Nicholas Chen

Wilson Wei, Nicholas Chen, Yuxuan Li

This paper explores the multi-dimensional challenges faced during the development of Large Language Models (LLMs), including the massive scale of model parameters and file sizes, the complexity of development environment configuration, the singularity of model functionality, and the high costs of computational resources. To address these challenges, this paper proposes three core technical solutions: LLM sharing protocol, LLM universal environment framework, and Agent optimal path module. To solve the computational resource constraints in the early stages of research, we further innovatively propose a joint mining mechanism, achieving bilateral value sharing between computing power providers and model designers, including breakthrough rewards for optimal model paths and long-term profit distribution, thereby providing researchers with cost-optimized computational resource support and promoting the continuous development of LLM research and applications.

Vikram Sharma Mailthody, James Wei, Nicholas Chen et al.

COVID-19 has fundamentally disrupted the way we live. Government bodies, universities, and companies worldwide are rapidly developing technologies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and safely reopen society. Essential analytics tools such as contact tracing, super-spreader event detection, and exposure mapping require collecting and analyzing sensitive user information. The increasing use of such powerful data-driven applications necessitates a secure, privacy-preserving infrastructure for computation on personal data. In this paper, we analyze two such computing infrastructures under development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to track and mitigate the spread of COVID-19. First, we present Safer Illinois, a system for decentralized health analytics supporting two applications currently deployed with widespread adoption: digital contact tracing and COVID-19 status cards. Second, we introduce the RokWall architecture for privacy-preserving centralized data analytics on sensitive user data. We discuss the architecture of these systems, design choices, threat models considered, and the challenges we experienced in developing production-ready systems for sensitive data analysis.