Group Leader

Anwar Hithnawi

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where I lead the Privacy Preserving Systems Lab. My research focuses on data privacy, applied cryptography, and systems. I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at ETH Zurich and spent two years as a postdoc at UC Berkeley. From 2020 to 2024, I was an Ambizione Fellow and research group leader at ETH Zurich. For more information on my current research, please visit the PPS research lab page. Outside of research, I enjoy cycling and swimming.

Update: I am actively recruiting PhD students to join my research group. If you are interested, please apply directly to the Department of Computer Science’s graduate program. Applications are due by December 1, 2024!

Research Group [Photos: 2023,2022,2021]

Current Students

Nicolas Küchler (Ph.D.)
Hidde Lycklama (Ph.D.)
Emanuel Opel (MS)
Isha Gupta (MS)
Nikolay Avramov (MS)

Former Students

Alexander Viand ( Ph.D. → Cryptography Researcher at Intel Labs)
Lukas Burkhalter [🏅 Microsoft Research Ph.D. Award] ( Ph.D. → Cryptography Engineer at Proton)
Christian Knabenhans (MS → Ph.D. student at EPFL)
Miro Haller (MS → Ph.D. student at UCSD)
Marko Mihajlovic (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Patrick Jattke (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Nicolas Küchler (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Hidde Lycklama (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Liangcheng Yu (MS → Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania)
Lukas Burkhalter - [🏅 ETH Medal for Outstanding Master Thesis] (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Su Li (MS → Ph.D. student at EPFL)
Vaibhav Kulkarni (MS → Ph.D. student at the University of Lausanne)
Yonathan Fisseha (BS → Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan)
Clément Thorens (MS → Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Lena Csomor (MS → CS High School Teacher at Kantonsschule Zurcher)
Matthias Lei (MS → Senior Consultant at Innovation Process Technology)
Dominic Plangger (MS → Lead Engineer at xorlab)
Michel Kaporin (MS → Software Engineer at ti&m)
Yu-Shan Wei (MS → Software Engineer at LzLabs)

Academic Service:

Program Committees: IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2025, USENIX Security 2025, Middleware 2023
Organization: ACM IPSN 2015 (Publication Chair), UbiComp 2013 (Chair for Demos and Posters)

Selected Honors & Awards:

Google Research Award.
Rising Stars in EECS.
Facebook Research Award.
Semiconductor Research Corporation Grant.
ETH Research Grant.
SNF Ambizione Grant.
SNF Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Google Anita Borg Scholarship.
DAAD Scholarship for Master's Studies.

Selected Recent Invited Talks:

Democratizing Privacy-Preserving Computation. SuRI - EPFL Summer Research Institute , WAHC'24 (Keynote), Swiss Crypto Day. [Slides]
Privacy-Preserving Systems for a Data-Driven World. University of Toronto, Waterloo, Oxford, Brown, UCSD, UPenn, NYU, Harvard. [Slides]
Useable Fully Homomorphic Encryption: Challenges & Opportunities. Intel Labs. [Slides]
Security and Robustness of Collaborative Learning Systems. University of Cambridge (invited guest lecture), FLOW Research Seminar, MBZUAI Workshop on CL, University St.Gallen CS Research Seminar, ZISC Seminar, UC Berkeley, MLSys Workshop on Decentralized and Collaborative Learning. [Slides, Video]
Systems Designs for End-to-End Privacy. Meta Labs, Columbia University, CISPA, Max Planck. [Slides]
Cryptographic Enforcement of End-to-End Data Privacy. Brown University, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Compiler Design for Fully Homomorphic Encryption. Intel's Crypto Frontier Center.
Encrypted Data Stream Processing at Scale. Intel, VMware, UC Berkeley.
Decentralized Authorization and Access Control for Encrypted Data Streams. UC Berkeley.

Selected Publications:

Thumbnail of Artemis: Efficient Commit-and-Prove SNARKs for zkML

Artemis: Efficient Commit-and-Prove SNARKs for zkML Paper Github

Hidde Lycklama*, Alexander Viand*, Nikolay Avramov, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi

Preprint, arXiv:2409.12055

Thumbnail of UTrace: Poisoning Forensics for Private Collaborative Learning

UTrace: Poisoning Forensics for Private Collaborative Learning Paper

Evan Rose, Hidde Lycklama, Harsh Chaudhari, Anwar Hithnawi, Alina Oprea

Preprint, arXiv:2409.15126

Thumbnail of Holding Secrets Accountable: Auditing Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning

Holding Secrets Accountable: Auditing Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Paper Slides Github Video

Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Christian Knabenhans, Anwar Hithnawi

USENIX Security 2024.

Thumbnail of Cohere: Managing Differential Privacy in Large Scale Systems

Cohere: Managing Differential Privacy in Large Scale Systems Paper Slides Github Video

Nicolas Küchler, Emanuel Opel, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi

IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2024.

Thumbnail of vFHE: Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption

vFHE: Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption Paper Github Video

Christian Knabenhans*, Alexander Viand*, Antonio Merino-Gallardo, Anwar Hithnawi

Workshop on Encrypted Computing & Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '24)

Thumbnail of CoVault: Secure Selective Analytics of Sensitive Data for the Public Good.

CoVault: Secure Selective Analytics of Sensitive Data for the Public Good. Paper

Roberta De Viti, Isaac Sheff, Noemi Glaeser, Baltasar Dinis, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Jonathan Katz, Bobby Bhattacharjee, Anwar Hithnawi, Deepak Garg, Peter Druschel

Preprint, arXiv:2301.08517