I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2023 from USC, advised by
Aleksandra Korolova
in the
CS Theory Group.
My research explored privacy-preserving algorithms, focusing on making differential privacy practical for real-world use.
Prior to USC, I completed my undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech, where I earned my B.S. in Computer Science, B.S. in Mathematics, B.A. in Economics, and B.S. in Statistics. Among many other things at VT, I was an undergrad research assistant under T. M. Murali, where I explored hypergraph algorithms and their applications to biological networks. Most notably, I was the primary designer and implementer of halp, the hypergraph algorithms package.
Papers
Brendan Avent
Ph.D. Dissertation. 2023.
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Brendan Avent, Aleksandra Korolova
Workshop on Privacy-Preserving Artificial Intelligence (PPAI). 2023.
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Brendan Avent, Javier Gonzalez, Tom Diethe, Andrei Paleyes, Borja Balle
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2020.
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★★ Andreas Pfitzmann Best Student Paper Award ★★
Presentation in Data Privacy: From Foundations to Applications Workshop @Simons Institute. 2019.
Poster in Privacy Preserving Machine Learning Workshop @CCS. 2019.
Brendan Avent, Yatharth Dubey, Aleksandra Korolova
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies. 2020.
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Presentation in Privacy in Machine Learning Workshop @NeurIPS. 2018.
Brendan Avent, Aleksandra Korolova, David Zeber, Torgeir Hovden, Benjamin Livshits
26th USENIX Security Symposium. 2017.
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Presentation in Private and Secure Machine Learning Workshop @ICML. 2017.
Presentation in 3rd Workshop on the Theory and Practice of Differential Privacy @CCS. 2017.
Anna Ritz, Brendan Avent, T. M. Murali
ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. 2015.
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Presentations
Brendan Avent, Anna Ritz, T. M. Murali
VTURCS Research Symposium. Poster. 2015.
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Brendan Avent, Nicholas Sharp, Dhruv Batra
SIAM Annual Meeting. Undergrad Presentation. 2014.
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Teaching Assistantships
CSCI 270: Spring 2018 and Fall 2017 with Aaron Cote
CS 4104: Spring 2014 with T. M. Murali
CS 4104: Fall 2013 with Lenwood Heath
CSCI 599: Spring 2017 and Spring 2016 with Aleksandra Korolova
CS/Stat 4654: Spring 2015 with Byron Smith
Stat 4106: Spring 2015 with Bill Woodall