Paul S. Lou
Hi! I'm Paul.
I'm a final-year Ph.D. student at UCLA working with Amit Sahai.
I'm interested broadly in cryptography.
My primary research goal is understanding and using new sources of hardness
to construct fundamental cryptographic primitives such as public-key encryption.
I also actively work on zero-knowledge proof systems, information-theoretic cryptography, and quantum algorithms.
Previously, I finished my undergraduate degrees
majoring in computer science, mathematics, and
statistics at the University of Pennsylvania where
I was fortunate to work with Nadia Heninger.
CV (Last updated: October 2024)
Publications
Authors are listed by alphabetical order.
-
Witness Semantic Security
Paul Lou, Nathan Manohar, Amit Sahai.
Eurocrypt 2024.
[Slides--Talk @ Eurocrypt 2024] -
Computational Wiretap Coding from Indistinguishability Obfuscation
Yuval Ishai, Aayush Jain, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai, Mark Zhandry.
Crypto 2023.
[Slides--Talk @ Crypto 2023 & Invited Talk @ ITC 2024] -
Hard Languages in NP∩coNP and NIZK Proofs from Unstructured Hardness
Riddhi Ghosal, Yuval Ishai, Alexis Korb, Eyal Kushilevitz, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai.
STOC 2023.
[Slides--Invited Talk @ CMU, Apr. 2024] -
Polynomial-Time Cryptanalysis of the Subspace Flooding Assumption for Post-Quantum iO
Aayush Jain, Rachel Lin, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai.
Eurocrypt 2023.
[Slides--Talk @ Eurocrypt 2023] -
Efficient NIZKs from LWE via Polynomial Reconstruction and "MPC in the Head"
Riddhi Ghosal, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai.
Asiacrypt 2022.
[Slides--Talk @ Asiacrypt 2022] -
Beyond the Csiszár-Korner Bound: Best-Possible Wiretap Coding via Obfuscation
Yuval Ishai, Alexis Korb, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai.
Crypto 2022. Invited & accepted submission to Journal of Cryptology.
[Slides--Oral Qualifying Exam @ UCLA, Nov. 2023] -
Relinearization Attack on LPN over Large Fields
Paul Lou, Amit Sahai, Varun Sivashankar.
CFAIL 2022. Invited & accepted submission to The Computer Journal.
[Slides--Talk @ CFAIL 2022] -
Post-Quantum
RSA.
Daniel J. Bernstein, Nadia Heninger, Paul Lou, Luke Valenta.
PQCrypto 2017.
Preprints
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A Note on the Pseudorandomness of Low-Degree Polynomials over the Integers
Aayush Jain, Alexis Korb, Paul Lou, Amit Sahai.
-
Expanding COVID-19 Symptom Screening to Retail, Restaurants, and Schools by Preserving Privacy Using Relaxed Digital Signatures
Brandon Jew, Alexis Korb, Paul Lou, Jeffrey N. Chiang, Ulzee An, Amit Sahai, Eran Halperin, Eleazar Eskin.
Service
Reviewer for Journal of Cryptology. External reviewer for CRYPTO 2022, TCC 2023, Eurocrypt 2024, STOC 2024, IEEE S&P 2024, TCC 2024. Program Committee (PC) member for Oakland 2023 Posters Program.
Teaching
CS-289: Advanced Topics in Cryptography (Quantum Cryptography)
Spring 2023, Co-lead instructor, UCLA.
CS-181: Formal Languages and Automata
Winter 2021, Winter 2022, Winter 2024, TA, UCLA.
CIS-556: Cryptography (Graduate-level)
Fall 2018, TA, UPenn.
CIS-548: Operating Systems (Graduate-level)
Spring 2018, TA, UPenn.
CIS-380: Operating Systems
Fall 2017, TA, UPenn.
Fall 2018, Head TA, UPenn
CIS-262: Theory of Computation
Fall 2016, TA, UPenn.