Elaine Shi

Elaine Shi is a Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science (CSD) and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She is also an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on cryptography, security, mechanism design, algorithms, blockchains, and programming languages. Shi co-founded Oblivious Labs, Inc., and her work on Oblivious RAM and differentially private algorithms has been adopted by major companies like Signal, Meta, and Google.

Affiliations:

• CMU’s Crypto Group
• CMU’s Cylab Crypto Seminar Series (co-founder)

Research Interests:

• Cryptography and Security: Focused on oblivious computation, private information retrieval, and secure protocols.
• Blockchain Technology: Including consensus mechanisms, transaction fee design, and decentralized systems.
• Privacy-Preserving Algorithms: Such as differential privacy and secure multi-party computation.
• Algorithm Design: With applications to parallel computing and efficient data structures.

Awards:

• Packard Fellow
• Sloan Fellow
• ACM Fellow
• IACR Fellow

Advising & Grants:

• Current advisees include PhD students like Benjamin Chan, Yanyi Liu, Mingxun Zhou, and Nikhil Vanjani.
• Past students have taken academic roles at institutions like UVA, University of Michigan, and Duke University.
• Grants supported research in secure computation, blockchain mechanisms, and privacy-preserving technologies.

Labs & Teams:

• Co-founder of Oblivious Labs, Inc.
• Leading CMU’s Crypto Group and Cylab Crypto Seminar Series.