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Anwar Hithnawi
Anwar Hithnawi

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.

Research Group [Photos: 2023,2022,2021]

Current Students

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

Academic Service:

  • Program Committees: IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2026, 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 DPolicy: Managing Privacy Risks Across Multiple Releases with Differential Privacy

DPolicy: Managing Privacy Risks Across Multiple Releases with Differential Privacy Paper Github

Nicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Hidde Lycklama, Anwar Hithnawi

IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2025.

Thumbnail of CoVault: Secure, Scalable Analytics of Personal Data.

CoVault: Secure, Scalable Analytics of Personal Data. Paper

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

USENIX Security 2025.

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 Fragile Giants: Understanding the Susceptibility of Models to Subpopulation Attacks

Fragile Giants: Understanding the Susceptibility of Models to Subpopulation Attacks Paper

Isha Gupta, Hidde Lycklama, Emanuel Opel, Evan Rose, Anwar Hithnawi

Preprint, arXiv:2410.08872

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.

usenix-artifact-availableusenix-artifact-functionalusenix-artifact-reproduced

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 RoFL: Robustness of Secure Federated Learning

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.

Thumbnail of HECO: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compiler.

HECO: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compiler. Paper Github Video

Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Miro Haller, Anwar Hithnawi

USENIX Security 2023.

usenix-artifact-availableusenix-artifact-functionalusenix-artifact-reproduced

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 Poster

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.

usenix-artifact-availableusenix-artifact-functionalusenix-artifact-reproduced

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.

Funding:

SNSF
Intel
Meta
Google