Current research projects

FASTPASS Project (January 2013 - December 2016)

I am Principal Investigator on the FastPass project. This 4-year EC funded project will establish and demonstrate a harmonized, modular approach for Automated Border Control (ABC) gates. Border control is a major challenge for security and mobility within the EU. Travellers request a minimum delay and a speedy border crossing, while Border Guards must fulfil their obligation to secure the EUs borders against illegal immigration and other threats. Fastpass will serve both demands at the same time to keep security at the highest level while increasing the speed and the comfort for all legitimate travellers at all border control points aiming at a minimum of privacy intrusion.

FastPass is a Collaborative Project funded by the European Commission under its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). Grant agreement no: 312583.

NETWORK OF EXCELLENCE IN INTERNET SCIENCE (EINS) project (July 2012 - )

Within the EINS project I work as project coordinator of the 'Internet Privacy and Identity, Trust and Reputation Mechanisms - JRA5' working group.

The explosion of content and data in the forms of messages, photos, videos and links in social networking sites and cloud computing servers across the Internet has raised questions about user privacy and the security of his/her data, concepts that are little understood even by experienced users.

Aiming to become a reference point for the coordination of studies in legislation and technology addressing privacy, identity, online trust and reputation, JRA5 will draw together and further develop research on distributed social networks (such as Diaspora and Footlights), partial identities (PrimeLife), privacy-protective sensor networks (FRESNEL), privacy beliefs and behaviours (PVNets), online trust and reputation mechanisms. It will integrate research efforts, scientific concepts and methodologies from computer science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, statistics, graph theory, behavioural economics and law, and will investigate trade-offs between anonymity and accountability, and how decentralized privacy-enhanced systems can protect against spam, offensive content and criminal activities, while at the same time creating reliable and trusted mechanisms for online interaction based on reputation systems.

The basic goal of Internet Science for privacy and identity should be to find the right combination of autonomy (solving security and privacy issues a user cannot resolve) and user control, in a way that is comprehensible and likely to be accepted.

PRIVACY TRENDS project (April 2012 - April 2013)

This Google funded project will develop a tool, called Privacy Trends, that collects and aggregates online reports from social media platforms on the topic of privacy. These reports will in turn be summarised and visualised, the output of which will be presented to everyday Internet users as a way to sensitise them on ongoing privacy violations. The design of this tool will be informed by users’ needs. Thus, users will be involved in the early design process, which will result in a set of ‘requirements’ and design concepts.

Recent research in computational linguistics and information visualisation can be applied to summarise the rich and accessible sources of online information produced about privacy. This can drive the design of new applications that will educate users on why and how privacy may be compromised, enabling them to participate in the privacy debate as informed stakeholders. Such tools can also help users reflect on their own technological practices, motivating them to take proportionate actions to protect their privacy. Principal Investigator of this project is Dr. Mina Vasalou from the Centre of Human-Computer Interaction, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham.