Okko Makkonen

About

I am a mathematics student at Aalto University, Finland, having received my master's degree in May 2022. I started my doctoral studies at Aalto University in August 2022 under the supervision of Professor Camilla Hollanti in the ANTA group. For 2023—2024 I am supported by the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

My research interests include applications of coding theory in information-theoretically secure distributed computing. For my master's thesis I worked on secure distributed matrix multiplication and was awarded the 2023 Ernst Lindelöf prize for the best master's thesis in mathematics by the Finnish Mathematical Society. Currently I am working on the mathematical foundations of secure distributed computation by studying methods from algebraic coding theory and information theory. I have an Erdős number of 4.

Publications

Journal Articles

1. O. Makkonen and C. Hollanti, “General Framework for Linear Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication with Byzantine Servers,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 70, 2024.
2. J. Li, O. Makkonen, C. Hollanti, and O. W. Gnilke, “Efficient Recovery of a Shared Secret via Cooperation: Applications to SDMM and PIR,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 40, 2022.

Conference Proceedings

1. O. Makkonen, S. Niemelä, C. Hollanti, and S. Kas Hanna, “Approximate Gradient Coding for Privacy-Flexible Federated Learning with Non-IID Data,” (to appear at EUSIPCO 2024), 2024.
2. O. Makkonen, D. A. Karpuk, and C. Hollanti, “Algebraic Geometry Codes for Cross-Subspace Alignment in Private Information Retrieval,” 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2024.
3. O. Makkonen, “Flexible Field Sizes in Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication via Efficient Interference Cancellation,” 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2024.
4. O. Makkonen and C. Hollanti, “Secure Distributed Gram Matrix Multiplication,” 2023 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2023.
5. O. Makkonen and C. Hollanti, “General Framework for Linear Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication with Byzantine Servers,” 2022 IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2022.
6. O. Makkonen and C. Hollanti, “Analog Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication over Complex Numbers,” 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), 2022.

Preprints

1. O. Makkonen, D. A. Karpuk, and C. Hollanti, “Secret Sharing for Secure and Private Information Retrieval: A Construction Using Algebraic Geometry Codes,” 2024.
2. O. Makkonen, E. Saçıkara, and C. Hollanti, “Algebraic Geometry Codes for Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication,” 2023.

Theses

• “New Schemes for Secure Distributed Matrix Multiplication: Cooperative and Analog SDMM,” Master's thesis in Mathematics, Aalto University, 2022.