Athanasios Andreou

Athanasios (Thanos) Andreou is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering under Damon McCoy's team. He holds a PhD from Sorbonne Université (conducted at EURECOM), supervised by Patrick Loiseau and Oana Goga, and a Diploma (5-year) in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NTUA. His research focuses on AI ethics, cybersecurity, privacy, and e-crime, with a particular emphasis on auditing social media advertising ecosystems and transparency mechanisms.

His academic journey includes a MSc in Communications & Computer Security from EURECOM. Key research interests span internet measurements, transparency in digital advertising, and mitigating privacy risks in social platforms. Notable contributions include developing the Facebook Ads Monitor tool and investigating privacy vulnerabilities in data brokers' interfaces.

• Publications: Over a decade of work, his publications address critical issues such as ad transparency limitations, privacy risks in Facebook targeting, and identity disclosure risks in multi-profile user scenarios.
• Awards: Winner of the 2020 CNIL-Inria Award, runner-up for the Caspar Bowden PET Award, and recipient of best paper runner-up at ASONAM 2017.

His work bridges social media analysis with practical tools like AdAnalyst, aiming to enhance user awareness of targeted advertising practices. Current affiliations include NYU Tandon, with prior involvement at EURECOM and Sorbonne Université.