5/9/2024 Bruce Adams
New faculty member Yupeng Zhang, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering with an affiliation in computer science, has been named a 2024 Google Research Scholar in the category of Privacy.
Written by Bruce Adams
New faculty member Yupeng Zhang, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering with an affiliation in computer science, has been named a 2024 Google Research Scholar in the category of Privacy.
Yupeng Zhang was selected for the proposal “Proof of Training and its Applications in Machine Unlearning and Differential Privacy.” Zhang described the paper’s subject matter: “Machine learning has seen prominent developments in recent years and is widely used in many applications. However, machine learning models are usually trained on large volumes of data, and data privacy is a rising concern. Users have no control over how their data is used in the training process. There is no mechanism to enforce any privacy protections, especially when the machine learning models are kept private.” Zhang suggests the use of “the cryptographic tool zero-knowledge proof, scaled to match the size of large language models (LLMs) via co-designed cryptography and machine learning training algorithms. Machine Unlearning is the concept advanced to remove private data from LLMs as required by recent regulations.” Zhang noted that “currently, there is no way to enforce this machine unlearning technique without monitoring the training process and learning the machine learning model. An important application of the proof of training in this proposal is to ensure that the data has been deleted without disclosing the machine learning model itself.”
As for his award, Zhang said, “It is a great recognition of my research. The award shows the importance of data privacy in machine learning technology to Google. It encourages this project and more research from the field to address the issues with cryptographic techniques.”
The Google Research Scholar Program aims to support early-career professors who are pursuing research in fields relevant to Google. It provides unrestricted gifts to support research at institutions worldwide and is focused on funding world-class research conducted by early-career professors. Awards are disbursed as unrestricted gifts of up to $60,000 USD to the university. They are intended for use during the academic year in which the award is provided to support the professor’s research efforts.
Yupeng Zhang is one of three computer science professors named 2024 Google Research Scholars. Read about the other professors here.