Aniket Kate

Associate Professor (on research leave)
University Faculty Scholar

Department of Computer Science
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN, USA

Email:
[How To Pronounce My Name]

Brief Bio

Prof. Aniket Kate is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. He is an applied cryptographer and a privacy researcher. His research builds on and expands applied cryptography, distributed computing, and data-driven analysis to solve security/privacy problems in decentralized environments. His current projects focus on communication privacy and distributed ledgers (or blockchains). He is a recipient of the 2019 NSF CAREER Award.

Before joining Purdue in 2015, he was a junior faculty member at Saarland University, Germany. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany. He has received his PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and his masters from IIT-Bombay, India.

While he is currently on a research leave to work at a startup, he maintains a research group at Purdue and is actively looking for PhD students and a post-doc.

Research Thrusts

• Cryptocurrencies & Blockchains ^{[NDSS '24 '23 '19-'17 '15] [CCS '23 '17 '15] [FC '22-'20] [Usenix Sec '21] [PETS '20 '17 '16] [WWW '18] [ESORICS '14]}
  
  • analyzing and improving privacy and security of cryptocurrencies, layer-2 solutions, IOU credit networks (e.g., Ripple), and consortium blockchain solutions (e.g., Hyperledger)
  • developing cryptography-aided (smart) contracts for breaking theoretical barriers
  • designing novel distributed ledger (or blockchain) architectures for supply-chains and distributed CPS
  
  
• MPC & Threshold Crypto ^{[CCS '23 '20 '19] [NDSS '23 '22 '20] [EuroS&P'23] [AFT '22] [PETS '22] [GPCE'21] [PODC '14 '12] [ACSAC '14] [CT-RSA '13] [ASIACRYPT '11 '10] [SCN '10] [ICDCS '09]}
  
  • improving the robustness and efficiency of multi-party computation (MPC)
  • developing MPC-based solutions for blockchains, verifiable randomness, differential privacy, #metoo, & machine learning
  • designing synchronous/asynchronous protocols for VSS and DKG
    
    
• Consensus & DHTs ^{[FC '23] [Middleware '23] [ICDCS '23 '10] [CCS '21][EuroSys '14] [ToN '13] [PODC '12] [ASIACCS '12]}
  
  • designing synchronous/asynchronous protocols for state machine replication and reliable broadcast/ data dissemination
  • building tailored consensus protocols for data-centers, dynamic cyber physical systems, and random beacons
  • designing scalable, robust, and private protocols for secure DHT lookups
    
    
• Anonymity Networks ^{[S&P '24 '18] [CSF '24 '13 '12] [PETS '23 '22 '20 '07] [NDSS '17] [ACNS '17 '15 '14] [ESORICS '16] [CCS '14] [WPES '12] [TISSec '10] [FC '10]}
  
  • understanding the fundamental communication lower bounds for anonymous communications
  • developing cryptographic and distributing computing primitives to enhance privacy, scalability, and accountability of anonymous communication and anonymous storage networks
  • building frameworks for defining, analyzing, and quantifying anonymity properties for the networks
    
    

Dormant (but ready to be revived)

• Right to be Forgotten/Update/Repair ^{[Usenix Sec '22][NDSS' 21][ FC'21][PETS' 19] [IC '17] [SOUPS' 16]}
  
• Privacy-Preserving Web Analytics ^{[ACSAC '14] [S&P '12]}
  
• Accountability and Transparency ^{[TDSC '16] [COSN '15]}
  

Selected Recent Publications

Service

• Organization

  [DCN 2023] Organizer for the Workshop on Decentralized Credit Networks (DCN)

  [CSF 2022] Track Chair on Blockchain

  [RWdC 2021] Organizer for the Real-World Decentralized Cryptography Workshop

  [CSF 2019] Track Chair on Blockchain

  [CNS 2019] Technical Program Area Chair

  [CCS 2018] Proceedings Chair

  [CCS 2016] Poster/Demo Chair

  
  
• Selected Program Committee
  

  2024		[IEEE S&P], [FC]
  2023		[IEEE S&P], [FC]
  2022		[CCS], [ICDCS], [AFT], [FC]
  2021		[CCS], [Usenix Security], [IEEE S&P], [WWW], [FC], [AFT], [ASIACCS]
  2020		[IEEE S&P], [Usenix Security], [FC], [WPES]
  2019		[IEEE S&P], [CCS], [NDSS], [WWW], [FC]
  2018		[CCS], [Usenix Security], [NDSS], [ICDCS], [ACNS], [Bitcoin]
  2017		[CCS], [CSF], [ACNS], [WPES], [Bitcoin], [ICDCS]
  2016		[Eurocrypt], [ACNS], [FC], [Bitcoin], [ICDCS]
  2015		[CCSW], [WPES], [ICDCS], [ProvSec]
  ...

  
  
• Editorial Board
  

  2021-22		IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
  2018-19		Privacy Enhancing Technologies

  
  
• Overall Coordinator at SecNet 2006, Annual Network Security Workshop, IIT-Bombay, India, 2006.

Teaching

@Saarland University

Miscellaneous

• I infrequently post cryptography, security and privacy news on my Twitter page: Follow @aniketpkate
  
  
• My Academic Genealogy
  Myself (Waterloo)← Ian Goldberg (Berkeley) ← Eric Brewer (MIT) ← William Weihl (MIT) ← Barbara Liskov (Stanford)← John McCarthy (Princeton)← ⋅⋅⋅
  
  
• My Erdös Number : 3
  (Kate → Goldberg → Stinson → Erdös)
  or (Kate → Zaverucha → Stinson → Erdös)
  
  

Contact Information