i recently started as a professor auxiliar (assistant professor) in the informatics (computer science) department of the faculdade de ciências de universidade nova de lisboa (FCT NOVA). a permanent academic position is something that i have been chasing for a little while, so i am excited to see how this new position goes.
as well as carrying on my research, i will be adding the — much feared — teaching component to my daily activities. it's undeniably a new challenge, but one that i hope (and expect, to imbue more optimism) to be rewarding on a personal level.
research collaborations / phd students
in an individual capacity, i would like to carry on doing research in the area of developing privacy-preserving applied cryptography. recently, i've been looking at private information retrieval and privacy-preserving data aggregation, and there are certainly improvements that i'm interested in further looking into related to this work.
however, i'm hoping that a dedicated university office will confer to me a capacity for broadening my horizons beyond either of those applications, or beyond simply looking at cryptographic solutions as privacy-preservation mechanisms. this task won't be easy: the time resource is not necessarily in a massive surplus, and i also don't necessarily possess the singularity of knowledge that would allow myself to pivot to different research areas.
so, this is my official call for ~collaborations~ and ~prospective students~. there are some great (more knowledgable than i am) people doing very interesting research in applied cryptography, privacy, and related areas. there are also great (more knowledgable than i am) students that would benefit these areas greatly by bringing their new ideas (untarnished by pessimism) to the area. if you'd be interested in working with me on topics in this area, or you would be interested in discussing the possibility for getting funding to do a PhD, or perform doctoral-level research in any capacity: please get in contact, my email is: a _dot_ davidson _at_ fct _dot_ unl _dot_ pt. i'm happy to actively help in writing funding proposals of any nature.
some other things worth noting
- Sofía Celi will be discussing how to build cryptography for small organisations at IACR RWC 2023 in Tokyo next month, based on our work on FrodoPIR and STAR. Sofía will give a great talk, so make sure you attend. :)
- if you are an academic, you find yourself in lisboa, and you decide that you would like to take time out from a nice holiday to come give a talk on your research at FCT NOVA, send me an email and i will do my best to make that happen.