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 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:
Artemis: Efficient Commit-and-Prove SNARKs for zkML Paper Github
Hidde Lycklama*, Alexander Viand*, Nikolay Avramov, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2409.12055
UTrace: Poisoning Forensics for Private Collaborative Learning Paper
Evan Rose, Hidde Lycklama, Harsh Chaudhari, Anwar Hithnawi, Alina Oprea
Preprint, arXiv:2409.15126
Holding Secrets Accountable: Auditing Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Paper Slides Github
Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Christian Knabenhans, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX Security 2024.
Cohere: Managing Differential Privacy in Large Scale Systems Paper Slides Video
Nicolas Küchler, Emanuel Opel, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2024.
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)
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
RoFL: Robustness of Secure Federated Learning Paper Slides Github Video
Hidde Lycklama*, Lukas Burkhalter*, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023.
HECO: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compiler. Paper Github Video
Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Miro Haller, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX Security 2023.
VF-PS: How to Select Important Participants in Vertical Federated Learning, Efficiently and Securely?. Paper
Jiawei Jiang, Lukas Burkhalter, Fangcheng Fu, Bolin Ding, Bo Du, Anwar Hithnawi, Bo Li, Ce Zhang
NeurIPS (Spotlight) 2022.
Cryptographic Auditing for Collaborative Learning Paper Poster
Hidde Lycklama, Nicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Emanuel Opel, Lukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi
ML Safety Workshop at NeurIPS 2022
Zeph: Cryptographic Enforcement of End-to-End Data Privacy. Paper Slides Github Video
Lukas Burkhalter*, Nicolas Küchler*, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX OSDI 2021.
SoK: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compilers. Paper Slides Github Website Video
Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2021.
Droplet: Decentralized Authorization and Access Control for Encrypted Data Streams. Paper Slides Github Website Video
Hossein Shafagh, Lukas Burkhalter, Sylvia Ratnasamy, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX Security 2020.
TimeCrypt: Encrypted Data Stream Processing at Scale with Cryptographic Access Control. Paper Slides Github Website Video
Lukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Sylvia Ratnasamy
USENIX NSDI 2020.
Secure Sharing of Partially Homomorphic Encrypted IoT Data. Paper
Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Lukas Burkhalter, Pascal Fischli, Simon Duquennoy
ACM SenSys 2017.
CrossZig: Combating Cross-Technology Interference in Low-power Wireless Networks. Paper
Anwar Hithnawi, Su Li, Hossein Shafagh, James Gross, Simon Duquennoy
ACM IPSN 2016.
Talos: Encrypted Query Processing for the Internet of Things. Paper
Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Andreas Dröscher, Simon Duquennoy, Wen Hu
ACM SenSys 2015.
TIIM: Technology-Independent Interference Mitigation for Low-power Wireless Networks. Paper
Anwar Hithnawi, Hossein Shafagh, Simon Duquennoy
ACM IPSN 2015.