Skip to content
Anwar Hithnawi
Anwar Hithnawi

Group Leader

Anwar Hithnawi

I am an Ambizione research fellow 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.

Current Students:

  • Lukas Burkhalter, Ph.D. Student, 2018-present
  • Alexander Viand, Ph.D. Student, 2019-present
  • Nicolas Küchler, Ph.D. Student, 2020-present
  • Hidde Lycklama, Ph.D. Student, 2021-present

Past Students:

  • Master Thesis Students: 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), Matthias Lei (→ Senior Consultant at Innovation Process Technology), Michel Kaporin (→ Software Engineer at ti&m), Lukas Burkhalter - thesis awarded ETH medal (→ Ph.D. student at ETH Zurich), Dominic Plangger (→ Lead Engineer at xorlab), Su Li (→ Ph.D. student at EPFL), Vaibhav Kulkarni (→ Ph.D. student at the University of Lausanne).

  • Others: Yonathan Fisseha - Research internship, Liangcheng Yu - Research internship, Jan Wolf - Bachelor thesis.

Awards and Fellowships:

  • Facebook Research Award (100k $).
  • SRC Hardware Security Solicitation Research Grant (270k $).
  • ETH Research Grant (240k $).
  • SNF Ambizione Grant (1 million $).
  • SNF Postdoctoral Fellowship.
  • Google Anita Borg Scholarship.
  • DAAD Scholarship for Master's Studies.
  • Birzeit University Merit Scholarship.

Selected Publications:

Thumbnail of RoFL: Attestable Robustness for Secure Federated Learning

RoFL: Attestable Robustness for Secure Federated Learning Paper Github

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

arXiv preprint, arXiv:2107.03311

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. Online.

Thumbnail of SoK: Fully Homomorphic Encryption Compilers.

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

Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Anwar Hithnawi

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2021. Online.

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 Symposium 2020. Online.

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. Santa Clara, California, USA.

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. Delft, Netherlands.

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. Vienna, Austria.

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. Seoul, South Korea.

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. Seattle, WA, USA.