Manuel Barbosa, a researcher at INESC TEC's High-Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab) and a professor at the Faculty of Science of the University of Porto (FCUP), was one of the members of a European research team who received a "Privacy Protection" award.

Awarded by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique (Inria) and by the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL), this initiative was established in 2016 and distinguishes scientific articles focusing on the protection of privacy and personal information.

Along with Manuel Barbosa, Michael Backes, Dario Fiore and Raphael M. Reischuk were also distinguished. These four researchers were the authors of the scientific paper "ADSNARK: Nearly Practical and Privacy-Preserving Proofs on Authenticated Data", which describes a new system that allows verifiable computations by third parties, preventing any part of the original data from being divulged, with the exception of their authenticity.

The seven-member jury emphasized the high quality of the results and particularly appreciated the authors' concern with combining theory and practice. Moreover, the results obtained meet a growing need and may allow better privacy protection in areas such as smart cities and health. The paper was also published in the IEEE Security and Privacy Conference in 2015.

The researcher mentioned in this news piece is associated with FCUP-UP.

INESC TEC, March 2017