Hiring! I am joining HKUST as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Computer Science Department starting from February 2026 and now looking for PhD students and research interns. I am looking for students who are interested in related topics including cryptography, privacy-preserving computation, security and privacy in machine learning, etc. Please feel free to reach out to me via email.
Research Interests
Cryptography, Privacy-preserving computation, Security and privacy in machine learning, Blockchain technology, etc.
I design algorithms and do implementations.
Education
I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University.Research Papers
- Ashrujit Ghoshal,Mingxun Zhou, Elaine Shi, Bo Peng.(Randomized Author Order) Pseudorandom Functions with Weak Programming Privacy and Applications to Private Information Retrieval , Eurocrypt, 2025.
- Mingxun Zhou, Elaine Shi, and Giulia Fanti. Pacmann: Efficient Private Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search , ICLR, 2025.
- Mingxun Zhou, Elaine Shi, and Giulia Fanti. Conan: Distributed Proofs of Compliance for Anonymous Data Collection , CCS 2024
- Ashrujit Ghoshal, Mingxun Zhou, and Elaine Shi.(Randomized Author Order) Efficient Pre-processing PIR Without Public-Key Cryptography, Eurocrypt 2024.
- Mingxun Zhou, Mengshi Zhao, T-H. Hubert Chan, and Elaine Shi.(Randomized Author Order) Advanced Composition Theorems for Differential Obliviousness, ITCS 2024.
- Mingxun Zhou, Andrew Park, Elaine Shi and Wenting Zheng. Piano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation, S&P 2024.
- Mingxun Zhou, Elaine Shi, T-H. Hubert Chan, and Shir Maimon.(Randomized Author Order) A Theory of Composition for Differential Obliviousness, Eurocrypt 2023
- Mingxun Zhou, W. Lin, Yiannis Tselekounis, and Elaine Shi.(Randomized Author Order) Optimal Single-Server Private Information Retrieval, Eurocrypt 2023
Mingxun Zhou*, Liyi Zeng*, Yilin Han, Peilun Li, Fan Long, Dong Zhou, Ivan Beschastnikh, and Ming Wu (*Equal Contribution). Mercury: Fast Transaction Broadcast in High Performance Blockchain System, INFOCOM 2023
Mingxun Zhou, Tianhao Wang, T-H. Hubert Chan, Giulia Fanti, and Elaine Shi. Locally Differentially Private Sparse Vector Aggregation, S&P 2022.
Charlie Hou*, Mingxun Zhou*, Yan Ji, Phil Daian, Florian Tramer, Giulia Fanti, and Ari Juels. (*Equal Contribution)SquirRL: Automating Attack Analysis on Blockchain Incentive Mechanisms with Deep Reinforcement Learning, NDSS 2021.[code]
Minmei Wang*, Mingxun Zhou*, Shouqian Shi, and Chen Qian. (*Euqal Contribution) Vacuum Filters: More Space-Efficient and Faster Replacement for Bloom and Cuckoo Filters, VLDB 2020. [code]
Preprints/Other Projects
- Mingxun Zhou, and Elaine Shi. The Power of the Differentially Oblivious Shuffle in Distributed Privacy Mechanisms, 2022.
VRecon: An Efficient Set Reconciliation Algorithm, Bachelor Thesis, 2021.
Presentations/Talks
- "Advanced Composition Theorems for Differential Obliviousness" at ITCS, Jan. 2024 [video]
- "Recent Progress in Private Information Retrieval" at PKU, Jul. 2023 [video(中文视频)]
- "Piano: Extremely Simple, Single-Server PIR with Sublinear Server Computation" at CMU Crypto Seminar, May 2023 [video]
- "A Theory of Composition for Differential Obliviousness" at Eurocrypt, Apr 2023 [video]
- "Optimal Single-Server Private Information Retrieval" at CMU Theory Lunch, Sep. 2022 [video]
- "The Power of the Differentially Oblivious Shuffle in Distributed Privacy Mechanisms" at the Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing, Jun. 2022 [video]
- "Locally Differentially Private Sparse Vector Aggregation" at IEEE S&P, May 2022 [video]
- "SquirRL: Automating Attack Analysis on Blockchain Incentive Mechanisms with Deep Reinforcement Learning" at IJTCS, Aug. 2020 [video]
Teaching
- Teaching Assistant, CMU 18734/17731: Foundation of Privacy, Fall 2024
- Teaching Assistant, CMU 15893: Special Topics in Cryptography (PIR, ORAM, ZK), Spring 2024
Others
- If you find difficulty pronouncing my name, it is similar to "Ming-Shwin Joel" :)