Two-party cryptography beyond computational assumptions: Some old and new results by Dr. Akshay Bansal

Venue: Bharti-425

Abstract: The impossibility of information-theoretic or unconditional security under classical communication is already established for many two-party cryptographic primitives, including but not limited to coin flipping, bit commitment, and oblivious transfer. In this talk, we first discuss the known limits of information-theoretic security using quantum communication and propose the novel framework of stochastic switching that uses stochastic semidefinite programming to develop simple protocols for various two-party tasks. We also briefly discuss the insufficiency of standalone security from the perspective of (in)composability of a weaker version of coin flipping.

Bio: Akshay Bansal is currently a Senior Scientist at a stealth venture based out of Bangalore. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Virginia Tech advised by Jamie Sikora, with a research focus on quantum algorithms, learning theory, and convex optimization. He holds a Bachelor’s from IIT Kanpur and Master’s in Computer Science from ISI Kolkata. He has previously worked at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, Institute for Quantum Computing at University of Waterloo, and held research position at IISc Bengaluru. His current work delves into the mathematical foundations of quantum cryptography, classical and quantum machine learning, and convex analysis.