, after receiving his PhD in Computer Science from Penn State, he was a postdoc at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), and held research positions at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Bell Labs, AT&T Labs--Research, and Yahoo Research. His research interests include both foundational and applied aspects of cryptography and information security. He is the author of over 180 published works (including articles, patents, and edited volumes) in the areas of cryptography, network security, distributed computing, and algorithms; in particular, he is credited with the first optimal and efficient Byzantine agreement protocol, the first efficient and universally composable zero-knowledge and secure multi-party computation (MPC) protocols, MPC over sparse networks, and the first formal treatment of Bitcoin. In addition, Dr. Garay has been involved in the design, analysis and implementation of a variety of secure systems, and is the recipient of a Thomas A. Edison Patent Award, two Bell Labs Teamwork Awards, an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and an IBM Research Division Award. Dr. Garay has served on the program committees of numerous conferences and international panels---including co-chairing Crypto 2013 and 2014, the discipline's premier conference. He is a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).

Oshani Seneviratne

    Empowering Decentralization through Algorand's Smart Contracts

    Abstract. Algorand is a high-performing blockchain platform that is well-suited for creating decentralized applications (dApps) that are scalable and efficient. This talk will provide an overview of Algorand's unique features and benefits, with a focus on smart contracts. We will discuss how Algorand's blockchain technology enables decentralized applications that can streamline complex transactions and provide secure, transparent, and verifiable solutions. We will delve into Transaction Execution Approval Language (TEAL), state proofs, Algorand Standard Assets (ASAs), and atomic transfers. We will also discuss other topics, such as decentralized identities, decentralized knowledge management, and the application of useful AI technologies in developing the next generation of decentralized applications using Algorand.
    Bio. Oshani Seneviratne is the Associate Director of the Tetherless World Constellation and an Assistant Professor in Computer Science. She was previously the Director of Health Data Research at the Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications. Oshani obtained her S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the supervision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. Before Rensselaer, Oshani worked at Oracle, specializing in knowledge representation, provenance, and healthcare-related research. Her research interests span data integration in knowledge graphs, artificial intelligence, decentralized systems (web and blockchain), and health informatics. At MIT, Oshani conducted research on Accountable Systems for the Web. As part of her Ph.D. at MIT, Oshani developed a novel web protocol called HyperText Transfer Protocol with Accountability.

Ishan Dhanani

    RevPass - A student-led project aimed to revolutionize the Sports Pass

    Abstract. The current sports pass system at Texas A&M allows for students to sell their passes on Facebook or group chats, with no official rules or enforcement. This results in a lack of standardization in the selling price and relies solely on trust between the buyer and seller. This creates inequity for students who may not have equal access to all selling platforms and puts the buyer at risk of not getting a fair value. To address this, Texas A&M Blockchain developed a digital sports pass built on the blockchain that can be rented by other students. Furthermore, we've built a marketplace where students can seamlessly rent passes in a trustless environment. We will discuss the development of this project, its features, and a long-term implementation roadmap for the University.
    Bio. Ishan Dhanani is an incoming Computer Science masters student at Columbia University and the founder of Texas A&M Blockchain. Over the last year, he has build Texas A&M's first blockchain organization and developed partnerships with companies including Avalanche, Starknet, and Polygon

Le Xie

    Blockchain and Energy: Understanding the Impact of Cryptomining on the Electric Grid
    Abstract. Blockchain technologies are considered one of the most disruptive innovations of the last decade, enabling secure decentralized trust-building. However, in recent years, with the rapid increase in the energy consumption of blockchain-based computations for cryptocurrency mining, there have been growing concerns about their sustainable operation in electric grids. This paper investigates the tri-factor impact of such large loads on carbon footprint, grid reliability, and electricity market price in the Texas grid. We release open-source high-resolution data to enable high-resolution modeling of influencing factors such as location and flexibility. We reveal that the per-megawatt-hour carbon footprint of cryptocurrency mining loads across locations can vary by as much as 50% of the crude system average estimate. We show that the flexibility of mining loads can significantly mitigate power shortages and market disruptions that can result from the deployment of mining loads.
    Bio. Le Xie is a full professor in Texas A&M's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research interests include modeling and control in data-rich large-scale systems, grid integration of clean energy resources and electricity markets. He has received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Department of Energy Oak Ridge Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award. He was awarded the 2017 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers PES Outstanding Young Engineer Award. He was recipient of Texas A&M Dean of Engineering Excellence Award, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Outstanding Professor Award, and TEES Select Young Fellow.

Korok Ray

    Banking in Bitcoin
    Abstract. I argue that the chief function of Bitcoin will be a settlement layer between banks. I review banking and central banking today, discuss Bitcoin in the context of banking, and speculate on opportunities for future Bitcoin development.
    Bio. Korok Ray is an Associate Professor at the Mays Business School of Texas A&M University, and Director of the Mays Innovation Research Center. He is a labor economist who researches the future of work. In particular, he investigates how computer science and machine learning can create better electronic labor markets that will become ever more common in a networked society.
    Korok’s core area of research is performance measurement: the study of incentives, risk/reward, and compensation for human performance. This application includes executives, chief financial officers, financial traders, farmers, doctors, teachers, rank and file employees, bankers, and even athletes. His research seeks to create economic models of human behavior and to design incentive systems to achieve better outcomes for all. His tools are economic theory, data science, and some small doses of artificial intelligence.
    Korok earned a BS in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a PhD in economics from Stanford University. He has taught at the University of Chicago and Georgetown University, as well as Texas A&M University. He also served on the Council of Economic Advisers of the White House from 2007 to 2009 during the historic financial crisis.

Tal Rabin

    YOSO: You Only Speak Once -- Secure MPC with Stateless Ephemeral Roles
    Abstract. The inherent difficulty of maintaining stateful environments over long periods of time gave rise to the paradigm of server-less computing, where mostly-stateless components are deployed on demand to handle computation tasks, and are teared down once their task is complete. Server-less architecture could offer the added benefit of improved resistance to targeted denial-of-service attacks, by hiding from the attacker the physical machines involved in the protocol until after they complete their work. Realizing such protection, however, requires that the protocol only uses stateless parties, where each party sends only one message and never needs to speaks again. Perhaps the most famous example of this style of protocols is the Nakamoto consensus protocol used in Bitcoin: A peer can win the right to produce the next block by running a local lottery (mining), all while staying covert. Once the right has been won, it is executed by sending a single message. After that, the physical entity never needs to send more messages.
    We refer to this as the You-Only-Speak-Once (YOSO) property, and initiate the formal study of it within a new model that we call the YOSO model. Our model is centered around the notion of roles, which are stateless parties that can only send a single message. We describe several techniques for achieving YOSO MPC, both computational and information theoretic.
    This is joint work with Craig Gentry, Shai Halevi, Hugo Krawczyk, Bernardo Magri, Jesper Buus Nielsen and Sophia Yakoubov
    Bio. Tal Rabin is a Rachleff Family Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining UPenn she has been the head of research and Algorand Foundation and prior to that she had been at IBM Research for 23 years as a Distinguished Research Staff Member and the manager of the Cryptographic Research Group. She received her PhD from the Hebrew University in 1995.
    Tal’s research focuses on cryptography and, more specifically, on secure multiparty computation, threshold cryptography, and proactive security and recently adapting these technologies to the blockchain environment. Her works have been instrumental in forming these areas. She has served as the Program and General Chair of the leading cryptography conferences and as an editor of the Journal of Cryptology. She has initiated and organizes the Women in Theory Workshop, a biennial event for graduate students in Theory of Computer Science. Tal currently serves as the chair of the ACM SIGACT Executive Board.
    Tal is an ACM Fellow, an IACR (International Association of Cryptologic Research) Fellow and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Tal’s work won the 30-year test of time award at STOC. She is the 2019 recipient of the RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics. She was named by Forbes in 2018 as one of the Top 50 Women in Tech in the world. In 2014 Tal won the Anita Borg Women of Vision Award winner for Innovation and was ranked by Business Insider as the #4 on the 22 Most Powerful Women Engineers.