Elijah Grubb

Elijah Grubb Pic

Contact Info

I am a graduate student in the Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. My research interests broadly involve theoretical cryptography and its applications to computer systems, security, and privacy. Recent projects involve research in post-quantum cryptography, consensus protocols, and zero-knowledge proofs.

Previously, I was a visiting graduate student at the IMDEA Software Institute in Madrid, Spain working with Professor Dario Fiore. I received my undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah. There I was a member of the Flux Research Group in the School of Computing working with Professor Eric Eide. Before that, I worked with Professor Feifei Li as a part of the Data Group.

Current research projects

Post-quantum NIZKs I am currently working on research involving building varying types of NIZKs from conjectured post-quantum secure assumptions (e.g. lattices, symmetric-key primitives).
LegoSNARK I spent the fall of 2019 at IMDEA as a visiting Ph.D. student working on utilizing commit-and-prove style NIZK techniques to increase proving times in SNARK merkle tree proofs.

Publications

DBLP

Google Scholar

Supporting Docker in Emulab-Based Network Testbeds.
David Johnson, Elijah Grubb, Eric Eide.
In Proc. of the 11th USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET ’18).
PDF    
Researchers conduct experiments in a variety of computing environments, including dedicated testbeds and commercial clouds, and they need convenient mechanisms for deploying their software within these disparate platforms. To address this need, we have extended Emulab so that it can instantiate and configure container-based virtual devices using Docker images. Docker is a de facto standard for packaging and deploying software in cloud environments; now, researchers can use Docker to package and deploy software within Emulab-based testbeds as well. We describe how Emulab incorporates Docker and how it extends Docker images to support the interactivity that researchers expect within a testbed. We show that Emulab can use many popular Docker images to create testbed experiments. We expect that Emulab's support for Docker will make it easier for researchers to move their activities freely, both into the testbed and out into production. 
@inproceedings {Johnson+:cset18,
	author = {David Johnson and Elijah Grubb and Eric Eide},
	title = {Supporting Docker in Emulab-Based Network Testbeds},
	booktitle = {11th {USENIX} Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test ({CSET} 18)},
	year = {2018},
	month = {August},
	address = {Baltimore, MD},
	url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/cset18/presentation/johnson},
	publisher = {{USENIX} Association},
}

Past research projects

As a part of the Xsmith project, I built a framework for testing the modern state of volatiles in C compilers. Published 10 years ago, Volatiles Are Miscompiled, and What to Do about It shed some fascinating light on the surprisingly dismal state of volatiles in production compilers. My goal is to evaluate how compilers and tools for testing compilers have changed over the past decade with regard to volatiles. Has the situation become better? Or maybe volatiles aren't as important as previously thought?

Project Link
Code Link

Worked to help bring Docker support to Emulab's unique system design. Tested ways to use the lightweight container capabilities of Docker while retaining Emulab's key debugging features and smooth deployment capabilities. Implemented support for Alpine Linux images inside of Emulab. Publication describing process has been accepted to CSET 18.

Project Link

Within the SONAR project, worked on data import, which includes bringing in large amounts of data from twitter, building a generic import function into the application to let others upload their own spatio-temporal data and researching data deduplication methods.

Within the election project, worked on taking collecting data store of tweets and running them through systems to find political tweets and assign them to their appropriate county based on location, then pushing them to database.

Project Link

Some Favorite Links

Outside of Computer Science

I love soccer. I had season tickets to RSL when I lived in Utah and spend most weekends watching English, German, Spanish, Italian or maybe even French footy.
The Utah Jazz, Chargers, and Braves are all doing decent and it makes watching sports actually fun again.
I played tennis in high school. Still love to watch the Grand Slam tournaments.
Go Sharks!
Utah rules BYU drools.
Alexander Hamilton Ron Chernow IP
Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson IP
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Dennis Taylor IP
Educated: A Memoir Tara Westover
Bad Blood John Carreyrou
Sometimes I Lie Alice Feeney
Dark Matter Blake Crouch
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Becky Chambers
Ready Player One Ernest Cline
The Martian Andy Weir
Masters of Doom David Kushner
Steve Jobs Walter Isaacson
Living in Utah for 20+ years gave me convenient access to some of the most beautiful places in the United States.
I have had the opportunity to visit, often several times, many national parks including: Bryce Canyon, Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Badlands, Wind Cave, Yellowstone, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Death Valley, Redwood, and Yosemite.
Looking forward to exploring Shenandoah National Park soon!

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