Lila Fontes

Email: fontes@cs
Office: SF 4302D

University of Toronto
Department of Computer Science
Sandford Fleming Building
10 King's College Road
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G4

About me

I am a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Toronto. I'm a member of the theory group, working under the supervision of Stephen Cook and Toni Pitassi. I did my undergraduate work at Harvard in mathematics, focusing on logic.

Research

I am interested in tradeoffs between online privacy and other measures like communication cost, accuracy, and optimality. Can privacy be traded away in return for faster computation time or better answers to computational problems? Do the same protocols protect privacy from eavesdroppers and other participants? Are some applications and functions hopelessly privacy-revealing?

My general theory interests cover a variety of topics, including computability, distributed computing, cryptography, using randomization in algorithms and proof techniques, and proof complexity.

Publications

The Hardness of Being Private. Anil Ada, Arkadev Chattopadhyay, Stephen Cook, Lila Fontes, Michal Koucký, Toniann Pitassi. CCC 2012 (slides).
Formal Theories for Linear Algebra. Stephen Cook and Lila Fontes. Logical Methods in Computer Science Vo. 8 (1:25)2012,pp. 1--31. An early version appeared in Computer Science Logic (CSL) 2010.
Interpreting LAP into VparityL and V#L. Lila Fontes. Working paper. (draft pdf) This was subsumed by "Formal Theories for Linear Algebra," above.
Formal Theories for Logspace Counting. Lila Fontes. M. Sc. thesis. (pdf, arXiv)

Teaching

I've been a teaching assistant for:

• Enriched Introduction to the Theory of Computation (CSC 240 winter 2013, 2010, and 2009),
• Introduction to the Theory of Computation (CSC 236 fall 2007 and 2012, winter 2008, & 2012),
• Automata Theory (CSC 448 winter 2011 & 2012),
• Computability and Logic (CSC 438/2404 fall 2011 and 2012),
• Algorithm Design and Analysis (CSC 373 fall 2011),
• Computational Complexity and Computability (CSC 363 fall 2010, 2009 & 2008), and
• Algebra I: Theory of Groups and Vector Spaces (Math 122 fall 2006).

Activities

Service: I was on the Department of Computer Science Chair's Search Committee (spring 2010). I served as treasurer for the Computer Science Graduate Student Benevolent Society (CSGSBS) from '09-'11. I was a CS representative to the Graduate Student Union '08-'09.

Sports: I have in the past enjoyed gymnastics, crew, skiing, and rugby, and synchronized swimming. This has resulted in some cool images of my knee (see my MRI and X-ray), and some knee surgeries. I do not recommend knee surgery as an enjoyable pastime. I also run and sometimes shoot arrows, although not at the same time (yet).

Communication: I have an online presence, as you well know. I maintain a personal blog, and, with my siblings, an oft-neglected silly blog. I sometimes tweet interesting links, if you're into that kind of thing.

Useful resources

Complexity Zoo
Looking for a LaTeX symbol? Try Detexify or The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbols List .
Bibtex help
MathWorld + Wikipedia = Planet Math
Mendeley

Grace Hopper
Anita Borg Institute
The estimated scale of the universe and everything (warning: autoplays music)