Hello!
My name is Damien Desfontaines — also known as
Ted, or any pseudonym recognized by the Ted(Ted)* regular
expression — and this is the sober version of my personal
webpage. The fancier one, which is now quite outdated, can be found
right here.
About me
I have two jobs:
I studied at the
École normale supérieure, where I
completed a Master's degree in mathematical logic and theoretical computer
science called the
LMFI.
Before that, I did the first year of the
MPRI, a theoretical
computer science master.
You can find my (outdated) curriculum vitae
right here, along with my (less outdated)
LinkedIn profile.
Oh, and I'm @TedOnPrivacy
on Twitter.
Publications
When I was studying for my Master's degree, I worked on pretty
theoretical stuff.
-
Cristian S. Calude,
Damien Desfontaines.
Universality and Almost Decidability.
Fundamenta Informaticae,
2015
(PDF,
tl;dr: maybe it's possible to approximate the
halting problem!)
-
Cristian S. Calude,
Damien Desfontaines.
Anytime Algorithms for Non-Ending Computations.
IJFCS,
2015
(PDF,
longer version of the previous paper)
-
Laurent Bienvenu,
Damien Desfontaines,
Alexander Shen.
What Percentage of Programs Halt?.
ICALP,
2015
(PDF,
tl;dr: actually, no, it's impossible.)
-
Laurent Bienvenu,
Damien Desfontaines,
Alexander Shen.
Generic algorithms for halting problem and optimal machines revisited.
LMCS,
2015
(PDF,
longer version of the previous paper)
Currently, both on my PhD time and on my engineering time, I'm working
on large-scale
data anonymization
and reidentifiability risk analysis.
-
Damien Desfontaines,
Andreas Lochbihler,
David Basin.
Cardinality Estimators do not Preserve Privacy.
PETS,
2019
(PDF,
blog post,
recording of my talk,
tl;dr: when counting people, in order to remember who you've already
counted, you have to remember who you've already counted.)
✨ Best Student Paper Award ✨
-
Pern Hui Chia,
Damien Desfontaines,
Milinda Perera,
Daniel Simmons-Marengo,
Chao Li,
Wei-Yen Day,
Qiushi Wang,
Miguel Guevara.
KHyperLogLog: Estimating Reidentifiability and Joinability of Large Data at Scale.
IEEE S&P,
2019
(PDF,
recording of Pern's talk,
tl;dr: a clever way of estimating how easy it is to reidentify people
in very large datasets.)
-
Royce J Wilson,
Celia Yuxin Zhang,
William Lam,
Damien Desfontaines,
Daniel Simmons-Marengo,
Bryant Gipson.
Differentially Private SQL with Bounded User Contribution.
PETS,
2020
(PDF,
tl;dr: a system to anonymize data easily and securely.)
-
Damien Desfontaines,
Balázs Pejó.
SoK: Differential Privacies.
Under review (PDF,
tl;dr: a categorized list of all variants and extensions of
differential privacy,
a central concept in anonymization.)
Basically, I'm trying to make it easy to protect your personal
data =)
Things I like, things I do
- I love to cook! Here are some
marvelous recipes I tried out
for you (in French).
- I like tabletop role-playing games, and I sometimes play or DM
on Dungeons & Dragons. I co-wrote an experimental
NPC generator
for Paizo Pathfinder RPG.
- When I have some free time, I sometimes write alexandrines. If
you like poetry and speak French, you may have fun reading our version
of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
(in French).
- I used to work as an oral examiner in mathematics, in the French
high school Louis-le-Grand. I love complicated math problems, especially
when they can be solved using only elementary results. Here are
some of my favourites (in French).
- I love simple programming languages that make it easy not to shoot
yourself in the foot, for example Go
or OCaml.
- I listen to music all the time. I like
trip-hop,
ska,
symphonic metal,
jazz,
electro,
classical music,
hip-hop,
mixes of everything,
and it is really hard for me to stop this list without adding
dozens of other links to wonderful artists' websites.
- I like to ski and to admire
snowy mountains
when winter is coming.
To get in touch with me, you can send an e-mail to
se.niatnofsed@neimad (beware when
copying it). You can also send me a message on
Twitter, though I am
slightly more likely to miss it. I also use WhatsApp and Signal, feel free
to ask me for my number if that's your favorite communication method.
And if you are a hipster fan of old-school letters, you can use
my office address (and send me postcards ♥):
Damien Desfontaines
Brandschenkestrasse 110
8002 ZÜRICH
SWITZERLAND
or ask me directly for my personal address.
