Jess Woods
I'm a PhD student in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, advised by Sebastian Angel in the Security and Privacy Lab (within the Distributed Systems Lab).
I'm interested in applied cryptography and it's crossover with programming languages. My recent work has been in compilers for zero-knowledge proofs. I'm also passionate about making math/computer science education better and more accessible.
he/him | woodsjk (at) seas.upenn.edu | GitHub | LinkedIn | CV
Publications
Flamingo: Multi-Round Single-Server Secure Aggregation with Applications to Private Federated Learning
Yiping Ma, Jess Woods, Sebastian Angel, Antigoni Polychroniadou, Tal Rabin
paper @ S&P 2023 (Oakland)
Efficient Representation of Numerical Optimization Problems for SNARKs
with* Sebastian Angel, Andrew J. Blumberg, Eleftherios Ioannidis
OpenMDlr: Parallel, Open-source Tools for General Protein Structure Modeling and Refinement from Pairwise Distances
Russell B. Davidson, Jess Woods, T. Chad Effler, Mathialakan Thavappiragasam, Julie C. Mitchell, Jerry M. Parks, Ada Sedova
Modeling protein structures from predicted contacts with modern molecular dynamics potentials: accuracy, sensitivity, and refinement
Russell B. Davidson, Mathialakan Thavappiragasam, T. Chad Effler, Jess Woods, Dwayne A. Elias, Jerry M. Parks, Ada Sedova
paper @ ACM-BCB 2021 | code
*authors ordered alphabetically
Professional Experience
Sandia National Laboratories, hosted by Jennifer Cordaro, Chris Jenkins, Summer 2022
Thunderbird Kudos Award
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, hosted by Oscar Hernandez, Ada Sedova, June 2019 - July 2020
Teaching
Computer and Network Security, Head TA, UPenn, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2022
TA Award for Excellence (Student Nominated)
High School Java, Head Instructor, Steppingstone Scholars, Philadelphia, PA, Summer 2021
Discrete Math, TA & Lecturer, UNC, Fall 2018, Spring 2019
K-12 Math, Instructor, Reading Writing Arithmetic Center, Chapel Hill, NC, Summer 2018
Education
Graduate Courses: Software Foundations, Analysis of Algorithms, Theory of Computation, Operating System Design and Implementation, Computer-Aided Verification, Cryptography, Computer and Network Security, Advanced Topics in Cryptography, Advanced Topics in Privacy and Anonymity, Writing and Speaking with Style
BS, Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019
BA, Studio Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019
AA, Isothermal Community College, Spindale, NC, 2015
Other Research
Vulnerability testing for post quantum lattice cryptography implementations
Jess Woods, Jennifer Cordaro
Internal SNL Work, 2022
poster @ SNL | code
Programming models for fully homomorphic encryption on a supercomputer
Jess Woods, Ada Sedova, Oscar Hernandez
ORNL Student Project, 2020
talk @ P3HPC 2020 | ignite talk, python talk, poster @ ORNL | c++ code | julia code | python code
Using Python for Improved Productivity in HPC and Data Science Applications: the Time is Now,
Jess Woods, Matthew Baker, Mathialakan Thavappiragasam, Ada Sedova, Oscar Hernandez, Vivek Sarkar