This semester, a team from xLab is working to develop a privacy-preserving web-based application that provides users control over their personal data while allowing service providers to utilize the data in a privacy-preserving manner for their needs.
The work builds on that of student teams from previous semesters. Students have designed and locally deployed a multi-component decentralized architecture that enables users to share specific personal data with service providers while maintaining data privacy and control. Users have ownership of their data and can manage data sharing through “data agents”. Service providers can query “data agents” to run specific computations on user data and return results.
By the end of this semester, the student team aims to achieve two significant milestones. First, they aim to demonstrate the practical utility of the system by executing real-world operations such as federated model training and secure computation on user data. This showcase will underscore the system's adeptness in managing sensitive data while upholding user privacy. Second, the team plans to deploy the applications and their requisite components to the cloud, ensuring scalability and accessibility for prospective users and service providers.