Nikolay Ivanov
Rowan University, NJ·Computer Science
Most people's online identities are held by companies, either in central account databases or through 'log in with' services. A single data breach can expose millions of people.
- Fields
Computer Science
Engineering
- Topics
self-sovereign identity
digital identity
decentralized identity
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Conduct a two-stage human-subjects study to identify usability problems across the lifecycle of self-sovereign digital identities (SSDIs), systems in which users control their own identity data.
- Develop an inventory of interoperable SSDI communication protocols covering authentication, authorization, revocation, data provenance, multi-party signatures, voting, delegation and zero-knowledge data storage.
- Build a framework with an application programming interface (API) and management tools based on these protocols, and improve cryptographic methods for generating, storing and managing users' private keys.
More about the research
Self-sovereign digital identities (SSDIs) offer another model: individuals control their own data and accounts rather than handing them to a central provider. This approach aims to be safer and more private. However, SSDI systems are complex and not fully developed, so many people avoid them. They also lack secure communication protocols, the agreed rules software uses to exchange information, that work across different SSDI systems.
Why it matters
Easier, more secure self-sovereign identity systems could improve personal data privacy and reduce the harm of large data breaches for everyday internet users and businesses. Public usability datasets and open protocols could help developers build identity tools people actually adopt, and support work on digital privacy rights and digital equity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alan Mislove
Northeastern University, MA·Computer Science
Design revocation schemes for TLS certificates in the Web Public Key Infrastructure based on cryptographic accumulators, compact summaries of large sets, to make certificate revocation more practical and far-reaching.
David Wu
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Computer Science·Early-career
Construct functional encryption schemes such as attribute-based and broadcast encryption in a registration-based model, where an untrusted, transparent key aggregator combines user-registered public keys into one short key.
Jiayu Xu
Oregon State University, OR·Computer Science
Re-analyze real-world asymmetric password-authenticated key exchange (aPAKE) protocols, which let a client prove a password without the server storing it, to test whether their contrived security definitions are necessary or whether standard notions suffice.
The school
Rowan University: 7 labs on PI Pages, $64M a year on research, 69 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.