PhD Position: Next-Generation Data Anonymization Engines

About the role

Four-year fully funded PhD at KU Leuven’s COSIC group, one of Europe’s leading cryptography and privacy labs. The project builds next-generation anonymization engines that combine differential privacy, k-anonymity successors, and synthetic data generation with strong utility guarantees. Verify the current deadline on the apply link before submitting.

Responsibilities

• Design and analyse anonymization techniques with rigorous privacy proofs.
• Build practical anonymization pipelines that operate on real industrial and government datasets.
• Publish in IEEE Security and Privacy, USENIX Security, PETS, and CCS.
• Collaborate with Belgian and EU partners on privacy-by-design deployments.

Requirements

• Master’s degree in computer science, mathematics, statistics, or a closely related field.
• Strong grounding in either cryptography, statistics, or machine learning.
• Programming proficiency in Python and at least one systems language.
• Fluent English. Dutch is not required.

Nice to have

• Prior research on differential privacy, k-anonymity, or synthetic data.
• Familiarity with privacy-preserving ML (federated learning, DP-SGD).
• A first-author publication or open-source privacy tool contribution.

How to apply

Open the apply link to see the current cycle’s deadline. Submit CV, transcripts, motivation letter, Master’s thesis, and two reference contacts via KU Leuven’s job portal.