Sophia has been an integral part of our Cryptography and Cyber Security research group since joining as a postdoc in 2019. She later became a tenure-track assistant professor in 2021, and her promotion recognizes her outstanding contributions to the field of cryptography.

Her research focuses on secure distributed computation (also referred to as secure multi-party computation, or MPC), which ensures that sensitive data can be processed securely in the cloud without exposing it—even to the machines performing the computation. This has far-reaching applications in privacy-sensitive areas such as healthcare, finance, and digital communications, where organizations must analyze and share data while preserving confidentiality. For example, MPC enables hospitals to collaborate on medical research without compromising patient privacy and allows companies to assess gender pay gaps without exposing individual salaries.

In 2020, Sophia and her collaborators introduced “you only speak once” - “YOSO” - secure computation, which is a very scalable form of MPC where each participant only sends a single message.  Since then, one of Sophia’s focus areas has been improving the efficiency of YOSO MPC.

Beyond privacy, Sophia has recently started researching rational cryptography, which explores how to design security protocols that align with the incentives of self-interested parties, ensuring they behave honestly rather than attempting to manipulate the system. Her research aims to secure large-scale distributed systems where malicious actors might try to use threats or bribes to acquire sensitive information.