1st in iDash 2021

A*FHE-2 Team is our I2R’s Homomorphic Encryption Team who took part in the recent iDash 2021: Homomorphic Encryption-based Secure Viral Strain Classification Competition. iDash is an International Data Privacy Competition funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. It focuses on evaluating the performance of state-of-the-art methods that ensure rigorous data confidentiality during data analyses in a cloud environment especially on genome data.

In this challenge, the team consisting of Chan Fook Mun, Deng Xiaoxia, Tan Hong Meng Benjamin, Sim Jun Jie, Zhou Weizhuang, Khin Mi Mi Aung, developed a solution that makes use of Homomorphic Encryption-based techniques and security guarantees for secure strain classification of 8,000 genomes. Their solution defeated 39 other teams comprising of IBM, Samsung, Tencent, Alibaba and top universities from 15 counties across 3 continents.