Research Scientist

Google

I am an applied AI researcher with experience in usable privacy and natural language processing. I am currently a Research Scientist at Google, working in the Applied Privacy Research Group. Before that, I was part of Amazon Alexa’s language understanding and generation team.

My portfolio includes Polisis, a system for visualizing privacy policies using machine learning, PriBot, a chatbot for automated question answering for privacy policies, an online wellbeing ML stack at Privately for assisting online children safety, and PrivySeal, an automated privacy assistant for installing cloud apps.

Interests

  • Usable Privacy and Security
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Human Computer Interaction

Education

  • PhD in Data-driven, Personalized Usable Privacy, 2017

    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

  • MsC in Communication Systems, 2012

    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

  • BSc in Computer and Communications Engineering, 2010

    American University of Beirut

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Research Scientist

Google

Feb 2020 – Present Zurich, Switzerland
 
 
 
 
 

Applied Scientist

Amazon Alexa

Jul 2019 – Jan 2020 Cambridge, UK
 
 
 
 
 

Machine Learning & Privacy Scientist

Privately SA

Nov 2018 – May 2019 Lausanne, Switzerland
 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Researcher

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Jul 2017 – Sep 2018 Lausanne, Switzerland

Awards

Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies

PET Award Committee Jul 2019

Excellence Award for Ph.D. thesis

Information Security Society Switzerland Nov 2017

Best Presentation Award

SwissText 2017 Jun 2017

Outstanding Paper Award

10th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy Mar 2017

Distinguished Poster Award

Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security Jun 2016

Swiss CTI Grant for an Online Children Safety Platform

Commission for Technology and Innovation Jan 2016

Best Dataset Award

ACM IMC 2015 Oct 2015

Venture Kick II Award with Graspeo Startup Team

Venture Kick Apr 2014

Dean’s Award for Creative Achievement

American University of Beirut Jun 2010

4-year Merit Scholarship

American University of Beirut Jul 2006

Projects

Polisis

AI-Powered Summaries of Privacy Policies

Pribot

Question Answering for Privacy Policies

Wellbeing ML

ML Tools for Teens' Online Wellbeing

Privyseal

Data-driven permission dialogs

Publications

Check my Google Scholar profile for the most up-to-date publications' list.

2021 30th USENIX Security Symposium

2020 Proceedings of COLING 2020, the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, December 8-13 2020
PDF

2020 Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2020
PDF Video

2019 2019 11th International Conference on Communication Systems & Networks (COMSNETS)
DOI

2018 27th USENIX Security Symposium
PDF

2017 7th ACM Conference on Data and Applications Security and Privacy (CODASPY'17)
PDF Poster Slides Video DOI

2017 Thirty-Second AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
PDF

2017 EPFL PhD Thesis
PDF

2017 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
PDF

2016 Workshop on Privacy Indicators, Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS)
PDF Slides Video

2016 Workshop on the Future of Privacy Indicators [June 22–24, 2016, Denver, Colorado]
PDF Slides Video

2016 Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2016
PDF Poster Slides Video DOI

2015 Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference - IMC ‘15
PDF DOI

2014 Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
PDF Poster Slides Video DOI

2014 US Patent
PDF

2012 Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
PDF DOI

2012 Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems
PDF DOI

Blog Posts

We Gave Privacy Policies an AI Overhaul, and You’ll Never Have to Read Them Again!
A Guide to Scaling Machine Learning Models in Production
How Chatbots Will Redefine the Future of App Privacy
Encryption, AI, and the Myth of Incompatibility

Selected Media

Articles covering our work

An AI That Reads Privacy Policies So That You Don’t Have To

Those Privacy Policies Flooding Your Inbox? Print Them Out and They Span a Football Field

You don’t read terms of service agreements, so let a bot do it | CBC News

The curious case of the PDF converter that likes Mozart

This Data Viz Tool Explains Privacy Policies You're Too Lazy To Read

We know you aren’t reading your privacy policy. Relax: this AI will do it for you

AI tool scans privacy notices to inform users on data collection

If you can’t beat them, join them: a usability approach to interdependent privacy in cloud apps

Esta es la información personal que regalas a servicios web sin saberlo

Selected Interviews

"Data protection policies that seem clear are often ambiguous" Warum Chatbots die neuen Apps sind

Why you should think twice before spilling your guts to a chatbot

Hamza Harkous, EPFL: "Le respect des données personnelles peut être un argument de vente"

Artificial intelligence can help you protect your personal data

Talks

Aug 15, 2018

USENIX Security 2018

Video
Jan 27, 2017

CPDP 2017

Video
Jul 20, 2016

Privacy Enhancing Symposium 2016

Video