Alexandra Henzinger
Alexandra Henzinger
I am on the academic job market this year!
I am a Ph.D. student in the
PDOS
and
CSS
research groups at MIT CSAIL, advised by
Henry Corrigan-Gibbs
. My email address is
ahenz@mit.edu
My research builds computer systems that deliver privacy and
security at scale. To achieve this, my work spans
computer security
systems
, and
cryptography
Before coming to MIT, I graduated from Stanford with a BS with honors in Computer Science.
Selected Projects
Tiptoe
SOSP 2023
) is the first cryptographically-private web search engine. Unlike Google or DuckDuckGo, the Tiptoe search engine only ever sees and answers encrypted search queries, ensuring that it learns--and leaks--nothing about what each user is searching for.
SimplePIR
USENIX Security 2023
) is a fast cryptographic private-information-retrieval scheme, with performance approaching hardware's memory bandwidth.
Eurocrypt 2025
introduces a new approach to constructing
homomorphic encryption
, which allows for performing computations on encrypted data.
Publications
Nudge: A Private Recommendations Engine
Alexandra Henzinger, Emma Dauterman, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, and Dan Boneh
USENIX Security 2026 (to appear)
[full version]
[code]
[bibtex]
Two-Server Private Information Retrieval in Sublinear Time and Quasilinear Space
Alexandra Henzinger and Seyoon Ragavan
EUROCRYPT 2026 (to appear)
[full version]
[code]
[bibtex]
The Structured Generic-Group Model
Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Alexandra Henzinger, and David J. Wu
EUROCRYPT 2026 (to appear)
[full version]
[bibtex]
Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption from Linear Homomorphism and Sparse LPN
Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Alexandra Henzinger, Yael Kalai, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan
EUROCRYPT 2025
Invited to the Journal of Cryptology
[full version]
[conference version]
[talk]
[slides]
[bibtex]
Distributional Private Information Retrieval
Ryan Lehmkuhl, Alexandra Henzinger, and Henry Corrigan-Gibbs
USENIX Security 2025
[full version]
[code]
[bibtex]
Private Web Search with Tiptoe
Alexandra Henzinger, Emma Dauterman, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, and Nickolai Zeldovich
SOSP 2023
[full version]
[conference version]
[system +
crypto code]
[blog]
[talk]
[slides]
[bibtex]
[demo]
One Server for the Price of Two: Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
Alexandra Henzinger, Matthew M. Hong, Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Sarah Meiklejohn, and Vinod Vaikuntanathan
USENIX Security 2023
[full version]
[conference version]
[code]
[talk]
[slides]
[bibtex]
[press]
[demo]
Automated Mapping of Task-Based Programs onto Distributed and Heterogeneous Machines
Thiago S. F. X. Teixeira, Alexandra Henzinger, Rohan Yadav, and Alex Aiken
SC 2023
[full version]
[bibtex]
Single-Server Private Information Retrieval with Sublinear Amortized Time
Henry Corrigan-Gibbs, Alexandra Henzinger, and Dmitry Kogan
EUROCRYPT 2022
[full version]
[conference version]
[slides]
[talk]
[bibtex]
ILP-based Local Search for Graph Partitioning
Alexandra Henzinger, Alexander Noe, and Christian Schulz
SEA 2018
ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics 2020
[conference version]
[journal version]
[bibtex]
Preprints
Catalytic Tree Evaluation from Matching Vectors
Alexandra Henzinger, Edward Pyne, and Seyoon Ragavan
[full version]
[bibtex]
Talks
Two-Server Private Information Retrieval in Sublinear Time and Quasilinear Space
MIT CIS Seminar
, Boston, MA, November 2025 (with Seyoon Ragavan)
Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption from Coding-Theoretic Cryptography
ENSL/CWI/KCL/IRISA Joint Cryptography Seminar
(virtual), November 2025
Simons Institute
, Berkeley, CA, June 2025
FHE.org meetup
(virtual), June 2025
EUROCRYPT
, Madrid, Spain, May 2025
[slides]
Texas Crypto Day
, Austin, TX, April 2025
MIT Cryptography and Security Day
, Boston, MA, January 2025
[video]
Oberwolfach Workshop on Cryptography
, Oberwolfach, Germany, January 2025
Private Web Search with Tiptoe
UIUC Security and Privacy Seminar
(virtual), February 2025
Boston University
, Boston, MA, October 2024
EPFL Summer Research Institute
, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2024
RSA Conference
, San Francisco, CA, May 2024
Real World Crypto
, Toronto, CA, March 2024
[slides]
[video]
Penn Security and Privacy Seminar
, Philadelphia, PA, February 2024
Brave Research (virtual), February 2024
University of Michigan (virtual), January 2024
Princeton Systems Lunch
, Princeton, NJ, December 2023
Duality Technologies
(virtual), December 2023
Cornell Systems Lunch
, Ithaca, NY, December 2023
Stanford Security Lunch
, Stanford, CA, November 2023
Berkeley Security Seminar
, Berkeley, CA, November 2023
MIT CIS Seminar
, Cambridge, MA, November 2023
SOSP
, Koblenz, Germany, October 2023
Brown University
, Providence, RI, October 2023
CRYPTO PPML
, Santa Barbara, CA, August 2023
[video]
Protecting our Privacy, one Search at a Time
MIT Libraries, Cambridge, MA (virtual), August 2023
MIT CSAIL Symposium: AI Frontiers & Implications
, Cambridge, MA, June 2023
[video]
Simple and Fast Single-Server Private Information Retrieval
USENIX Security
, Anaheim, CA, August 2023
[slides]
[video]
Privacy Engineering group
, Amazon Web Services (virtual), April 2023
Berkeley Security Seminar
, Berkeley, CA, March 2023
Penn Distributed Systems Lab Seminar
, Philadelphia, PA, February 2023
Cornell Security Seminar
, New York, NY, November 2022
Cloudflare Research
(virtual), October 2022
Google, New York, NY, October 2022
Single-Server Private Information Retrieval with Sublinear Amortized Time
New York Crypto Day
, New York, NY, January 2023
CMU CyLab Crypto Seminar
, Pittsburgh, PA, September 2022
[video]
University of Maryland
, College Park, MD (virtual), September 2022
Simons Institute,
Berkeley, CA, June 2022
[slides]
[video]
Stanford Security Seminar
, Stanford, CA, June 2022
EUROCRYPT
, Trondheim, Norway, May 2022
[slides]
[video]
NYU
, New York, NY (virtual), May 2022
Charles River Crypto Day
, Boston, MA, April 2022
[video]