Becoming Nishant

Nishant Kumar was a gem of a person. A God gifted who believed in hard work. Nishant was born in Ranchi, a small town in Jharkhand,India. Born to his doctor parents, and the younger among his sibling, he was the favourite of all.

He had this special affection towards his mother, Dr. Manju Sinha. He was exceptionally worried about her. Since childhood he used to take care of her like a grown up guy

He did his schooling from DPS Ranchi and then completed my Bachelors of Technology in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi), where he was advised by Dr. Shweta Agrawal. He had also spent time working as a Software Engineer in the Azure Backup team of Microsoft,

He later spent two years as a Research Fellow at Microsoft Research Lab, India, where He worked in the cryptography group, on the EzPC (Easy Secure Multi-party Computation) project with Dr. Nishanth Chandran, Dr. Divya Gupta, Dr. Aseem Rastogi and Dr. Rahul Sharma.

He also joined as PhD student in the Computer Science department at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where he was advised by Dr. Dakshita Khurana. His was interested in both theoretical and applied aspects of cryptography.

Biography

  • Nishant's Life : 02/12/1994 - 11/04/2022
  • Birthdate : 02/12/1994
  • Email : nishant.kr10@gmail.com
  • Phone : +91 9113188818
  • Skype : nishkum
  • Address : Krishna Niwas, Bariatu Ranchi

Philanthropy

The Nishant Kumar Memorial Award

Prize Money of Rs. 31,000 and a trophy along with a certificate.

The award will be presented on the award ceremony day organised by Delhi Public School, Ranchi, Jharkhand.

The award will be presented to the student of DPS Ranchi, who has secured the best rank at national level in JEE Mains (IIT) Exam.

Presented By: Dr. Manju Sinha and Dr. Krishna Kumar (Parents).


Academics

Education

2020 - 2022

PhD in Cryptography @ University of Illinois

Memory from Nishant's Mentor Homepage University of Illinois,USA


2012 - 2016

B. Tech in Computer Science @ IIT Delhi

Research Paper at IIT

IIT Delhi


1999 - 2012

Schooling @ DPS Ranchi

Nishant Kumar Memorial Award

Work

2018 - 2020

Microsoft, Hyderbad

Software Engineer in Azure backup team, College Placement

Product developed
2016 - 2018

Micorsoft Research, Banglore

Research Scientist in Cryptography

Work done @ Microsoft Research

Publications and Manuscripts

COA Secure Obfuscation and Applications

with Ran Canetti, Suvradip Chakraborty, Dakshita Khurrana, Oxana Poburinnaya and Manoj Prabhakaran. (EUROCRYPT 2022)

EUROCRYPT 2022
Function Secret Sharing for Mixed-Mode and Fixed-Point Secure Computation

Elette Boyle, Nishanth Chandran, Niv Gilboa, Divya Gupta, Yuval Ishai, Nishant Kumar & Mayank Rathee

bib
CrypTFlow2: Practical 2-Party Secure Inference

Deevashwer Rathee, Mayank Rathee, Nishant Kumar, Nishanth Chandran, Divya Gupta, Aseem Rastogi & Rahul Sharma

[eprint] [bib] [code]

A Practical Model for Collaborative Databases: Securely Mixing, Searching and Computing

Shweta Agrawal, Rachit Garg, Nishant Kumar & Manoj Prabhakaran

[eprint] [bib] [code]


CrypTFlow: Secure TensorFlow Inference

Nishant Kumar, Mayank Rathee, Nishanth Chandran, Divya Gupta, Aseem Rastogi & Rahul Sharma

[eprint] [bib] [code]

Achievements

HEIDELBERG LAUREATE FORUM:

Invited to attend the 8th Heidelberg Laureate Forum, 2021.


KISHORE VAIGYANIK PROTSAHAN YOJANA

Awarded the prestigious KVPY Fellowship Award, 2011, by Govt. of India.


ACM ICPC

My team (hyperbolicTan) secured rank 18 in ICPC Kharagpur Regionals, 2014.


CBSE MERIT

Received CBSE Merit Certificate for being among the top 0.1% students in Economics in India, CBSE Board Exams, 2012.


REGI ONAL MATHEMATICS OLYMPIAD

Amongst the top 30 to qualify for RMO-2009, the first stage on the path of becoming part of India’s contingent for International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO).


TALKS

CrypTFlow: Secure TensorFlow Inference, IEEE S&P, 2020

CrypTFlow2: Practical 2-Party Secure Inference, UIUC Security Seminar, October 2020

OLYMPIAD

Secured all India rank of 5 and 30 in National Science Olympiad, organized by Science Olympiad Foundation in 2007 and 2008 respectively.


UIUC, Illinois, USA

Organizer, Crypto seminar, UIUC, Illinois, USA, August 2021 – April 2022.


Microsoft Research India and IISc

Organizer, Joint crypto reading group between Microsoft Research India and IISc, Jan - April 2019.


Sub-Reviewer

Sub-Reviewer for ASIA cRYPT 2019, INDO CRYPT 2019, SCN 2020, INDO CRYPT 2020,
PKC 2020, CrYPTO 2021, STOC 2022, CCS 2022, CRYPTO 2022.


OPEN-SOURCE CONTRIBUTIONS

Co-developed CrypTFlow2: a practical protocol for secure and correct Machine Learning inference in a 2-party setting.

Designed and developed Athos, a compiler (written in Python) from TensorFlow inference code to secure MPC proto- cols. Athos compiles TensorFlow using 2 Intermediate Languages (IL) - a High-Level Intermediate Language (HLIL) and a Low-Level Intermediate Language (LLIL). Implemented several standard and non-standard optimizations on each IL during compilation. Also, designed and incorporated several optimizations in Porthos (written in C++), a 3-party computation protocol geared for ML-like applications.

Memories

Forever Missed

Road crossed again

By: Ran Canetti

I have only known Nishant on a professional level. But his almost child-like sincerity and uninhibited enthusiasm, combined with his mathematical sharpness and acumen, have touched me deeply. It was clear to me that he was a very special individual, and that he was going to go far and contribute to science and society. His untimely and tragic death is a loss to humanity.

I have first met Nishant in January 2000 at a workshop in Bangalore, just before Covid locked us all down. He was working at MSR and has just applied to graduate schools in the US. He was asking on where to go should he get accepted and wanted to tell me all about his research at MSR and other research ideas that he was thinking about. I honestly don’t remember technical details, but the one thing that clearly stuck was his contagious enthusiasm for the research he was doing. I remember thinking to myself that this uninhibited enthusiasm is a gift, and that working with him could be rewarding. I also remember wanting to tell him to hang on to this enthusiasm, but not managing to find a way to say it…

Our roads crossed again about a year ago, when Dakshita suggested that Nishant join a project that we were working on (together with Suvradip Chakraborty, Oxana Poburinnaya, and Manoj Prabhakaran) that languished a bit and needed some revitalization. I was happy for the opportunity to interact with Nishant, and indeed it has been rewarding: We have had weekly meetings where at first he was very tentative, but as he learned more about the work and the relevant literature he became more confident --- and started catching us when we were saying something wrong, or just BS’ing… soon enough he started “owning” the work and rewriting large parts of it. Throughout I was very much impressed with this sharpness, open-mindedness, and humility: He had no problem saying he did not understand, or that he didn’t know - but when he was assertive about something, he was invariably correct.

Last march, as part of our work towards finally posting our work on Eprint (it will be presented in Eurocrypt 2022) I wrote a new proof for some theorem in the paper. I was happy about the new idea, and it seems to work just fine, but I asked everyone to check the proof. In our next weekly (Monday) meeting Nishant started by saying that “the proof is very nice, but there are a couple points that I don’t understand…” …I knew I was in trouble. And indeed it soon became clear that these two points were significant gaps in the proof. We discussed these gaps and threw around ideas on how to fix, and then time was up and we said we’d continue next week. I of course kept thinking about the issues and was looking forward to telling Nishant and the others how I thought one of the issues can be resolved and discuss the other one which seemed more elusive --- but then the following Monday I opened my email to the terrible news.

The paper is not up yet (hopefully very soon) but I wanted to tell Nishant, wherever he is, that we now finally think that we got the proof right, and ask him If he could again give it a good read?

Proud Advisor

By: Dakshita Khurana

Nishant was a bright star in our lives. He was so full of life, cheerful, sincere, smart, hardworking and a really wonderful human being. I am proud to have been his PhD advisor. He was extremely passionate about a wide array of research topics. I would end up having research conversations with him nearly every day. It was great to have him in my classrooms, he was always excited to learn and would often offer insights and ask questions. He would organize reading groups, and push everyone else to sign up. It was so wonderful to have a person like him be a part of our community, even if for a while. He had so much potential, and would have become an excellent researcher. Beyond all that, he was also a good friend. I will dearly miss having him around.
Having him around was fun

By: Dr Nishant Chandran

I was truly heartbroken to hear about Nishant's passing. Nishant was such a sweet guy with a smile always on his face. He had so much passion for whatever he did and especially crypto research. He was so perseverant in his efforts to do high quality research and brought so much energy and happiness to the group at MSR India during the 2 years he spent there. Such a sport too - we used to tease him about his "bee" tshirt which I see he still wore at UIUC; having him around was so much fun.

I am so sad that, due to covid, I never got a chance to see him in person before he left for the US. I feel fortunate for having known Nishant. I was looking forward to seeing amazing research outputs from him too -- and only weeks ago saw updates on his recent results.

One thing is for sure - Nishant truly touched the lives of everyone who met him. Personally, I will miss him deeply.

Beside him,Drive would be awesome

By: Amit Agrawal

Nishant was a person with a sparkling smile, a remarkable personality, and an unending curiosity - both in academics and life in general. He was a very outgoing person and was always proactive in organizing guest talks by inviting people from other universities. Over the past year and a half, I went on multiple road trips with him, and believe me, with Nishant on the passenger seat, your drive would be awesome. He had all sorts of interesting "inside stories" about different crypto researchers to keep you entertained throughout the trip. Every now and then, he would also confess how his Ph.D. research isn't going as great as he expected, and I used to console him by sharing some of my own stories. "Hey, Nishant! Don't you worry so much. After we graduate, we will look back at this time and laugh at all these petty issues." Little did I know what nature had in store for him. I will miss him forever and ever.
Intellectual Center

By: Sanmi Koyejo

I am heartbroken to hear the tragic news of Nishant's passing. I will fondly remember Nishant as the intellectual center of our research for almost two years. Nishant was among those few early Ph.D. students who take such a mature approach to research that one is convinced they are much further along. Nishant was an enthusiastic, patient, and selfless mentor to the other students working with us. It was my privilege and pleasure to work with him for the short time that it was possible. Nishant's passing is an incalculable loss for all -- family and friends and all of computer science @ Illinois. He will be missed.
Remembering his beautiful smile

By: Bhavana Kanukurthi

It is impossible to think of Nishant without picturing his beautiful smile. Sincere, focused, passionate and yet extremely gentle, Nishant's life inspires me to be a better version of myself. We miss him and will never forget him!
Intrigued by his knowledge and commitment in research

By: Ayan Kumar

I first met Nishant when we were Research Fellows at Microsoft, where Nishant had the tough job to fix and build upon some code I had written during an internship. I was very intrigued by his knowledge and his commitment towards excellence in research. He would always have something interesting to contribute to discussions and people's work. Often I would go and have a chat with Nishant whenever I felt lost, and benefitted immensely from our conversations during our time at MSR. It makes it so much more harder to deal with his sudden passing, he was shaping up to be an awesome researcher. Nishant, you will be sorely missed.

Send a message

Get in touch

Phone :
+91 9113188818
Address :
Krishna Niwas, Bariyatu Housing,Ranchi
Email :
nishant.kr10@gmail.com