The Cryptography and AI Security Lab is an emerging research laboratory at Newcastle University, led by Dr Aydin Abadi. The lab designs, analyses, and implements cryptographic and privacy-preserving technologies for AI, blockchain, financial technology, and trustworthy digital systems.
Our research focuses on building systems that provide strong security, privacy, efficiency, and verifiability guarantees in real-world settings.
The lab's research focuses on three closely connected areas:
Privacy-preserving and secure AI
We develop cryptographic and privacy-preserving techniques for secure AI systems, including federated learning, private inference, and secure collaborative learning.
Cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies
We design and analyse cryptographic protocols and privacy-enhancing technologies, including secure multi-party computation, private set intersection, oblivious transfer, verifiable computation, time-lock puzzles, and post-quantum cryptography.
Financial technology, secure payments, and blockchain systems
We develop cryptographic technologies for secure digital payments, financial technology, and blockchain-based systems. Our work covers provably secure payment protocols, dispute resolution for fraud victims, blockchain and smart-contract security, and privacy-preserving approaches to cryptocurrency fraud and scam prevention.
The lab brings together PhD students and collaborators working on cryptography, privacy-preserving technologies, secure AI, blockchain security, and trustworthy digital systems.
The lab applies cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, and security analysis to real-world industrial challenges. Its work supports the design and evaluation of secure AI systems, privacy-preserving digital services, blockchain applications, financial technologies, and secure payment infrastructures.
The lab provides expertise in cryptographic protocol analysis, security and privacy assessment, blockchain and smart-contract security, payment-system security, cryptocurrency fraud mitigation, and the design of privacy-preserving technologies.