HACS

Hello!

• I’m here in Toronto for HACS, which is a workshop just before Real World Crypto. Yes; RWC was the conference I attended in 2020 that was just before everything locked down, and I haven’t really been back in-person since! Things are so different since then. Can you believe back then I was learning about Differential Privacy, and since then (1) published a paper in that area (2) do post-quantum cryptography and have a desk in the Pure Maths department now?
• There is something about this year that has made me feel more “in my own skin” than I have ever felt in a LONG time. I have so far attributed it to Berkeley, but I really can’t say why for sure right now. However, my peers have found me to be a riot because it’s been a long time since I’ve just been myself. I even spoke with a mentor recently who said that since she met me, everything about me is so much lighter in terms of disposition. She attributed it to my staying home and working from home, and also my trip to Berkeley, which she said it sounds like “I really needed to do to get a break”.

Getting to HACS

• Okay, this was sort of more involved than I expected. I have this thing I do where if it’s a red-eye, I will stay in the airport the night before, and I did that, and usually it’s just fellow travellers doing the same, but this time apparently there was this one guy who was “on something” who was camping out near to my usual spot. And the police got involved and told him “whatever you’re using, you need to stop” because apparently he was freaking people out. And then I realized that everyone had gone downstairs (probably to avoid said person). Then they advised me to be careful, and that it was safer downstairs as that is where they were (i.e. the police). So I moved downstairs, and there were some people hanging out (but it’s not as comfortable as my usual spot), and there was this random dude who was sleeping on a chair who kept talking in his sleep saying “I’m not a r@pist” which creeped me out. So then I went back upstairs and it was pretty much just an hour or two before the front desk opened. It kind of reminded me of my Greyhound days in LA, but maybe not as fun (no guy in a wifebeater buying pickles from a vending machine!).
• The flights were pretty fine; I passed through LaGuardia, which is new and shiny and has good places to eat. A big thing for me is eating healthily while travelling and avoiding the usual soda and pasty / fried everything in airports. I arrived and the thing I was looking for (because of lack of experience) didn’t show up on my map to my hotel, so opted for a rideshare instead. This was a good choice because the driver was pretty helpful, even being gracious when I accidentally called the CN Tower “the Space needle” (no, that’s in Seattle). Yikes. Oh, and Nexus scanned my passport successfully this time, which was a major win. Hooray!
• It took me about three hours to check-in, but that was also something I guess I handled with grace because I had been having back and forths with the place for a couple days down to the day before leaving because a link on their website was broken. But they were super great about everything, and I was just exhausted afterwards. However, I did attend Graph Theory class in the lobby (I’m taking an Algebraic Graph Theory and Quantum Computing class at another institution that meets three times a week online, where the homework is Putnam-style proof-writing. I LOVE the class, quite frankly, and the professor is AMAZING. I love his lectures and love the material a lot! The professor also knows my name now, too, which I did not expect since I’m not from his primary institution, and I appreciate).

HACS Day 1

• HACS, fortunately, was barely 10 minutes from where I’m staying, which was awesome (so is the thing that is not the Space Needle, so don’t call it that or we’ll throw you back over the border!).
• What is HACS? It’s short for High Assurance Cryptographic Software. It’s a mix of people from academia and industry and they skew towards inviting nice people who can contribute positively to the space; this year, the topic was the intersection of cryptography and formal methods, specifically for zero knowledge and post-quantum cryptography. And yes; there were a handful of isogenists I knew from other workshops there!
• So how does HACS run? They’re updating the programme each year, but this year they opted for a smaller group; last year (in Japan) it was around 150; this year they had an upper bound of 100 people. It was a mix of persons who had been there before and those who hadn’t, and when you sign in, you can choose (a la Strange Loop) whether you want a lanyard indicating it’s okay to be photographed vs not. Most people opted photographs okay.
• The first thing we did is went around the room and did introductions (three sentences). Yours truly kicked it off, as I was in a mood because I woke up to my flight ticket back being cancelled (yay, Canada wants me to stay!) and frantically (I mean like ten minutes before I left!) was rebooking so that I could, idk get back to the US when I said I would. Yeah, my life “do be like that” sometimes.
• From the beginning, we are encouraged to specifically talk to someone we hadn’t met before. I loved this, because many times there aren’t a lot of people who look like me, I stick out, and I’m the only person from my school, and all the people at certain companies or schools just hang out with each other. This was so different because a number of people came up to me, were friendly and I made a lot of friends!
• After introductions, we had about 11 smaller breakout sessions where people who wanted to have discussions had groups of chairs around their board, and every 30 minutes or so, we would switch to another group. I started off with Chipala’s group on fiatcrypto and bedrock and learned about the Vale programming language.
• I went to some other formal methods stuff and avoided the PQC stuff, because we were advised to go to sessions we know less things about. No; people did not have a Lean session :) Also, I went to an FHE group and the cryptographer there squealed in delight when I kicked off the session asking about operating “over a torus” and what that means :) So that was pretty neat!
• Then, we had lunch, which included some amazing fried eggplant and we felt like taking a nap for a bit, but it was time to get to work! We had working sessions for longer periods of time. There were two in the afternoon; the first I attended was on isogenies, with people I knew, and I took some notes live TeX-ing, because well, I like doing that. That was pretty productive and we found a lot of possible avenues and things to work on! The second group I attended was on risks of Quantum Computing, and I enjoyed that session a lot, too. At the end of the first day, which I really liked, they passed around the mic to everyone, and you could choose to pass, but everyone had an opportunity to say something they were thinking of or wanted to see tomorrow (some of those will be included!). I really liked this because sometimes at workshops, people who are “not the loudest” can be ignored, and they can have some really insightful contributions! This gives everyone a chance to do so.
• Finally, we had a reception. I ended up chatting with some people from Signal, which was mind-blowing and definitely not something I can imagine coming from my institution I would ordinarily have the chance to do. Also, when I met my current Maths advisor, I took her mathematical cryptography class and for a final assignment wrote a paper on Signal’s protocol. So it was like coming full-circle. When one person asked me just to be clear “do you know X in our protocol?” in regards to post-quantum migration, I said “yes, actually I wrote a paper on it for this class where I met my Maths advisor”, it felt surreal. They smiled, and really enjoyed that. And then we spoke about Maths for a couple hours (they actually teach a Maths camp for high schoolers!) and introduced me to some other people on their team. It’s just been quite wonderful!

So in short

• I totally understand why people would make this a yearly thing; the one workshop they make sure to attend! I met one person in industry who said that it is one of the workshops they attend every year. It is full of THE top cryptographers but with a specification that they have to be also in the “no jerks” category.
• The energy of the space is quite wonderful; I generally have a lot of workshop / conference anxiety, but one of the organizers, Trevor, greeted me with a smile; we had been chatting back and forth for months now.
• I’m super grateful that this year I had the opportunity to attend! :)

Oh

• On the way home, I picked a random place and tried their thai curry and sesame balls. I was so happy! I promised myself I’d also try the Trini food here, as quite a few people I know migrated here from my home country. On the first day, I already found a website with some options!
• One thing I always underestimate is how TIRED I will be at the end of the day. I had planned to stay up late working, but I ended up falling asleep instead. I think it’s important to not burn out, so maybe I really needed to do that. Besides, I was strangly up at 3am watching Suits lol (just seasons 1 and 2) and pushed a 6am research 1:1 meeting by a day. Needless to say, I do have to catch up on two sets of homework, but good news! I found out I got into a Quantum-Safe workshop based in IBM Research Zurich that I thought I had no chance of getting into, and they gave me funding! I say this because for this workshop, (1) only 1 student per institution (per department) can be recommended to be admitted to any of the grad summer workshops that year (2) the only workshop I wanted to attend filled up within seconds, and was very popular. I was in fact on the waitlist, even though my advisor submitted as soon as the portal opened. Fortunately, I got a spot!
• Zurich has been one of those places that has been within my grasp but the timing has never quite worked out (every academic seems to have a place like this). It started pre-grad school, actually, when I wanted to attend ZuriHac. Then EuroCrypt is this year in Zurich, but I am interning. So we’ll see if this also is outside of my grasp. I am jockeying for my internship to show me mercy and grant me a possibility of going. There must be a reason this year that I was given this opportunity, and it would be sad not to be able to go, but we’ll see.
• So…this is my life right now. I’m really happy that my room has one of those coffee / tea makers, and I’m happy I was able to make a bunch of friends today. Someone even came up to me and said “there you are! I was looking all over for you!” and I was in shock, and they had a Maths question they though I could help with (surprise!). Someone said that they found what I was working on to be “super interesting” , and they were legitimately blown away / fascinated, which was so validating! I had a similar thing happen to me in Berkeley, which is nice because it encourages you as a budding researcher in confirming that what you are doing is interesting enough, people care and they are questions the community cares about. Also, people cared that I was there, knew my name (!!) and I feel super grateful to have been given the opportunity to be in this space. It’s been wonderful!
• HACS is to be experienced! If any of this interests you, I highly recommend going!

Anyways, Here are some photos

• From the space of HACS. The views are breathtaking.

• View from LaGuardia before waiting to board

• On the second day, we wrapped up HACS and a bunch of us went out for dumplings!

The second day

• On the second day of HACS, we continued working sessions. I went to a ZK compiler working session, which is a little in the direction of not what I do, but it was informative anyways, and through that I ended up eventually bumping into two people who were able to help me make progress on a research problem! Later, we all went out for dinner, and I got to meet this person whose blog I’ve been following for years, which was awesome. The evening ended with dumplings and snow actually fell, which was wild. It was a great day, and I was a bit teary-eyed. Also, I unwittingly volunteered (through another person) to lead a Hack Day session and we got a TONNE of signups! So that’s exciting!

And that’s it!