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From basic research to applicable spin-off technology

The CFEM project is coming to an end, and on July 7, Center for the Foundations of Electronic Markets hosts a reception for partners and others interested. Ivan Bjerre Damgård, Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University and one of the Center Managers of CFEM, sums up the highlights of the project.

SMC is a powerful tool

CFEM has been running for six years and involves experts in computer science, economy, game theory and mechanism design as well as industrial partners.

Secure Multiparty Computation (SMC) is one of the core technologies of the CFEM project. Thirty years ago, Secure Multiparty Computation was a theoretical concept, but today the technology is a powerful tool that allows us to perform complex computations on encrypted data. In the past, it would take days, but now we can do it in a few seconds. Therefore, the technology can be used in a wide range of industrial applications:

  • Start-up company Sepior – a spinoff of the activities in CFEM – uses Secure Multiparty Computation in their encryption product for cloud services.  
  • Other applications include benchmarking, credit rating, statistics and machine learning – or any other area where we want to perform computation on data without revealing the private data behind the computation.

Collaboration between research and industry continues

CFEM has established a biannual workshop in Aarhus for researchers and people from industry. The workshop has become an institution in the world of SMC and will therefore be continued. This proves that the theory works in practice and can is useful in real products, says Ivan Bjerre Damgård.  

Read the full article in Danish here.