George Danezis (born 6 December 1979) is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and Professor of Security and

Privacy Engineering Privacy engineering is an emerging field of engineering which aims to provide methodologies, tools, and techniques to ensure systems provide acceptable levels of privacy. Its focus lies in organizing and assessing methods to identify and tackle priv ...

at the Department of Computer Science,

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

where he is part of the Information Security Research Group, and a fellow at the

Alan Turing Institute The Alan Turing Institute is the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence, founded in 2015 and largely funded by the UK government. It is named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician and computing p ...

. He co-founded ''Chainspace'', a sharded

smart contract A smart contract is a computer program or a Transaction Protocol Data Unit, transaction protocol that is intended to automatically execute, control or document events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement. The objective ...

platform, and was Head of Research before it was acquired by Facebook. After leaving Facebook he co-founded MystenLabs and is one of the designers of the Sui Blockchain. He currently works part-time as a Professor at

and as Chief Scientist at MystenLabs.

Education

Danezis was educated at the University of Cambridge where he received a BA in Computer Science and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Computer Science. His

was supervised by Ross Anderson, where he completed his thesis on anonymous communications.

Career and research

Before joining

, Danezis worked as a researcher at

KU Leuven KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries. In addition to its mai ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

and

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

. He has published research on anonymous communications and

computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity, digital security, or information technology (IT) security) is a subdiscipline within the field of information security. It consists of the protection of computer software, systems and computer network, n ...

. In 2005, Danezis and

Steven Murdoch Steven James Murdoch is Professor of Security Engineering in the Computer Science Department, University College London. His research covers privacy-enhancing technology, Internet censorship, and anonymous communication, in particular Tor. He i ...

published research showing that the Tor anonymity network was susceptible to

traffic analysis Traffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observ ...

that allowed adversaries to reduce the anonymity provided by Tor by inferring the network nodes that relay the anonymous data. He has contributed to the design of anonymity networks including Hornet and Loopix, as well as the Sphinx packet format. He has also contributed to the design of cryptocurrency systems, including RSCoin, a centrally banked cryptocurrency, and Chainspace, a sharded distributed ledger, which was spun-out into a commercial company and subsequently the first blockchain start-up acquired by Facebook.

Awards and honours

Danezis was recognised as a Fellow of the British Computer Society in 2014, an award given to those who "demonstrate a commitment to advancing standards; strategic leadership and best practice, and encourage this in others".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Danezis, George Living people Computer security academics 1979 births Academics of University College London Alumni of the University of Cambridge