Guest talk: Luca Vassio "Anonymization in data processing and publishing"

Anonymization in data processing and publishing

Luca Vassio
Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Abstract: Big data have opened new opportunities to collect, store, process and, most of all, monetize data. This has created tension with privacy, especially when it comes to information about individuals. Privacy-preserving data processing allows companies, researchers and practitioners to share datasets carrying significant value while preserving at the same time the privacy of users. Researchers proposed approaches for anonymization like generalizing or removing data from the most sensitive fields.  I will present the basic concepts of privacy-preserving data processing, introducing the main motivations, challenges and opportunities around anonymization techniques. I will focus on k-anonymity as the classical approach to anonymize tabular data, and differential privacy as a flexible technique for running privacy-preserving queries.

Bio: Luca Vassio is an Assistant Professor in the field of Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and a member of SmartData@Polito research center for Big Data technologies. He holds a PhD 'cum laude' in Communication Engineering and an MSc in Mathematical Engineering. In the last few years, he has worked and visited Bell Labs, MIT, UFMG, and Huawei. His research interests include big data analysis, machine learning and complex networks. He applies these techniques to cybersecurity problems, online social networks, and intelligent transport systems.

This guest talk is hosted by Associate Professor Alex Jung, Department of Computer Science.