# Brendan Avent - Personal Academic Website

Last updated: 2026-06-26

> Brendan Avent is a Privacy Engineer at Snap Inc. and Computer Science PhD from USC specializing in differential privacy, federated learning, and privacy-preserving machine learning research.

**Alumni of:** [University of Southern California](https://www.usc.edu/), [Virginia Tech](https://www.vt.edu/)

![Profile Image](https://baavent.com/images/hero/brendan.jpg)

## On this page
- [About](https://baavent.com/#about) — Who is Brendan Avent?
- [Projects](https://baavent.com/#work) — What research has Brendan Avent published?
- [Teaching Asst.](https://baavent.com/#teaching) — What courses has Brendan Avent taught?

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Who is Brendan Avent?
Brendan Avent is a Privacy Engineer at Snap Inc. and a Computer Science PhD from USC. He specializes in differential privacy, federated learning, and bridging the gap between privacy theory and real-world deployment.

### What does Brendan Avent research?
His research focuses on differential privacy, federated learning, privacy-preserving machine learning, and trust models for deploying privacy mechanisms in adversarial, large-scale systems.

### Where does Brendan Avent work?
He is a Privacy Engineer at Snap Inc., where he designs and evaluates privacy-preserving systems at scale.

### What is Brendan Avent's education?
He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (2023) and bachelor's degrees in CS, Math, Statistics, and Economics from Virginia Tech (2015).

## About
Privacy, AI, and the pesky chasm between theory and practice.

![Snap Inc. logo](https://baavent.com/images/about/snap_logo.webp)
### Snap Inc. — Priv-Eng (Now)
- Privacy Engineer designing and evaluating privacy-preserving systems at scale.

![University of Southern California logo](https://baavent.com/images/about/usc.jpg)
### USC — PhD (2023)
- Ph.D. in Computer Science under Aleksandra Korolova. Research focused on bridging the gap between differential privacy theory and the practical constraints of real-world systems.

![Virginia Tech logo](https://baavent.com/images/about/vt.png)
### Virginia Tech — BS, BA (2015)
- Bachelor's degrees in CS, Math, Statistics, and Economics. Researched hypergraph algorithms with T. M. Murali; primary author of halp, the open-source Python hypergraph package.

![Privacy, machine learning, and research interests illustration](https://baavent.com/images/about/interests.png)
### Interests
- I’m drawn to stress-testing ideas in adversarial systems, watching where they hold up and where they quietly break down.

## Research & Publications
### Practice-Inspired Trust Models and Mechanisms for Differential Privacy
![Dissertation cover for Practice-Inspired Trust Models and Mechanisms for Differential Privacy](https://baavent.com/images/projects/dissertation.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent
- **Venues:** Ph.D. Dissertation, 2023
- **Year:** 2023
- **Publisher:** USC
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://baavent.com/files/avent-dissertation.pdf)
- **Description:** Ph.D. dissertation on trust models and mechanisms for differential privacy.

### Pushing the Boundaries of Private, Large-Scale Query Answering
![Illustration for Pushing the Boundaries of Private, Large-Scale Query Answering](https://baavent.com/images/projects/rap.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Aleksandra Korolova
- **Venues:** [PPAI Workshop @ AAAI](https://aaai-ppai23.github.io/), 2023
- **Year:** 2023
- **Publisher:** AAAI
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.04833)
- **Code:** [GitHub](https://github.com/bavent/large-scale-query-answering)
- **Description:** Research on private, large-scale query answering.

### Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning
![Cover for Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://baavent.com/images/projects/fl3.png)
- **Authors:** Peter Kairouz, H. Brendan McMahan, Brendan Avent, Aurélien Bellet, Mehdi Bennis, Arjun Nitin Bhagoji, Keith Bonawitz, Zachary Charles, Graham Cormode, Rachel Cummings, Rafael G.L. D’Oliveira, Salim El Rouayheb, David Evans, Josh Gardner, Zachary Garrett, Adrià Gascón, Badih Ghazi, Phillip B. Gibbons, Marco Gruteser, Zaid Harchaoui, Chaoyang He, Lie He, Zhouyuan Huo, Ben Hutchinson, Justin Hsu, Martin Jaggi, Tara Javidi, Gauri Joshi, Mikhail Khodak, Jakub Konečný, Aleksandra Korolova, Farinaz Koushanfar, Sanmi Koyejo, Tancrède Lepoint, Yang Liu, Prateek Mittal, Mehryar Mohri, Richard Nock, Ayfer Özgür, Rasmus Pagh, Mariana Raykova, Hang Qi, Daniel Ramage, Ramesh Raskar, Dawn Song, Weikang Song, Sebastian U. Stich, Ziteng Sun, Ananda Theertha Suresh, Florian Tramèr, Praneeth Vepakomma, Jianyu Wang, Li Xiong, Zheng Xu, Qiang Yang, Felix X. Yu, Han Yu, Sen Zhao
- **Venues:** Foundations & Trends in Machine Learning, 2021
- **Year:** 2021
- **Publisher:** Foundations & Trends in Machine Learning
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.04977)
- **Description:** Comprehensive review of federated learning advances and challenges.

### Automatic Discovery of Privacy-Utility Pareto Fronts
![Graphical abstract for Automatic Discovery of Privacy-Utility Pareto Fronts](https://baavent.com/images/projects/pareto.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Javier Gonzalez, Tom Diethe, Andrei Paleyes, Borja Balle
- **Venues:** Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2020, [Simons Institute Workshop, 2019](https://simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/data-privacy-foundations-applications/schedule), [PPML @ CCS, 2019](https://ppml-workshop.github.io/ppml19/index.html)
- **Year:** 2020
- **Publisher:** PoPETs
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.10862)
- **Code:** [GitHub](https://github.com/amzn/differential-privacy-bayesian-optimization)
- **Video:** [Watch here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OA59vff7Z4)
- **Award:** Pfitzmann Best Student Paper
- **Description:** Paper on discovering privacy-utility tradeoffs in machine learning.

### The Power of the Hybrid Model for Mean Estimation
![Illustration for The Power of the Hybrid Model for Mean Estimation](https://baavent.com/images/projects/hybrid-mean.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Yatharth Dubey, Aleksandra Korolova
- **Venues:** Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2020, [PPML @ NeurIPS, 2018](https://ppml-workshop.github.io/ppml18/index.html)
- **Year:** 2020
- **Publisher:** PoPETs
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.12040)
- **Video:** [Watch here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW50YEZk2us)
- **Description:** Research on hybrid models for mean estimation in privacy.

### BLENDER: Enabling Local Search with a Hybrid Differential Privacy Model
![Illustration for BLENDER: Enabling Local Search with a Hybrid Differential Privacy Model](https://baavent.com/images/projects/blender.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Aleksandra Korolova, David Zeber, Torgeir Hovden, Benjamin Livshits
- **Venues:** 26th USENIX Security Symposium, 2017, [PSML @ ICML, 2017](https://sites.google.com/view/psml/), [TPDP @ CCS, 2017](https://tpdp.journalprivacyconfidentiality.org/2017/)
- **Year:** 2017
- **Publisher:** USENIX
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.00831)
- **Video:** [Watch here](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity17/technical-sessions/presentation/avent)
- **Description:** Paper on hybrid differential privacy models for local search.

### Pathway Analysis with Signaling Hypergraphs
![Graphical abstract for Pathway Analysis with Signaling Hypergraphs](https://baavent.com/images/projects/signaling-hypergraphs.png)
- **Authors:** Anna Ritz, Brendan Avent, T. M. Murali
- **Venues:** ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Bio & Bioinformatics, 2015
- **Year:** 2015
- **Publisher:** ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Bio & Bioinformatics
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7164280/?arnumber=7164280)
- **Description:** Research on signaling hypergraphs in biological networks.

### Hypergraphs: Algorithms, Implementations, and Applications
![Poster for Hypergraphs: Algorithms, Implementations, and Applications](https://baavent.com/images/projects/hypergraph.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Anna Ritz, T. M. Murali
- **Venues:** VTURCS Research Symposium, 2015
- **Year:** 2015
- **Publisher:** VTURCS Research Symposium
- **Paper/Poster:** [Link](https://baavent.com/files/2015-vturcs-hypergraphs-poster.pdf)
- **Code:** [GitHub](https://github.com/Murali-group/halp)
- **Description:** Poster on hypergraph algorithms and applications.

### Machine Learning Models for Terrestrial Space Weather Forecasting
![Illustration for Machine Learning Models for Terrestrial Space Weather Forecasting](https://baavent.com/images/projects/space-weather.png)
- **Authors:** Brendan Avent, Nicholas Sharp
- **Venues:** SIAM Annual Meeting, 2014
- **Year:** 2014
- **Publisher:** SIAM Annual Meeting
- **Code:** [GitHub](https://github.com/bavent/Space-Weather-Forecasting)
- **Description:** Research on machine learning models for space weather forecasting.

## Teaching Assistantships
### Algorithm Analysis
![Algorithm Analysis course image](https://baavent.com/images/teaching/algo-anal.png)
- CS 4104 — Fall '13 (Instructor: [Lenwood Heath](https://people.cs.vt.edu/heath/))
- CS 4104 — Spring '14 (Instructor: [T. M. Murali](https://bioinformatics.cs.vt.edu/~murali/))
- CSCI 270 — Fall '17, Spring '18 (Instructor: [Aaron Cote](https://viterbi-web.usc.edu/~aaroncot/))

### Privacy in the World of Big Data
![Privacy in the World of Big Data course image](https://baavent.com/images/teaching/privacy-big-data.png)
- CSCI 599 — Spring '16, '17 (Instructor: [Aleksandra Korolova](https://www.korolova.com/))

### Data Analytics & Machine Learning
![Intermediate Data Analytics & Machine Learning course image](https://baavent.com/images/teaching/data-anal.png)
- CS/Stat 4654 — Spring '15 (Instructor: Byron Smith)

### Theoretical Statistics II
![Theoretical Statistics II course image](https://baavent.com/images/teaching/t-stats.png)
- Stat 4106 — Spring '15 (Instructor: [Bill Woodall](https://www.stat.vt.edu/people/emeritus/woodall-bill.html))

## Contact & Profiles
- [GitHub](https://github.com/bavent)
- [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/baavent)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Qve76yUAAAAJ)
- Email: baavent@gmail.com