PhD Project in Secure computation with advanced cryptography

As data generation and usage increases across our daily lives, there is a need and also a regulatory requirement to consider user privacy. There are many ways to address this challenge; one technological solution is to use advanced cryptography to enable privacy-preserving computation. One technique is Homomorphic Encryption (HE), which is an exciting, advanced type of encryption, which allows computations on encrypted data, without use of a decryption key. HE can be used for secure computation in a variety of privacy-prioritising applications, finance to healthcare and beyond. Introduced in 2009, such a powerful encryption tool enables privacy-preserving data analysis, however HE suffers in terms of performance due to high computational complexity and particularly memory management demands. Additional it is not well understood, though there is ongoing efforts in industry and standardisation to address this challenge. Hardware acceleration and optimisation of homomorphic encryption has demonstrated successful speed up factors of over 100x for homomorphic encryption. Moreover, such HE schemes are often based on lattice based cryptography, relying on security via added noisy error vectors, which allow for potential approximation and acceleration. Further research is needed to investigate the hardware acceleration of homomorphic encryption, balancing performance, security, approximation, and accuracy, to facilitate high performance implementations at the edge.

This project will focus on fully homomorphic encryption and investigating the hardware implementation, security, and optimisation of such schemes, leading to increased performance with consideration to real world scenarios.

The objectives include:

[1] Become familiar with fully and somewhat homomorphic encryption

[2] Understand the current bottlenecks and identify limitations in homomorphic encryption schemes (in software and/or hardware)

[3] Investigate and propose novel algorithmic or hardware optimisations to address identified limitations, for example to accelerate homomorphic encryption schemes

[4] Demonstrate proposed techniques in a working hardware design or hardware-software co-design, benchmarking results for a target HE application, on a suitable platform (e.g. FPGA)

[5] Evaluate against state of the art in homomorphic encryption and provide recommendations for privacy preserving data analysis.

Funding Information

To be eligible for consideration for a Home DfE or EPSRC Studentship (covering tuition fees and maintenance stipend of approx. £19,237 per annum), a candidate must satisfy all the eligibility criteria based on nationality, residency and academic qualifications.

To be classed as a Home student, candidates must meet the following criteria and the associated residency requirements:

• Be a UK National,
or • Have settled status,
or • Have pre-settled status,
or • Have indefinite leave to remain or enter the UK.

Candidates from ROI may also qualify for Home student funding.

Previous PhD study MAY make you ineligible to be considered for funding.

Please note that other terms and conditions also apply.

Please note that any available PhD studentships will be allocated on a competitive basis across a number of projects currently being advertised by the School.

A small number of international awards will be available for allocation across the School. An international award is not guaranteed to be available for this project, and competition across the School for these awards will be highly competitive.

Academic Requirements:

The minimum academic requirement for admission is normally an Upper Second Class Honours degree from a UK or ROI Higher Education provider in a relevant discipline, or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University.

Entrance requirements

Graduate
The minimum academic requirement for admission to a research degree programme is normally an Upper Second Class Honours degree from a UK or ROI HE provider, or an equivalent qualification acceptable to the University. Further information can be obtained by contacting the School.

International Students

For information on international qualification equivalents, please check the specific information for your country.

English Language Requirements

Evidence of an IELTS* score of 6.0, with not less than 5.5 in any component, or equivalent qualification acceptable to the University is required (*taken within the last 2 years).

International students wishing to apply to Queen’s University Belfast (and for whom English is not their first language), must be able to demonstrate their proficiency in English in order to benefit fully from their course of study or research. Non-EEA nationals must also satisfy UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) immigration requirements for English language for visa purposes.

For more information on English Language requirements for EEA and non-EEA nationals see: www.qub.ac.uk/EnglishLanguageReqs.