Computer science professor Allison Lewko specializes in prot
Source: Zoe Wood
When she’s not teaching classes, Columbia computer science assistant professor Allison Lewko is working to protect your data.
Lewko, specializes in cryptology―a process of creating and testing ideally unbreakable algorithms that ensures the security of sensitive information, such as when money is sent via PayPal or documents are stored on Apple’s iCloud. And in the fall, it’s a skill she’ll be teaching to undergraduates in introduction to cryptology.
“Encrypt means protect or hide,” Lewko said. “Most of what I do is trying to design ways that we can encrypt data and still be able to use it in ways that we want to use it.”
Lewko, who was included on the 2014 Forbes 30 Under 30 for Science and Health Care list, focuses on several types of encryption―identity-based, attribute-based, and functional encryption―that streamline the sharing of information between two parties.
“There’s a lot more awareness and demand for privacy and data analysis,” Lewko said. “We want to draw the line between protecting the things that we want to protect about data, but still being able to compute the things you want to compute, share the things you want to share.”
Lewko said she decided to become a cryptographer after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin because she wanted to work in a field that was practically applicable. And as data is becoming heavily relied on by the general public, ensuring its security is more important than ever, according to Lewko.
“I think there’s never been a more exciting time in terms of the data that’s available and the sensitive data that’s available and the stakes of figuring out how to protect things,” Lewko said.
“The field that is IB [identity-based], AB [attribute-based], and functional encryption are her field,” Valerio Pastro, a Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences computer science Ph.D. student whom Lewko advises, said. “She owns it.”
Pastro, who has also published a paper with Lewko, said that he especially valued working with her because of her enthusiasm and communication skills.
“When I talk to her, the communication goes through in a very deep way,” Pastro said. “She gets excited about stuff that is not essentially her main area of interests, and she’s happy to contribute to different topics, which is, I think, a great quality.”
The reach of Lewko’s work also extends to undergraduate students.
Ellen Vitercik, CC ’15, who intends to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science after completing her math major, said Lewko was instrumental in helping her reconcile her interests in computer science and math.
“She is incredibly generous with her time and will sit around with me for an hour and a half while we're trying to figure out a problem,” Vitercik said in an email.
But Lewko never expected to pursue cryptography. Throughout grade school and high school, Lewko said she vowed to never study anything quantitative. However, after taking a course in number theory as an undergraduate in order to satisfy a requirement, Lewko said she found that math allowed a level of creativity that she hadn’t seen in science before.
“I wanted to be a novelist. For 19 years of my life. Still do,” she said. “I loved creative writing, I wanted to be a musician, and I hated math.”
Lewko sees a lot of similarities between math and creative writing. Currently, she is co-authoring a children’s book about math in response to concern about math education in the United States.
“It’s sort of a fairy tale that introduces kids to the concepts of functions,” Lewko said.
Still, Lewko remains focused on creating more nuanced cryptographic algorithms.
“I’m at a point now when I’ve been successful in a lot of the projects that I’ve started building, but we’re building towards bigger and bigger things,” Lewko said. “The things that I really set out to prove are kind of still out there, but we’ve been sort of moving steadily towards them, so hopefully in the future we’ll get some of the bigger things we’re going after.”
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