LASIGE Talks are fortnightly/monthly events to publicize recently distinguished publications or ongoing cutting-edge work by researchers from the research centre, consolidating the scientific culture of the LASIGE community.

Speakers: João Guerreiro and Alex Davidson
Date: November 16th, 2025, Wednesday, 12:00
Where: C6.3.27

Program:
12:00 João Guerreiro
12:20 Alex Davidson
12:40 Q&A + Break for snacks & coffee

Talk1: Aiming at VR Boxing For and With Blind People
Speaker: João Guerreiro
Summary: This talk describes two of our latest efforts to make Virtual Reality (VR) accessible to blind people. We first explored nonvisual aiming techniques in a VR archery scenario featuring both stationary and moving targets. We then investigated how to design and implement feature-rich VR experiences. In collaboration with Jorge Pina, a former national boxing champion who is now blind, we developed a VR boxing experience that combines physical movement, spatialized sound, and haptic feedback to create an immersive and engaging experience. This talk aims to bring VR accessibility to the ring, hoping to land a few insightful punches on the way.
Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3706598.3713374

Talk2: Pool: A Practical OT-based OPRF from Learning with Rounding
Speaker: Alex Davidson
Summary: Oblivious Pseudorandom Function (OPRF) protocols allow a client to receive a pseudorandom function evaluation on their private input X, from a server holding a secret key K. OPRFs have quickly become a fundamental cryptographic tool, serving as both a key building block in complex theoretical constructions, while also being standardised for providing privacy-preserving versions of Internet cookies.
Our work proposes Pool: a conceptually simple post-quantum (PQ) OPRF protocol, that is round-optimal, practically efficient, and with security based on the well-understood hardness of the Learning with Rounding (LWR) problem. Pool is more efficient than constructions from well-known PQ PRFs, and is competitive even with those that only conjecture PQ security on lesser-known assumptions.
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1816.pdf