Haris Smajlović

Haris Smajlović is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Biomedical Informatics & Data Science at Yale School of Medicine, working in the Hoon Cho Lab. His research bridges privacy-enhancing technologies, compiler design, and biomedical data security, with a focus on enabling secure collaborative analysis of sensitive health information.

Dr. Smajlović earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Victoria (2024), where he worked at the 0xTCG lab under Prof. Ibrahim Numanagić. Previously, he completed his MSc in Theoretical Computer Science (2017) and BSc in Mathematics (2015) at the University of Sarajevo, where he also served as a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics before pursuing his doctorate. His educational background spans mathematics, theoretical computer science, and practical software engineering experience from his role as lead software engineer at Symphony.is.

His research interests center on privacy-preserving computational frameworks for biomedical applications, with particular expertise in secure multiparty computation, homomorphic encryption, and high-performance compiler design. Dr. Smajlović specializes in creating practical tools that bridge the gap between theoretical cryptographic techniques and real-world biomedical data analysis needs.

Analysis of his publication record reveals a consistent trajectory from computational geometry and optimization algorithms toward increasingly sophisticated privacy-preserving frameworks for biomedical data. His most recent work focuses on compiler-based approaches to secure distributed computation, with applications in genomic analysis and healthcare data sharing. The progression shows a shift from theoretical algorithms to practical frameworks that integrate cryptographic techniques with domain-specific biomedical applications.

• Golden Badge of University of Sarajevo (2017)
• Graduate Award of University of Victoria (awarded annually 2020-2024)
• Ph.D. Fellowship at University of Victoria (2020-2021)

Dr. Smajlović actively contributes to the academic community as a reviewer for prestigious venues including Genome Biology, ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Compiler Construction, ISMB, and RECOMB. His invited talk at Applied Machine Learning Days (EPFL) in 2025 highlights his growing recognition in the field of secure federated AI. His work on the Sequre and Shechi frameworks has been supported by research funding at Yale, particularly within the context of the NSF grant for confidential genome analytics mentioned in the lab news.

As a core member of the Hoon Cho Lab at Yale's Biomedical Informatics & Data Science department, Dr. Smajlović contributes to the lab's mission of creating algorithmic solutions for computational challenges in genomic and health-related data. The lab's research themes align closely with his expertise, particularly in privacy-enhancing technologies for biomedical applications. His work on the Shechi framework directly supports the lab's focus on secure computation for sensitive biomedical data, while his compiler expertise contributes to their scalable AI/ML in genomics initiatives.