Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M privacy preserving federated learning with applications in medical domains

The  Inria University of Lille centre, created in 2008, employs 360 people  including 305 scientists in 15 research teams. Recognised for its strong  involvement in the socio-economic development of the Hauts-De-France  region, the Inria University of Lille centre pursues a close  relationship with large companies and SMEs. By promoting synergies  between researchers and industrialists, Inria participates in the  transfer of skills and expertise in digital technologies and provides  access to the best European and international research for the benefit  of innovation and companies, particularly in the region.For more  than 10 years, the Inria University of Lille centre has been located at  the heart of Lille's university and scientific ecosystem, as well as at  the heart of Frenchtech, with a technology showroom based on Avenue de  Bretagne in Lille, on the EuraTechnologies site of economic excellence  dedicated to information and communication technologies (ICT).

This post-doctoral position will be supported by the  HE Trumpet project, the HE Flute project and/or the PEPR IA Redeem project.      While this position will be in the MAGNET team in Lille, we will collaborate with the several European project partners.

While AI techniques are becoming ever more powerful, there is a growing concern about potential risks and abuses. As a result, there has been an increasing interest in research directions such as privacy-preserving machine learning, explainable machine learning, fairness and data protection legislation.
Privacy-preserving machine learning aims at learning (and publishing or applying) a model from data while the data is not revealed. Notions such as (local) differential privacy and its generalizations allow to bound the amount of information revealed.

 The MAGNET team is involved inthe related TRUMPET, FLUTE and REDEEM projects, and is looking for team members who can in close collaboration with other team members and national & international partners contribute to one or more of these projects.  All of these projects aim at researching and prototyping algoirhtms for secure, privacy-preserving federated learning in settings with potentially malicious participants.  The TRUMPET and FLUTE projects focus on applications in the field of oncology, while the REDEEM project has no a priori fixed application domain.

 The start and end date of the offered post-doctoral positions can be negotiated, subject to the administrative constraints that they start at the earliest on 1/5/2024 and end before or around 30/04/2026 and that individual contracts last no longer than 2 years. 

The recruited post-doc will collaborate with colleagues in the MAGNET team and the TRUMPET, FLUTE and REDEEM project consortia.

If the research features a prototype, it will contribute to the project's open source library.

We hope the post-doc can bring new expertise to the group and/or can help intensifying collaboration in the project consortium.  He will collaborate closely with the other group members on realizing the research objectives of the project.  Engineers in the team can support the prototyping and validation.

Possible topics of research include (but are not limited to):

• Cryptography-based strategies to improve the security of privacy-preserving AI systems.
• Inference methods for privacy assessment and/or theory for statistical privacy in general
• Programming language strategies such as those relevant in compilers and interpreters
• Design and development of the TRUMPET/FLUTE platform and its supporting algorithms.

• Contribute to the research of theprojects
• Collaborate with other MAGNET and project team members
• Collaborate with engineers to prototype proposed algorithms and validate them
• Disseminate research results

The following skills are desired for this position:

• a strong research background in the domain of the project (or at least a specific area such as privacy, cryptography, statistics, distributed systems, ...)
• good communication and reporting skills, and an interest in collaborative work
• proficiency in English

• Subsidized meals
• Partial reimbursement of public transport costs
• Leave: 7 weeks of annual leave + 10 extra days off due to RTT (statutory reduction in working hours) + possibility of exceptional leave (sick children, moving home, etc.)
• Possibility of teleworking and flexible organization of working hours
• Professional equipment available (videoconferencing, loan of computer equipment, etc.)
• Social, cultural and sports events and activities
• Access to vocational training
• Social security coverage

Gross monthly salary (before taxes) : 2 788 €