Meet the people of CRSS: Amin Karbas

February 8, 2024

Q&A

What is your favorite food or meal?

There's this dish from the west of Iran, called Khoresh Khalal. It contains beef, almond slivers, black barberry, and ghee (among other things). It is served with white rice and tastes like heaven! I also like classic (not deep-fried!) Sushi rolls. :)

 

 

What are some accomplishments you are really proud of?

A big one is working while doing my undergrad for three years really helped my career and taught me a ton, and not just technical stuff. Then, coming across the globe for graduate school, which proved tougher than I imagined. Finally, becoming good at teaching–– I didn't like to teach much. It got better when I mentored new hires at my job before, and really improved through TA-ing and helping the new hires of our research lab.

 

What is your research about?

Applied cryptography and security. The idea is that just encrypting your data when at rest is far from enough to achieve high levels of privacy, especially with co-located workloads or infrastructure that can become malicious or compromised. The approach is to quantify exactly how much information an adversary can gain. This is called leakage, and can be anywhere from just the fact that the database "is accessed", all the way to what its contents are. The aim is for the fastest solution that has acceptable leakage for a given problem setting.

 

What do you hope to do when you graduate?

I want to deepen my skills and knowledge in a real-world setting before possibly resuming research for a PhD. I'm graduating with my Master's degree this or next quarter (Winter or Spring 2024), and I'm looking for industry positions on infrastructure and systems engineering. Wish me luck! :)

CRSS Contact: Karbas, Amin