Benjamin D. Kim

I am an incoming EECS PhD student at MIT. I received my BS/MS in ECE from UIUC in 2025/2026, where I was advised by Lav Varshney and Daniel Alabi. My graduate studies are supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and an MIT Presidential Fellowship.

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Research Interests

I am mainly interested in information theory, cryptology and privacy, and trustworthy AI.

Current Projects:

  • Multi-bit LLM watermarking with Amazon
  • Shuffle differential privacy auditing
  • Private sampling from aggregated user distributions
  • Coding for efficient post quantum key exchange

Publications
TVMark: Multi-Bit Text Watermarking across Distortion Regimes
Benjamin D. Kim, Wanrong Zhang, Weitong Ruan, Lav R. Varshney, Daniel Alabi
Submitted to NeurIPS, 2026
Optimal Guarantees for Auditing Rényi Differentially Private Machine Learning
Benjamin D. Kim, Lav R. Varshney, Daniel Alabi
Submitted to NeurIPS, 2026
To be presented at TPDP, 2026
Scalable Multiterminal Key Agreement via Error-Correcting Codes
Benjamin D. Kim, Daniel Alabi, Lav R. Varshney
Preprint, 2026
CRYPTO-MINE: Cryptanalysis via Mutual Information Neural Estimation
Benjamin D. Kim, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Jongchan Woo, Alejandro Cohen, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Muriel Médard
IEEE ICASSP, 2024
On the Benefits of Coding for Network Slicing
Homa Esfahanizadeh, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Benjamin D. Kim, Shruti Siva, Jennifer Kim, Alejandro Cohen, Muriel Médard
IEEE ICC Workshops, 2024
An Efficient Hybrid Key Exchange Mechanism
Benjamin D. Kim, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Alejandro Cohen, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Muriel Médard
IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), 2025
Revisiting the Interface between Error and Erasure Correction in Wireless Standards
Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Homa Esfahanizadeh, Benjamin D. Kim, Laura Landon, Alejandro Cohen, Muriel Médard
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
CERMET: Coding for Energy Reduction with Multiple Encryption Techniques - It's easy being green
Jongchan Woo, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Benjamin D. Kim, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Alejandro Cohen, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Muriel Médard
Preprint, 2023
Leveraging AES Padding: dBs for Nothing and FEC for Free in IoT Systems
Jongchan Woo, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Benjamin D. Kim, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Alejandro Cohen, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Ken R. Duffy, Muriel Médard
Preprint, 2024
Cryptanalysis via Machine Learning Based Information-Theoretic Metrics
Benjamin D. Kim, Vipindev Adat Vasudevan, Rafael G. L. D'Oliveira, Alejandro Cohen, Thomas Stahlbuhk, Muriel Médard
Preprint, 2025

Research Experience
UIUC CSL 2025-Present
  • Advised by Daniel Alabi and Lav Varshney
  • Information Theory and Trustworthy AI
Amazon 2026
  • Designing Robust LLM Watermarks
MIT Lincoln Laboratory 2025
  • Tactical Edge Communications Group 62
  • Information Theory and Statistical Signal Processing
MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics 2022-2025
  • Advised by Prof. Muriel Médard
  • Information Theory, Communications, Cryptography, Machine Learning

Awards and Fellowships

MIT Irwin Mark Jacobs and Joan Klein Jacobs Presidential Fellowship - Mar. 2026

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship - Apr. 2025

Edward C. Jordan Award - Apr. 2025

CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award Finalist - Jan. 2025

UIUC Outstanding Senior (Homecoming Court) Finalist - Jul. 2024

Donald L. Bitzer and H. Gene Slottow Creativity Award - Apr. 2024

Teaching

Teaching Assistant for CS/ECE 374, Algorithms & Models of Computation at UIUC - 2023-2026


Last updated: 5/26