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Anwar Hithnawi
Anwar Hithnawi

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 (open water swimming).

Research Group [Photos: 2022,2021]

Current Doctoral Students

  • Alexander Viand
  • Nicolas Küchler
  • Hidde Lycklama

Current Master’s and Undergraduate Students

  • Christian Knabenhans
  • Emanuel Opel
  • Lena Csomor
  • Yu-Shan Wei

Former Doctoral Students

  • 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: Opportunities & Challenges. 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. [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 RoFL: Robustness of Secure Federated Learning

RoFL: Robustness of Secure Federated Learning Paper Github

Hidde Lycklama*, Lukas Burkhalter*, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi

IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023.

Thumbnail of HECO: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compiler.

HECO: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compiler. Paper Github

Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Miro Haller, Anwar Hithnawi

USENIX Security 2023.

Thumbnail of VF-PS: How to Select Important Participants in Vertical Federated Learning, Efficiently and Securely?.

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.

Thumbnail of Cryptographic Auditing for Collaborative Learning

Cryptographic Auditing for Collaborative Learning Paper

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

ML Safety Workshop at NeurIPS 2022

Thumbnail of Zeph: Cryptographic Enforcement of End-to-End Data Privacy.

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.

Thumbnail of SoK: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compilers.

SoK: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compilers. Paper Slides Github Website Video

Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Anwar Hithnawi

IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2021.

Thumbnail of Droplet: Decentralized Authorization and Access Control for Encrypted Data Streams.

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.

Thumbnail of TimeCrypt: Encrypted Data Stream Processing at Scale with Cryptographic Access Control.

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.

Thumbnail of Secure Sharing of Partially Homomorphic Encrypted IoT Data.

Secure Sharing of Partially Homomorphic Encrypted IoT Data. Paper

Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Lukas Burkhalter, Pascal Fischli, Simon Duquennoy

ACM SenSys 2017.

Thumbnail of CrossZig: Combating Cross-Technology Interference in Low-power Wireless Networks.

CrossZig: Combating Cross-Technology Interference in Low-power Wireless Networks. Paper

Anwar Hithnawi, Su Li, Hossein Shafagh, James Gross, Simon Duquennoy

ACM IPSN 2016.

Thumbnail of Talos: Encrypted Query Processing for the Internet of Things.

Talos: Encrypted Query Processing for the Internet of Things. Paper

Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Andreas Dröscher, Simon Duquennoy, Wen Hu

ACM SenSys 2015.

Thumbnail of TIIM: Technology-Independent Interference Mitigation for Low-power Wireless Networks.

TIIM: Technology-Independent Interference Mitigation for Low-power Wireless Networks. Paper

Anwar Hithnawi, Hossein Shafagh, Simon Duquennoy

ACM IPSN 2015.