Group Leader

Anwar Hithnawi

I am an Ambizione Fellow (Principal Investigator) at the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, 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. Upon graduating, I spent two wonderful years as a postdoc at UC Berkeley. For more information on my current research, please visit the PPS research lab page. Outside of research, I enjoy cycling and swimming.

Research Group [Photos: 2023,2022,2021]

Current Doctoral Students

Nicolas Küchler
Hidde Lycklama

Current Master’s and Undergraduate Students

Christian Knabenhans
Emanuel Opel
Lena Csomor
Yu-Shan Wei

Former Doctoral Students

Alexander Viand ( → Cryptography Researcher at Intel Labs)
- Thesis: Useable Fully Homomorphic Encryption
- Committee: Anwar Hithnawi (ETH), Kenny Paterson (ETH), Raluca Ada Popa (UC Berkeley)
Lukas Burkhalter [🏅 Microsoft Research Ph.D. Award] ( → Cryptography Engineer at Proton)
- Thesis: Privacy-Centric Systems for Stream Data Processing
- Committee: Anwar Hithnawi (ETH), Kenny Paterson (ETH), Peter Druschel (MPI-SWS), Srdjan Capkun (ETH)

Former Master’s and Undergraduate Students

Miro Haller (→ Ph.D. student at UCSD)
Marko Mihajlovic (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Patrick Jattke (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Nicolas Küchler (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Hidde Lycklama (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Liangcheng Yu (→ Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania)
Lukas Burkhalter - [🏅 ETH Medal for Outstanding Master Thesis] (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich)
Su Li (→ Ph.D. student at EPFL)
Vaibhav Kulkarni (→ Ph.D. student at the University of Lausanne)
Yonathan Fisseha (→ Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan)
Matthias Lei (→ Senior Consultant at Innovation Process Technology)
Dominic Plangger (→ Lead Engineer at xorlab)
Michel Kaporin (→ Software Engineer at ti&m)
Clément Thorens (→ Software Engineer at Huawei Zurich Research Center)

Honors & Awards:

Google-Initiated Research Award.
Rising Stars in EECS 2021.
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.
Birzeit University Merit Scholarship.

Selected Recent Invited Talks:

Useable Fully Homomorphic Encryption: Challenges & Opportunities. Intel Labs. [Slides]
Security and Robustness of Collaborative Learning Systems. 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, Birzeit 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 Cohere: Privacy Management in Large Scale Systems

Cohere: Privacy Management in Large Scale Systems Paper

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

Preprint, arXiv:2301.08517

Thumbnail of Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption

Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption Paper Github

Alexander Viand*, Christian Knabenhans*, Anwar Hithnawi

Preprint, arXiv:2301.07041

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