B / Avent

BrendanAvent

Privacy Engineer @ Snap Inc.

Privacy, AI, and the pesky chasm between theory and practice.

Brendan Avent, Privacy Engineer at Snap Inc.
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About

My research interests lie at the intersection of privacy and AI, drawn to the subtle tensions between theory and deployment. Especially in adversarial settings, where ideas get stress-tested and either hold up or quietly break down.
I’m especially interested in translating cutting-edge ideas into systems that actually work.

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Priv-Eng Now

Snap Inc.

Privacy Engineer designing and evaluating privacy-preserving systems at scale.

University of Southern California logo
PhD 2023

USC

Ph.D. in Computer Science under Aleksandra Korolova. Research focused on bridging the gap between differential privacy theory and the practical constraints of real-world systems.

Virginia Tech logo
BS, BA 2015

Virginia Tech

Bachelor's degrees in CS, Math, Statistics, and Economics. Researched hypergraph algorithms with T. M. Murali; primary author of halp, the open-source Python hypergraph package.

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Projects

2023Dissertation cover for Practice-Inspired Trust Models and Mechanisms for Differential Privacy

Practice-Inspired Trust Models and Mechanisms for Differential Privacy

Brendan Avent

Ph.D. Dissertation, 2023
Paper
2021Cover for Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning

Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning

Peter Kairouz, H. Brendan McMahan, Brendan Avent

Foundations & Trends in Machine Learning, 2021
Paper
2020Illustration for The Power of the Hybrid Model for Mean Estimation

The Power of the Hybrid Model for Mean Estimation

Brendan Avent, Yatharth Dubey, Aleksandra Korolova

Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2020· PPML @ NeurIPS, 2018
Paper Video
2017Illustration for BLENDER: Enabling Local Search with a Hybrid Differential Privacy Model

BLENDER: Enabling Local Search with a Hybrid Differential Privacy Model

Brendan Avent, Aleksandra Korolova, David Zeber, Torgeir Hovden, Benjamin Livshits

26th USENIX Security Symposium, 2017· PSML @ ICML, 2017
· TPDP @ CCS, 2017
Paper Video
2015Graphical abstract for Pathway Analysis with Signaling Hypergraphs

Pathway Analysis with Signaling Hypergraphs

Anna Ritz, Brendan Avent, T. M. Murali

ACM/IEEE Transactions on Computational Bio & Bioinformatics, 2015
Paper
2015Poster for Hypergraphs: Algorithms, Implementations, and Applications

Hypergraphs: Algorithms, Implementations, and Applications

Brendan Avent, Anna Ritz, T. M. Murali

VTURCS Research Symposium, 2015
Poster Code
2014Illustration for Machine Learning Models for Terrestrial Space Weather Forecasting

Machine Learning Models for Terrestrial Space Weather Forecasting

Brendan Avent, Nicholas Sharp

SIAM Annual Meeting, 2014
Code
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Teaching Asst.

Intermediate Data Analytics & Machine Learning course image

Data Analytics & Machine Learning

CS/Stat 4654 — Spring '15with Byron Smith
Theoretical Statistics II course image

Theoretical Statistics II

Stat 4106 — Spring '15with Bill Woodall