معرفی
Kinan Dak Albab is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences (CDS) at Boston University, where he joined in summer 2024. His research spans systems, cryptography, and programming languages, focusing on building practical tools for data privacy and compliance-by-construction. He has developed influential systems such as Sesame, K9db, and DP-PIR, which have been published in top venues like SOSP, OSDI, and USENIX Security.
- PhD in Computer Science, Brown University
- MS in Computer Science, Boston University (2020)
- BS in Computer Science, American University of Beirut (2015)
Kinan's research centers on data privacy, secure computation, and systems security. He designs tools that allow developers to build applications that are privacy-compliant by construction. His work leverages systems design, cryptographic protocols, and language-level enforcement to reduce developer burden while ensuring strong privacy guarantees. He is particularly interested in GDPR compliance, private information retrieval, and usability of secure systems.
His publications span high-impact areas including end-to-end privacy enforcement (Sesame), database systems with built-in privacy (K9db), and efficient private information retrieval (DP-PIR). These works combine systems performance with strong theoretical foundations, enabling real-world deployment in domains like wage gap analysis and public policy.
- Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, Brown University (2025)
- Teaching Excellence Award, Boston University (2020)
- Vivli and Microsoft datatheon Outstanding Graduate Submission (2019)
- Hariri Institute Graduate Fellow (2017–2020)
- Mark Sawaya Excellence Award, AUB (2015)
- 1st Place, ACM Lebanese Collegiate Programming Contest (2015)
Kinan has advised and collaborated on real-world secure computation deployments, including a project with the Boston Women's Workforce Council and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce to measure wage gaps across over 100 companies. His work contributed to the formation of the startup nthparty and has been cited in the White House’s National Strategy on Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing, the UN Handbook on Privacy-Preserving Computation, and the European Commission’s report on Technological Enablers for Privacy. He is the lead developer of the JIFF framework for secure multi-party computation on the web and has created tools like Carousels for resource estimation in secure programs.
He leads the ETOS group and is affiliated with multiparty.org, an initiative focused on advancing privacy-preserving technologies through open-source tools and real-world applications.
