Natasha Fernandes

Natasha Fernandes is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at Macquarie University. She holds a PhD in Computing from Macquarie University and École Polytechnique (France), and an undergraduate degree in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Sydney. Her roles include involvement in the Data Horizons Research Centre and Future Communications Research Centre, alongside professional casual appointments in academic computing.

Her research focuses on the mathematical foundations of data privacy, particularly differential privacy and its applications in natural language processing and machine learning. She develops privacy-preserving systems and tools using quantitative information flow techniques rooted in information theory. Key areas include privacy analyses for financial systems (e.g., Open Banking), API privacy, and optimizing utility in privacy pipelines.

Fernandes has led or contributed to five research projects, including work on privacy analyses for financial transaction protocols and UAV-based machine learning systems. She received the 2021 John Makpeace Bennett Award for her doctoral research on differential privacy in metric spaces.

Her academic journey combines industry experience as a backend software engineer with rigorous academic contributions, spanning over 21 peer-reviewed publications and collaborations across cybersecurity and privacy engineering domains.