Email: a DOT cretu AT imperial.ac.uk

My name is Ana-Maria and I’m a final year PhD candidate in the CPG. My research interests lie at the intersection between (1) machine learning and (2) privacy and security. I study vulnerabilities in behavioral datasets and data processing systems such as machine learning models, query-based systems and client-side scanning through the lens of automated attacks. Specifically, I use machine learning and evolutionary algorithms to develop novel attacks against such systems. Through a rigurous study of privacy vulnerabilities, my research can inform the design of principled countermeasures allowing to prevent them and, ultimately, to use data safely. For the latest information, check out my personal website.

Prior to starting my PhD, I obtained an MSc in Computer Science from EPFL, Switzerland, and the Diplome d’Ingénieur de l’Ecole Polytechnique (equivalent to a Bachelors and Master’s degree) from Ecole Polytechnique, France. At Ecole Polytechnique, I studied Pure and Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, and specialized in Data Science. Towards completion of my EPFL MSc degree, I did my Master Thesis in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Lukasiewicz, and in close collaboration with Dr. Oana-Maria Camburu. My research there was on 1) developing deep learning-based approaches to solve the Winograd Schema Challenge and 2) developing sentence representation models with the goal of improving interpretability and performance on a set of benchmark natural language processing tasks.

This summer (2020), I was a research intern at Twitter (London, UK) in the graph learning team. I worked with Dr. Davide Eynard on the privacy of Twitter graph data. In 2017, I did a summer internship at Google (Boulder, Colorado, USA), in the Payments Compliance Engineering Team, under Craig Wright’s supervision. In 2016, I did a 5-month internship at Google (Paris, France), under Dr. Sertan Girgin’s supervision.