Rate My Professor Marina Blanton

Marina Blanton is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB), a position she has held since January 2017. She also serves as Faculty Director of Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) at UB's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences since May 2021 and as Senior Scientist at Interrupt Sciences since December 2014. Previously, Blanton was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame from August 2007 to June 2016, following her doctoral studies. Her education includes a PhD in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2007, an MS in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2004, an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Ohio University in 2002, and a BS in Computer Science with honors from Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, Russia, in 1999.

Blanton's research focuses on information security, privacy, and applied cryptography, with emphasis on privacy-preserving computation and outsourcing, data-oblivious algorithms, secure multi-party computation, private biometric and genomic computation, authentication, and anonymity. A key contribution is PICCO, a compiler developed by her team that transforms programs for computing on private data into secure distributed implementations, utilized as a research experimentation tool, teaching resource, and practical toolkit. She has authored over 80 refereed publications, accumulating more than 6,000 citations and an h-index of 35 as of 2024. Selected works include the co-edited book Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook (2009), "Practical Secure Computation Outsourcing: A Survey" (ACM Computing Surveys, 2018), "Secure Pattern Matching based on Bit Parallelism" (International Journal of Information Security, 2019), "Binary Search in Secure Computation" (NDSS, 2022), and "Efficiently Compiling Secure Computation Protocols From Passive to Active Security" (PoPETs, 2024). Her accomplishments are honored by the 2024 ACM Distinguished Member award, Google Faculty Research Award (2019), AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2013), 2015 ACM CCS Test of Time Award for two papers, IEEE Senior Member (2016), ACM Senior Member (2015), and ELATES Fellowship (2022-2023).