Disclaimer: I have other things
to do with my time than build an exciting personal web page, but
everything you need should be here. :-)
Contact Info:
Christopher Thorpe
Email: cateecs.harvard.edu
Obligatory Photo:
Dr. Christopher Thorpe is a computer scientist whose research
focuses on security and cryptography in business and finance,
but also includes security and economics of virtual worlds
and how great Internet applications are created.
Christopher Thorpe refers to himself in the
third person at the beginning of the web page so that
search engines excerpt a reasonable part of the page. (This trick worked!)
I taught Computer Science 286r a graduate seminar on computational finance, in Spring 2008.
I have been a teaching fellow over a dozen times, including introductory
computer science, probabilistic reasoning, cryptography
and advanced systems programming.
Research Interests and papers:
Real-world applications of cryptography, including publicly
verifiable sealed-bid auctions and other e-commerce applications,
spam prevention, email retraction, and electronic voting.
My dissertation, “Provably Correct, Secrecy Preserving
Computation and its Applications in Auctions and Securities
Exchanges”, is based on much of the following research
and outlines a general model of efficient, secrecy-preserving
computation, with applications to secure auctions and information
hiding in securities exchanges.
Christopher Thorpe and David C. Parkes: Cryptographic Combinatorial Securities Exchanges, to appear in Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security '09 (FC09). (Link is to a pre-proceedings version; please ask permission before redistributing.)
David C. Parkes, Michael O. Rabin and Christopher Thorpe: Cryptographic Combinatorial Clock-Proxy Auctions, to appear in Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security '09 (FC09). (Link is to a pre-proceedings version; please ask permission before redistributing.)
Security, economics and art in massively multiplayer online worlds.
Christopher Thorpe, Jessica Hammer, Jean Camp, Jon Callas, and Mike Bond: Virtual Economies: Threats and Risks, Proceedings of Financial Cryptography and Data Security '07
Computer models of music, and their use in tasks such as composer
identification, composition, missing part reconstruction, optical
music recognition, and theoretical analysis
C.P.U. Bach: Markov Models for Chorale Harmonization
was my Harvard undergrad senior thesis in Computer Science
and Music.
I was primarily advised by the late
David Lewin
whom I consider one of the most influential teachers and mentors
I have ever had.
Automated use of freely available information on the Internet
for predictions in finance
Natural language analysis of Latin texts to provide
insight on authorship and relationships among authors and texts.
Systems administration (I don't actively think about this much anymore. This paper was written and accepted when I was a senior in college.)
From 2000-2002 I worked on internationalization of VoiceXML and speech recognition software at Tellme Networks. I coordinated efforts among dozens of engineers, content developers and speech experts in Belgium and California to deliver an internationalized voice application platform running on North American and European telephony infrastructure. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft in April 2007.
From 1998-2000 I worked on e-commerce at Yahoo!, after the startup I was with, Viaweb, was acquired by the big Y. Some of my user interfaces are still in use on Yahoo! Store and Shopping. Before leaving, I was responsible for leading the engineering efforts in the internationalization of Yahoo's e-commerce properties, including Auctions, Store, Shopping, Classifieds, and others.
I also founded three startups that didn't make it.
Ask me why. One answer:
"All successful startups resemble one another,
but each unsuccessful startup is unsuccessful in its own way."
(me, after Tolstoy)
I moved my bullet point list of thoughts on startups
here.
Vocations and Other Interesting Facts:
Singing, conducting, and composing in the style of early music
Nunc Dimittis, Dorian Short Service, 2007. Dedicated to those affected by the tragedy at Virginia Tech in 2007. This recording is the premiere performance at the special Memorial Church service in April 2007.
Corrupting early music; this palestremix was executed by Wayne Marshall after my original concept and heckling during the remix process
Playing computer games; I am a special fan of escaping into alternate universes such as Azeroth. Level 60's impede research; level 70's even more. Someone commented on one of my characters here.
Cooking, gardening, and eating the fruits and vegetables of my
labors
My degree is a "Philosophiae Doctoris" in "Computationis Rationum Scientiam", a phrase Google didn't know about before I wrote it here.
My name has some interesting characteristics:
When I was young, I
noticed an interesting anagram I will leave as a puzzle.
Heinrich Christensen noticed it without prompting;
Noam Elkies, upon meeting my parents, asked them if they
had intentionally given me a name with this property.
(I don't know whether he'd noticed it before then.)
After reading this, Florin Constantin observed that “short cipher” is an anagram for Chris Thorpe, but the one I'm talking about is even more self-referential than a topic relating to my research.
Shiyang Cao figured it out.
The first six letters of my first name, or my short first
name and last initial make for unfortunate abbreviations:
When I was at Microsoft, they nearly gave me the email
address t-christ@microsoft.com
(I got t-cthorp).
When I joined LinkedIn,
my contacts were invited to accept my invitation,
decide later, or say "I don't know Christ...".
Zak Stone provided a screenshot.
I speak English, Spanish, French, German, and Dutch well enough to
have meaningful conversations, which means I can also understand Italian
and read Portuguese (If you've ever heard spoken Portuguese the
reason for this distinction is immediate.)
I also studied Russian and Japanese and know enough Mandarin to
surprise people.
eecs.harvard.edu
