On November 13, 2020, Chatdanai Dorkson defended his PhD thesis, written under the guidance of Dr Siaw-Lynn Ng.
Chatdanai Dorkson
Chat's thesis title is "Private Information Retrieval using Regenerating Codes", and in the thesis he considers how a user could download records from a distributed database coded for efficient node repair, without disclosing the identity of the desired records, and exhibited a few constructions that allow this.
Private Information Retrieval (PIR) is a protocol that allows a user to download record(s) from a database without disclosing the identity of the desired record(s). In recent literature, PIR on a coded database, where a database is distributed across multiple servers using erasure codes, is explored to reduce the cost of storage. An important problem in distributed storage using erasure codes is a repair problem which considers how to regenerate lost data at a replacement server during a server failure in order to maintain the level of reliability.
Usually PIR on a coded database and the repair problem in a distributed storage are considered separately. Chat’s thesis addressed these problems in an integral manner. He exhibited a few PIR constructions using regenerating codes, which is a class of erasure codes providing efficient repair.
Congratulations to Chatdanai Dorkson and Siaw-Lynn Ng!
