UMBC's 22nd Annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) is April 25, 2018

Have mentor-led research or creative work to present? Present a powerpoint, poster, display your artwork, digital story, video game, film, choreography, engineered prototype, spoken word performance, musical composition... get creative!

Application Deadline:
This MONDAY, Feb. 26, 2018 at 5pm.

Applying is easy- submit a 200-word abstract and mentor support form!

Go to: ur.umbc.edu/urcad

Questions? aprilh@umbc.edu

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Experimentally Measuring the Circuit Complexity
of One-Way Boolean Functions

Brian Weber, CSEE, UMBC

12:00–1:00pm, Friday, 23 February 2018, ITE 229

I present preliminary results from an exhaustive search for one-way functions in certain classes of small Boolean functions.   One-way functions are functions that are easy to compute but hard to invert.  They are vital for cryptography, yet no one has proven their existence for arbitrary input sizes.  For any bounded circuit model of computation, it is possible to search exhaustively over all possible Boolean functions of restricted size and thereby determine for the searched class the maximum disparity between the complexity of any function and its inverse.  Throughout, we assume a circuit model in which each gate has fan-in 2 and fan-out 1.

In his 1985 dissertation at MIT, Steven Boyack carried out the first such search.  For any positive integers n and M, let F_n,M denote the set of Boolean functions with n inputs and Moutputs. Using circuit size as the complexity measure, Boyack searched the space of every combinatorial function in F_3,3 by searching each of 52 equivalency classes of functions in this space.  He found that every function class in this space has an identically sized inverse.  He was able to prove that functions do exist with more complex inverses outside the space he searched, but not by more than a constant factor.

In spring 2017, using circuit depth as the complexity measure, I searched all injective functions up to F_8,8 whose coordinate functions are in F_2,1.  A coordinate function in this context refers to the function that computes an individual output bit.  In addition, I searched up to F_4,4 allowing coordinate functions in F_3,1.  In the space I searched, the most one-way function has fixed depth of 1, and an inverse depth exactly equal to the input size of the function. That is, for each 2 < n < 9, the hardest inverse in the space I searched has a depth of n, where n is the number of input bits. In addition, a search space allowing a larger fan-in for the coordinate functions did not yield functions less invertible than were found in the original search space.

Brian Weber is a senior BS/MS computer engineering student and SFS scholar at UMBC.  He hopes to extend the work presented here into his Master’s thesis next year.  Email: *protected email*

Host: Alan T.  Sherman, *protected email*Support for this research was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant 1241576.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public.

The post talk: Circuit Complexity of One-Way Boolean Functions, 12pm Fri 2/23, ITE229 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Teachers from a wide range of disciplines are being sought including English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Technology, etc.  Education majors along with those who are not certified are encouraged to attend.  All counties will be represented.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore Catholic Schools enroll over 25,000 students. There are currently 45 elementary and middle schools, and 19 high schools spread throughout the Archdiocese, which includes: Baltimore City, Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Frederick, Harford, Howard and Washington Counties.

All attendees and those who can not attend but are interested, please be sure to complete this REGISTRATION FORM.

We see you. We believe you. You matter.

“What would it mean to survivors for  the entire campus community to be behind them in their healing? What would it mean for survivors that the care we give to them is not limited to the few on campus either whose job it is to do this work, or who have taken a special, personal interest in it?”*

The Women’s Center has meant a lot to many alumni and we have their continued support for this season’s fundraising campaign. For Black and Gold Rush, we were lucky to chat with former (and current) community members about all of the ways the Women’s Center has been a useful and meaningful resources. Take some time to hear from Kayla Smith, a recent graduate, and ambassador for our Grit Starter Campaign for Survivors of Sexual Violence, and get some insight into why the Women’s Center was a big part of her UMBC experience! 

Name – Kayla Smith

UMBC Major/ Minor – Interdisciplinary Studies – Public Health Advocacy

Hometown – Laurel, Maryland

Current Job Title/ Employer – J.D. Candidate (Law school student)

How did your time at the UMBC Women’s Center support your current work or career path? Working at the Women’s Center gave me a framework to explain and further understand the importance of intersectional activism and feminism when I approach a particular issue in the law.

How would you describe your UMBC experience? I loved being at UMBC. I made my best friends and had some of my most personally rewarding experiences while I was there.

Share a special moment from your time in the Women’s Center. How did it shape your experience as a survivor? After I led my second Take Back the Night march, I was approached by multiple women who told me that they were able to share their stories and process what happened to them because of my bravery and courage in sharing my own experiences with trauma and recovery. To me, that was the most rewarding experience because it reminded me why my work with the Women’s center was so important.

Kayla! Thank you for your bravery, for sharing your story, and for being a lifelong supporter of our mission!

UMBC Giving Day Black and Gold Rush is an inspiring example of what the UMBC community can accomplish together. If you would like to support survivors of sexual violence at UMBC, and build a coalition of supportive allies, consider giving to the Women’s Center’s GritStarter campaign during UMBC’s Giving Day this February 28th.