About me
My research interests centre on networked systems, particularly in the context of security and measurement. Currently, I am working on the design, scalability and applications of blockchains with George Danezis and Sarah Meiklejohn as part of the EU DECODE and EPSRC Glass Houses projects. I am a Research Scientist at Chainspace, and a member of IC3 (Initiative for cryptocurrency and Contract) and The UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies (CBT). I also have a long-standing research interest in characterizing various forms of information control (e.g., censorship, discrimination and misinformation) to enable transparency and accountability; for this work I was named to MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35.
I received my Ph.D. degree (Characterization of Internet Censorship from Multiple Perspectives) from the University of Cambridge in 2017 under the supervision of Jon Crowcroft (and co-supervised by Steven Murdoch, Vern Paxson, and Ross Anderson) where I was an Honorary Cambridge Trust Scholar, and was awarded the Mary Bradburn Scholarship by the British Federation of Women Graduates for my research work. Previously, I collaborated with ICSI (UC Berkeley), and made research contributions to NSF projects on developing empirical basis for censorship and socio-economic perspectives on Internet security. I also worked on Intrusion Detection Systems (Bro), and wrote an open-source software for botnet detection (BotFlex). I received my Master's degree in Computer and Communication Security from National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan in 2013 for which I was awarded the President's Gold Medal.
Projects
- Internet Censorship Explained - ComputerphileGovernments can censor access to the web, but how do they restrict access? Sheharbano Khattak, Research Assistant at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory takes us through the methods. EXTRA BITS: https://youtu.be/nqbyS_Z74nc http://www.facebook.com/computerphile https://twitter.com/computer_phile This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley
- Scaling Blockchains - ComputerphileScaling up blockchains is far from simple - Dr Shehar Bano of the Information Security Group at UCL dicusses some of the problems. UCL Link: http://bit.ly/C_UCL-people https://www.facebook.com/computerphile https://twitter.com/computer_phile This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
Projects credited in
- Leaders with social heart: 100 creative changemakersCelebrating social responsibility is at the heart of what we do, so we've partnered with Squarespace – whose mission is to inspire people with creative ideas to succeed – to shine a light on 100 influential luminaries from art, technology, charity, design, business and more that are working tirelessly to make our world a better place. To highlight these organisations, we asked 10 creative changemakers to each nominate 10 people behind inspiring brands, products and movements with amazing social
Skills
- Research