Research Fellow in Cyber Security
Macquarie University
Australia

• Salary Package: Level A step 6 (PhD) to Level B from $91,188 - $125,405 p.a., plus 9.5% employer's superannuation and annual leave loading.
• Appointment Type: Full-time, 12 Month fixed term, with a possibility of further renewal subject to funding and performance.
• Working with leading researchers based in Macquarie University (North Ryde location)

The Role

Macquarie University is seeking a suitably qualified Postdoctoral Research Fellow to join a talented and pro active team within the Optus Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub.

Reporting to the Executive Director of the Cyber Security Hub, you will:

•    In collaboration with senior academic staff, carry out innovative, impactful research of strategic importance to the Cyber Security Hub leading to novel and important scientific outcomes.

•    Publish research outcome in prestigious conferences and journals in the domain of privacy preserving technologies and related areas.

•    Engage with Undergraduate and Higher Degree Research students to foster collaboration amongst the team members and jointly work on innovative privacy-related technologies.

•    Design, implement and evaluate security and privacy-preserving solutions from the analysis of real-life applications and datasets.

About You

You will have completed (near completion) a PhD in a related discipline. You will assist and collaborate with a team of world-renowned researchers to work on different aspects of Cyber-Security and Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) from the development of theoretical frameworks with cryptographic or information-theoretic approaches, to the measurement and the data-driven analysis of security/privacy sensitive applications.

The successful applicant will carry out innovative, impact research to build trustworthy, private and secure systems within Optus Macquarie University Cybersecurity Hub.

About Us

The Optus Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub within the Faculty of science and Engineering is an interdisciplinary network launched in August 2016 by Macquarie University with Optus as the founding partner.

About the Project

The candidate will conduct high-quality research activities within the Optus Macquarie University Cyber-Security Hub, led by Prof. Dali Kaafar, to research on topics including but not limited to:

• Internet privacy and security analytics, to automatically detect and quantify privacy violations and security threats in the Web and Mobile Apps. The candidate will exploit active and passive measurements and design pipelines toautomatically detect, quantify and highlight security and privacy threats.They will use big-data approaches, automatic crawling, and machine learning as the fundamental building blocks to identify malicious activities, security vulnerabilities and leaks of private personal information.
• Machine learning security and privacy analysis, to quantify the information leakage of AI platforms, as well as the associated security risks under adversarial settings. The candidate will (i) identify privacy and security risks in Machine Learning algorithms, focusing on sensitive real-world applications such as biometric recognition, and (ii) proposenovel defense approaches for trustworthy, private, and secure machine learning.
• Privacy preserving analytics and data sharing, as means to impose control on personal data. The candidate will use concepts like Zero Knowledge, Differential Privacy, K-Anonymity to design and engineer solutions that allow one to share their data, while keeping control on it.

The candidate will work effectively as part of a multi-disciplinary research team, to undertake independent scientific investigations and carry out associated tasks under the guidance of more senior Researchers and Academics.

To Apply

To be considered for this position, please apply online and attach your resume and a separate cover letter that outlines how you meet to the selection criteria below:

Essential

• A PhD (or will shortly satisfy the requirements of a PhD) in a relevant discipline area, such as Computer Science, Mathematics or statistics, Cryptography and Information Security/Privacy.
• Demonstrated knowledge and skills in one or more of the following areas: Internet measurements, machine learning, data analysis and knowledge discovery, algorithm design, data sharing andDifferential Privacy framework.
• Demonstrated experience in the collection and efficient processing of large datasets, the development of security or privacy-preserving algorithms, the design of protocols for collaborative analytics and data sharing, and large-scale measurement studies of privacy and security risks.
• A record of science innovation and creativity plus the ability and willingness to incorporate novel ideas and approaches into scientific investigations.
• A record of publication in top peer reviewed journals and conferences (i.e. high impact factor, or selective acceptance rate).
• Ability to work within collaborative teams towards research objectives.

Desirable

• Previous experience in one or more of the following research areas:ML security & privacy, Web and mobile-app measurements and security/privacy analysis, privacy-preserving machine learning algorithms,information theory, probabilistic and statistical framework.
• Familiarity with softwaredevelopment and comfort with mainstream programming languages (such as C, Python, Java), data analysis pipelines and Web programming.

General Enquiries: Dali Kaafar, Executive Director on dali.kaafar@mq.edu.au

Applications Close: Sunday 6 September 2020 at 11:55pm

At Macquarie University, we are committed to providing a working environment where each individual is valued, respected and supported to progress. Our priority is to ensure culture, policies and processes are truly inclusive and that no-one is disadvantaged on the basis of their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity, gender, culture, disability, LGBTIQA+ identities, family and caring responsibilities, age, or religion. We encourage everyone who meets the selection criteria and shares Macquarie University’s values of scholarship, empowerment and integrity to apply.

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