Anwar Hithnawi
I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and a Canada Research Chair in Security and Privacy 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.)
- Nikolay Avramov (Ph.D.)
- Ashwin Karthikeyan (Ph.D.)
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 (BS → MS ETH Zurich)
- Isha Gupta (BS → MS Stanford)
- Giacomo Fiorindo (MS)
Teaching:
- CSC364 - Foundations of Computer Security, Fall 2026, Fall 2025,.
- CSC2231 - Privacy-Enhancing Technologies, Fall 2026, Winter 2026, Winter 2025.
Selected Honors & Awards:
- Google Research Scholar.
- Intel's Outstanding Researcher 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.
Academic Service:
- Associate Chair: IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2027
- Program Committees: IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2027, IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2026, IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2025, USENIX Security 2025
- Organization: ACM IPSN 2015 (Publication Chair), UbiComp 2013 (Chair for Demos and Posters)
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:
Ashwin Karthikeyan*, Ethan Kharitonov*, Kuldeep S. Meel, Anwar Hithnawi
Conference on Logic for Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Reasoning (LPAR 2026)
Nikolay Avramov, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2609.11841
DPolicy: Managing Privacy Risks Across Multiple Releases with Differential Privacy
Paper Slides GithubNicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Hidde Lycklama, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2025.
Roberta De Viti, Isaac Sheff, Noemi Glaeser, Baltasar Dinis, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Bobby Bhattacharjee, Anwar Hithnawi, Deepak Garg, Peter Druschel
USENIX Security 2025.
Hidde Lycklama*, Alexander Viand*, Nikolay Avramov, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2409.12055
Isha Gupta, Hidde Lycklama, Emanuel Opel, Evan Rose, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2410.08872
Evan Rose, Hidde Lycklama, Harsh Chaudhari, Anwar Hithnawi, Alina Oprea
Preprint, arXiv:2409.15126
Nicolas Küchler, Emanuel Opel, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2024.
Christian Knabenhans*, Alexander Viand*, Antonio Merino-Gallardo, Anwar Hithnawi
Workshop on Encrypted Computing & Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '24)
Hidde Lycklama*, Lukas Burkhalter*, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023.
VF-PS: How to Select Important Participants in Vertical Federated Learning, Efficiently and Securely?.
PaperJiawei Jiang, Lukas Burkhalter, Fangcheng Fu, Bolin Ding, Bo Du, Anwar Hithnawi, Bo Li, Ce Zhang
NeurIPS (Spotlight) 2022.
Hidde Lycklama, Nicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Emanuel Opel, Lukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi
ML Safety Workshop at NeurIPS 2022
Lukas Burkhalter*, Nicolas Küchler*, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX OSDI 2021.
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 VideoHossein 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 VideoLukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Sylvia Ratnasamy
USENIX NSDI 2020.
Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Lukas Burkhalter, Pascal Fischli, Simon Duquennoy
ACM SenSys 2017.
Anwar Hithnawi, Su Li, Hossein Shafagh, James Gross, Simon Duquennoy
ACM IPSN 2016.
Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi, Andreas Dröscher, Simon Duquennoy, Wen Hu
ACM SenSys 2015.
Anwar Hithnawi, Hossein Shafagh, Simon Duquennoy
ACM IPSN 2015.
Funding:
