About
I am a Research Fellow in the Software Innovation Institute at the Australian National University. My primary area of research is preserving privacy of individuals through different techniques including distributed machine learning, differential privacy, and federated learning. Currently, I am involved with the projects which work with the Solid technology and the concept of PODs.
Further, I am also interested in the area of privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) especially in developing different privacy attacks on PPRL techniques and investigating on more secure PPRL techniques that are robust against exisiting privacy attacks.
I am also a passionate photographer studying photography as a hobby. I enjoy travelling and taking photographs of landscapes, cityscapes, woodlands, and wildlife.
Latest News
- A Taxonomy of Attacks on Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: Our paper on a taxonomy of attacks on PPRL has been accepted to be published at the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality (JPC).
- Efficient Cryptanalysis Techniques for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: My PhD thesis has now been published in the University open research repository and can be accessed for free.
- Linking Sensitive Data - Methods and Techniques for Practical Privacy-Preserving Information Sharing: A new book co-authored by my PhD supervisors which explains the methods and challenges of linking sensitive data while preserving the privacy of individuals.
- A Graph Matching Attack on Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: Our paper on a novel graph based similarity matching attack has been presented at the 29th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) 2020.
- A Privacy Attack on Multiple Dynamic Match-key based Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage: Our paper on a novel frequency based attack on PPRL has been published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS) 2020.
Qualifications
Research Experience
Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage
August 2017 - Present
The Australian National University, Canberra
- Explore and develop efficient and effective cryptanalysis attacks on techniques utilised in privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) with the purpose of evaluating the privacy guarantees of those techniques. Develop a vulnerability assessment framework to quantify the vulnerabilities of plaintext and encoded values in sensitive databases. Develop more secure PPRL techniques which are robust against existing privacy attacks.
Research Officer / Advisor
May 2019 - Present
The Australian National University, Canberra
- Research and development of web based smart cost benefit tool (part of a collaboration with the ANU Research School of Social Sciences). Responsibilities include improving existing functionalities and developing novel data science based functionalities for the tool.
Co-investigator - Research consultancy project
2018
The Australian National University, Canberra
- An evaluation of hashing, encoding, hardening and cryptanalysis attacks on Bloom filter based privacy-preserving record linkage. Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Reusing Discarded-Smartphone Capabilities on Quadcopters: The Rationale, Benefits and Issues
Feb 2015 - Jan 2016
University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka
- 4th year undergraduate research. Investigated the reusability of discarded smartphone sensors and computational power on quadcopters. A survey on discarded smartphones, a statistical analysis for feature comparison and several software and hardware application developments were conducted in this research.
Education
PhD in Computer Science
August 2017 - Feb 2022
The Australian National University, College of Engineering and Computer Science
- Research areas: privacy-preserving record linkage, data privacy, data mining
Bachelor of Science in Information and Communication Technology (Honours)
2011 - 2016
University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka
- 1st Class with Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.62/4.0
- Completed relevant coursework: information systems security, mathematics, software design and development, research methods, database management
Teaching
Course Convenor/Co-convenor
Jul 2022 - Present
The Australian National University, Canberra
- Data Wrangling: Undergraduate, Master of Applied Data Analytics (MADA), and Graduate Certificate of Data Engineering (GCDE).
Tutor (Casual Sessional Academic)
Jul 2018 - Jun 2021
The Australian National University, Canberra
- Data Wrangling: Undergraduate, Master of Applied Data Analytics (MADA), and Graduate Certificate of Data Engineering (GCDE).
- Completed the Principles of Tutoring and Demonstrating (PTD) Course offered by the Australian National University in 2018.
Teaching Instructor
Feb 2016 - Mar 2017
University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka
- Robotics, Embedded Systems, Programming with C & C++, Mathematical Methods, Middleware Architecture, Advanced Concepts in Software Design and Development, Application Laboratory (Linux/Ubuntu OS).
Publications
- A Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell. 2022. (under review).
- A Taxonomy of Attacks on Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Thilina Ranbaduge, Peter Christen, Rainer Schnell. In Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality (JPC), 2020, 12 (1).
- Efficient Cryptanalysis Techniques for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage. PhD thesis, The Australian National Univeristy, 2022.
- A Graph Matching Attack on Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Thilina Ranbaduge, Peter Christen, Rainer Schnell. In ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2020, Ireland (online), 1485–1494.
- A Graph Matching Attack on Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Thilina Ranbaduge, Peter Christen, Rainer Schnell. In ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2020, Ireland (online), 1485–1494.
- A Privacy Attack on Multiple Dynamic Match-key based Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Thilina Ranbaduge, Peter Christen, Sean Randall. In the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), 2020, 5 (1).
- Bloom Filter based Encoding Methods. Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell, Anushka Vidanage, Christian Borgs. (co-authored book chapter). In Linking Sensitive Data - Methods and Techniques for Practical Privacy-Preserving Information Sharing, Springer, 2020, ch.8, 193-219.
- Attacking and Hardening Bloom Filter Encoding. Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell, Anushka Vidanage, Sirintra Vaiwsri. (co-authored book chapter). In Linking Sensitive Data - Methods and Techniques for Practical Privacy-Preserving Information Sharing, Springer, 2020, ch.9, 221-251.
- Empirical Evaluation. Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell, Anushka Vidanage, Sirintra Vaiwsri. (co-authored book chapter). In Linking Sensitive Data - Methods and Techniques for Practical Privacy-Preserving Information Sharing, Springer, 2020, ch.12, 323-344.
- Efficient Pattern Mining Based Cryptanalysis for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage. Anushka Vidanage, Thilina Ranbaduge, Peter Christen, Rainer Schnell. In IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), 2019, Macau, 1698-1701.
For full list of publications, please see my Google Scholar Profile .
Achievements
Awards
Australia–Germany joint research cooperation scheme fund
German academic exchange service (DAAD), 2021 and 2022. Co-investigator with Peter Christen, Thilina Ranbaduge, Rainer Schnell, and Sarah Redlich.
SIGIR student travel grant
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2020.
Finalist
The Visualise Your Thesis (VYT) competition, 2020. University level finals, The Australian National University, Canberra. The presentation can be viewed from here.
People’s Choice Award
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, 2019. University level finals, The Australian National University, Canberra. The presentation can be viewed from here.
College level winner
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, 2019. College level finals, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Professor V.K. Samaranayake medal for the most outstanding graduate of UCSC
2015, Univeristy of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka.
Best final year project award
2015, 4th year undergraduate research project (group) Univeristy of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC), Sri Lanka.
Presentations
Invited presenter
Linking Sensitive Data: Approaches and Vulnerabilities. 8th International ScaDS.AI Summer School on AI and Big Data 2022, Leipzig, Germany.
Invited presenter
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) presentation – China Scholarship Council Student Affairs Administrators' Programme, 2019.
Poster presentation
Efficient Pattern Mining Based Cryptanalysis for Privacy-Preserving Record Linkage, IEEE 35th International Conference on Data Engineering, 2019, Macau, China.
Invited presenter
Pattern mining based cryptanalysis of Bloom filters for privacy-preserving record linkage – Privacy-preserving Record Linkage Workshop, 2019, Data61, Sydney.
Contact
Address:
School of Computing, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, Computer Science & Information Technology (CSIT) Building, #108, Science Road, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia.
Email:
anushka.vidanage@anu.edu.au