Kevin Nam

About Me

I am a Ph.D candidate studying at Security Optimization Lab (SORLab) in Seoul National University, advised by professor Yunheung Paek. I hold a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the same university. I served my mandatory military service at the ROK Air Force. My research trajectory began with hardware security topics, including monitoring mechanisms and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), and has since expanded to privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). In particular, my most recent works focused on on enabling efficient and accurate Machine Learning as a Service over Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE).

My research vision is to design efficient Security and Privacy Enhancing Computing Systems. While PETs have achieved significant theoretical and mathematical progress, they are still far from widespread deployment due to their computational complexity. I draw inspiration from the history of Artificial Intelligence: envisioned since the 1970s, AI only became practically deployable with 21st-century hardware and software innovations such as GPUs, distributed systems, and large-scale frameworks. I believe PETs can follow a similar path, becoming practical through retrofitted HW/SW innovations, which is the central goal of my research.

To this end, I pursue what I call non-mathematical approaches–hardware acceleration, compiler optimization, and algorithm–system co-design–to mitigate the performance bottlenecks of PETs, including Homomorphic Encryption, Secure Multi-Party Computation, and TEEs. Ultimately, my goal is to make privacy-preserving computation as conventional and accessible as everyday computing.

You can find most of the information below on my Curriculum Vitae(CV), if you prefer accessing via PDF.

Education

• Seoul National University, BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Mar. 2014-Feb. 2020). I left for my military service between 2017-2019.
• Seoul National University, MS/Ph.D combined in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Mar. 2020-present). I am currently a Ph.D candidate.

Skills

• Languages: I am fluent in Korean, English, and French. I spent my youth in Sevres and Paris, France, and hold a diplomat of DELF B2.
• Programming Languages: I mainly use C/C++, Python, HDL verilog, and JAVA. I have been working with Rust for some time.
• Tools/Frameworks: Vitis, Vivado, Xcellium, Synopsys DC, Tensorflow, Pytorch, Docker, Git, Linux

Research Experience

Some projects (with fundings, PI : my advisor, Yunheung Paek) that I have worked on are :

• Privacy-Preserving Neural Network Inference System funded by NRF, South Korea (Oct. 2023-present). I am the project leader, designing the overall framework and the FHE transpiler.
• Secure FHE Key Management System funded by CryptoLab (Mar. 2023-Apr. 2024). I was the TEE software engineer.
• Neural Network to FHE Transpiler funded by ETRI (Oct. 2023-Nov. 2024). I was the FHE transpiler engineer devising FHE dialects and translation rules.
• PEC Platform Development funded by the National Intelligence Service of South Korea (Mar. 2022-Nov. 2022). I designed the methodology to weave multiple privacy-preserving techniques together and a methodology that suggests the appropriate privacy-preserving technique for each sub-routines of a given (unencrypted) program.
• FPGA Accelerator for FHE funded by the National Intelligence Service of South Korea (Mar. 2021-Nov. 2021). I was the sole participant, covering from algorithm analysis to system integration.
• Designing HW/SW-based Computing Base for Secure Boxes funded by IITP, South Korea (Sep. 2021-present). I implemented HW/SW-based isolated VMs with TEEs and HE.
• Designing PQC Accelerators funded by Samsung Electronics, South Korea (Sep. 2020 - Sep. 2024). Integrated and optimized the HW modules.
• FPGA-based Trusted Execution Environments funded by NRF, South Korea (Mar. 2020-July. 2022). I implemented TEE isolation systems on FPGAs.

Honors and Awards

• Excellence Paper Award from ACK 2024 in May. 2024
• Award for Excellence in TA from Seoul National University in Jan. 2024
• NIPA Director Award from ASK 2023 in Jun. 2023
• Undang Academic Award from KIPS, Best Graduate Student Paper Award in Dec. 2021

I also was granted for scholarships

• BK21+ Scholarship by the Ministry of Education of Korea (Mar. 2020-present)
• SNU graduate student schoparship by Seoul National University (Mar. 2022-Feb. 2024)

Miscellaneous (rather gibberish)

I used to play baseball a lot as a short-stop position during my undergraduate years. I really wanted to be a pitcher but seems that my elbow is not strong enough even for a university division. I also liked to develop gadgets that I suddenly got interested in such as electric wheel for bicycles. I began having hands-on works on computer security during my military service.

I like watching Formula 1. Great fan of Red Bull Racing. Sometimes I also watch WEC races as white noise during coding.

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