Postdoctoral Researcher: Trustworthy & Privacy-Preserving Identity Technologies

Postdoctoral Researcher: Trustworthy & Privacy-Preserving Identity Technologies

Idiap Research Institute

Martigny, Switzerland

Role Summary

The Idiap Research Institute is seeking a qualified candidate for a Postdoctoral position on trustworthy and privacy-preserving technologies for identity systems.

We are looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the CERTAIN project, with a principal focus on privacy-preserving technologies for biometric data protection. Within this scope, we are particularly interested in a rigorous, practically grounded exploration of homomorphic encryption (HE). The group already has some background on this topic, and we are seeking an expert to deepen our understanding of:

• Trade-offs across different HE algorithms;
• Concrete challenges and pitfalls of applying HE to biometric data;
• Evaluation methodologies for assessing the security and privacy properties of HE schemes;
• Advances towards post-quantum HE;
• How HE-based biometric data protection contributes to meeting the requirements of relevant privacy regulations, such as the GDPR and the EU AI Act.

The ideal candidate combines a deep understanding of HE schemes with hands-on implementation experience and, crucially, the ability to communicate their knowledge and experimental findings clearly to non-experts. Your main responsibilities will include integrating HE algorithms into existing biometric systems to protect the underlying biometric data, designing and running experiments to evaluate the efficacy, trade-offs, and attack vulnerabilities of different HE schemes, contributing to project deliverables, and strengthening the group's overall expertise on the topic.

Duties include:

• Carry out research as stated in the assigned project(s) and follow the evolution of project(s);
• Fulfil project-related assignments (evaluations, deliverables, ...) as requested;
• Publish results (in journal papers and conferences; favour joint publications with other Idiap staff and/or project partners);
• If required, participate in project meetings and boards;
• When appropriate, assume leading role as Idiap contact point or work package leader;
• Help supervise PhD students and interns in collaboration with supervisors;
• Participate in various Idiap activities and projects as requested by supervisor(s) or Idiap management.

Your profile

Candidates must have the following requirements:

• PhD in a relevant field such as cryptography, computer science, applied mathematics, or a closely related discipline (e.g. engineering, biometrics, computer vision, machine learning);
• Deep understanding of homomorphic encryption (HE) algorithms, with hands-on experience implementing and evaluating HE schemes in code;
• Strong background in mathematics relevant to cryptography as well as statistics, optimisation and linear algebra;
• Strong programming skills, particularly in Python, and comfort working in a Linux environment;
• Excellent research experience, a strong publication record, and the ability to conduct creative and significant research with a good level of autonomy;
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English, including the ability to explain technical findings to non-experts.

Preferred:

• Prior experience in the field of biometrics;
• Familiarity with deep learning (DCNNs, Transformers, GANs, Diffusion Models, Foundation and Large Multimodal Models) and frameworks such as PyTorch;
• Additional programming experience (e.g. C/C++);
• Contributions to open-source projects or publicly available research code.