Simon Oya

Simon Oya is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Faculty of Applied Science. He holds a PhD in Information Technologies and Communications from the University of Vigo (Spain) and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Cryptography, Security and Privacy (CrySP) group at the University of Waterloo.

His educational background includes:

• BSc, MSc, PhD from University of Vigo (Spain)

Simon Oya's research focuses on designing and evaluating privacy-enhancing technologies with strong privacy and utility guarantees. He approaches privacy problems from a statistical perspective, using theoretical tools from signal processing and information theory to quantify privacy leakage and develop effective defenses. His primary research areas include:

• Privacy-preserving searchable encryption
• Machine learning privacy (particularly membership inference attacks)
• Anonymous communication systems
• Location privacy
• Differential privacy

His publication record demonstrates a consistent focus on analyzing and improving privacy mechanisms across various domains. His recent work has particularly emphasized the intersection of machine learning and privacy, as well as advancing techniques for searchable encryption. His research methodology typically involves developing statistical models to understand privacy leakage and designing optimization-based approaches to improve privacy-utility tradeoffs.

His notable scientific contributions include developing attacks against searchable encryption schemes to better understand their privacy limitations, and designing improved privacy mechanisms for location-based services. His work on statistical disclosure attacks against anonymous communication systems has also been influential in the field.

As an educator, he teaches CPEN 442: Introduction to Cybersecurity at UBC. He actively seeks motivated graduate students interested in privacy research, particularly those with strong backgrounds in statistics, machine learning, or optimization.