UVM Center for Computer Security and Privacy

Security and privacy research and education at the University of Vermont. Our faculty work on differential privacy, secure computation, language-based security, usable privacy, and cryptography, and teach a full sequence of courses in each.

Prospective MS students Prospective PhD students UVM undergraduates

6core faculty

12active sponsored projects

10security & privacy courses

Research themes

All research →

Data Privacy and Differential Privacy

Joseph Near, Yuanyuan Feng

Secure and Distributed Computation

Christian Skalka, Joseph Near, Christelle Vincent

Language-Based Security and Verification

Christian Skalka, Joseph Near

Usable Privacy and Security

Yuanyuan Feng

Cryptography

Christelle Vincent, James Eddy, Laura Marthaler

Selected recent work

All publications →

PoPETs 2026

"We Need a Standard": Toward an Expert-Informed Privacy Label for Differential Privacy

Onyinye Dibia, Mengyi Lu, Prianka Bhattacharjee, Joseph Near, Yuanyuan Feng

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), 2026(1)
PLDI 2025

Efficient, Portable, Census-Polymorphic Choreographic Programming

Mako Bates, Shun Kashiwa, Syed Jafri, Gan Shen, Lindsey Kuper, Joseph Near

ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI)
NIST 2025

Guidelines for Evaluating Differential Privacy Guarantees (NIST SP 800-226)

Joseph Near, David Darais, Naomi Lefkovitz, Gary Howarth

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 800-226
ESOP 2025

SMT-Boosted Security Types for Low-Level MPC

Christian Skalka, Joseph Near

European Symposium on Programming (ESOP), pp. 258–285
PoPETs 2025

SoK: Usability Studies in Differential Privacy

Onyinye Dibia, Prianka Bhattacharjee, Brad Stenger, Steven Baldasty, Mako Bates, Ivoline Ngong, Yuanyuan Feng, Joseph Near

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs), 2025(4):881–895
SOUPS 2024

Evaluating the Usability of Differential Privacy Tools with Data Practitioners

Ivoline Ngong, Brad Stenger, Joseph Near, Yuanyuan Feng

USENIX Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS)
USENIX Security 2024

Understanding How to Inform Blind and Low-Vision Users About Data Privacy Through Privacy Question Answering Assistants

Yuanyuan Feng, A. Ravichander, Yuan Yao, Shikun Zhang, R. Chen, S. Wilson, Norman Sadeh

33rd USENIX Security Symposium
USENIX Security 2022

Efficient Differentially Private Secure Aggregation for Federated Learning via Hardness of Learning with Errors

Timothy Stevens, Christian Skalka, Christelle Vincent, John Ring, Samuel Clark, Joseph Near

31st USENIX Security Symposium, pp. 1379–1395

Recent venues include PoPETs · USENIX Security · ANTS · JAMIA · LuCaNT · ESOP · NAACL · PLDI · Computer J. · JMIR · PPDP · Q. J. Math.

Supported by

Active projects include an NSF CAREER award, two further NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace awards, DARPA and IARPA programs, and NOAA- and American Heart Association-funded work in environmental sensing and health. See all funded projects →

About the Center

The Center for Computer Security and Privacy is the home for security and privacy research and teaching at the University of Vermont. Our faculty work on the mathematical foundations of privacy and secure computation, on programming languages and verification for building secure systems, on the human side of privacy, and on cryptography. Our work is supported by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, NIST, and other sponsors, and it appears at the leading venues in security, privacy, and programming languages.

The Center supports a sequence of undergraduate and graduate courses in security and privacy, advises PhD and MS students, and welcomes undergraduates into research.