Leading your Research Team in Science

This short and practical guide offers valuable recommendations, stories and exercises, to guide readers towards a really successful career as an independent investigator in science. A must-read for early-career researchers, as well as those advising them and anyone else serious about science. This title is available as Open Access via Cambridge Core

Enhancing user's privacy : developing a model for managing and testing the lifecycle of consent and revocation

Increasingly, people turn to the Internet for access to services, which often require disclosure of a significant amount of personal data. Networked technologies have enabled an explosive growth in the collection, storage and processing of personal information with notable commercial potential. However, there are asymmetries in relation to how people are able to control their own information when handled by enterprises. This raises significant privacy concerns and increases the risk of privacy breaches, thus creating an imperative need for mechanisms offering information control functionalities. To address the lack of controls in online environments, this thesis focuses on consent and revocation mechanisms to introduce a novel approach for controlling the collection, usage and dissemination of personal data and managing privacy ex- pectations. Drawing on an extensive multidisciplinary review on privacy and on empirical data from focus groups, this research presents a mathematical logic as the foundation for the management of consent and revocation controls in technological systems. More specifically, this work proposes a comprehensive conceptual model for con- sent and revocation and introduces the notion of 'informed revocation'. Based on this model, a Hoare-style logic is developed to capture the effects of expressing indi- viduals' consent and revocation preferences. The logic is designed to support certain desirable properties, defined as healthiness conditions. Proofs that these conditions hold are provided with the use of Maude software. This mathematical logic is then verified in three real-world case study applications with different consent and revocation requirements for the management of employee data in a business envi- ronment, medical data in a biobank and identity assurance in government services. The results confirm the richness and the expressiveness of the logic. In addition, a novel testing strategy underpinned by this logic is presented. This strategy is able to generate testing suites for systems offering consent and revocation controls, such as the EnCoRe system, where testing was carried out successfully and resulted in identifying faults in the EnCoRe implementation

A Fuzzy-Based User Privacy Framework and Recommender System: Case of a Platform for Political Participation

Avec l’avènement d’une nouvelle ère, celle de la société numérique, les utilisateurs laissent derrière eux un grand nombre d’empreintes numériques qui constituent la source d’un nouveau bien économique. L’exploitation intensive du Big Data, de l’intelligence artificielle, de l’informatique cognitive, pour ne citer que quelques exemples, donne de la valeur aux données et en mÍme temps, augmente le risque d’atteinte à la sphère privée des individus, en particulier, lorsque les utilisateurs de services en ligne doivent faire face à des compromis dans leurs décisions touchant à la vie privée. Pour l’utilisateur, il devient alors problématique d’exprimer avec précision les préférences relevant de sa sphère privée et d’estimer les risques potentiels liés à leur divulgation, d’où l’incertitude dans la prise de décision touchant à la vie privée. En outre, dans chaque situation particulière le comportement en matière de vie privée varie d’un individu à l’autre en fonction de ses motivations personnelles et contextuelles, nécessitant ainsi la personnalisation de la sphère privée adaptée à chaque individu. Dans cette thèse, l’auteure présente un framework du profil de la sphère privée, conçu pour la plateforme de participation politique. Ce framework permet à la fois de mesurer les préférences du citoyen et de modéliser son profil relevant de sa sphère privée en utilisant les techniques de clustering flou. Par l’application des algorithmes du Fuzzy C-means (FCM) et du Partitionnement Autour des Médoïdes (PAM), les profils flous de la sphère privée sont utilisés dans l’architecture d’un système de recommandation pour la configuration des données d’ordre privé. Deux évaluations centrées sur l’utilisateur ont été réalisées pour estimer la perception des individus vis-à-vis des recommandations sur la configuration du profil de la sphère privée. Les résultats montrent que l’adoption des recommandations sur la configuration du profil de la spèhre privée dépend des caractéristiques personnelles du citoyen et révèle aussi l’existence d’un comportement incohérent en matière de sphère privée.When entering a new era of digital societies, a vast number of digital footprints left by users becomes a new source of the economic good. A heavy exploitation of Big data, artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, amongst others, makes the data more valuable implying that the risk to people’s privacy will be ever-increasing. Especially, when their privacy decisions are confronted with various trade-offs while using online services. Then, it becomes problematic to precisely express privacy preferences and estimate the potential risks of one’s disclosure behaviour, which might lead to an uncertainty in privacy decisionmaking. Moreover, depending on personal and contextual motives, privacy behaviour in particular situations differs from individual to individual, thus creating a personalised need for privacy. This thesis presents a privacy profile framework designed for the platform for political participation which allows both to measure the citizens’ privacy preferences and model their privacy profiles using fuzzy clustering techniques. By applying Fuzzy C-means (FCM) and Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) algorithms, fuzzy privacy profiles are used in the architecture of privacy settings recommender system. Additionally, two user-centric evaluations were performed to estimate people’s perceptions of the privacy settings recommendations. The results demonstrated that the adoption of the privacy settings recommendations depends on the personal characteristics of citizens, as well as indicated an existence of the inconsistent privacy behaviour.Im Zeitalter der digitalen Gesellschaft werden die digitalen Spuren, die wir tagtäglich in grosser Zahl hinterlassen, zu einem ökonomischen Faktor. Der Einsatz von Big-Data-Methoden, künstlicher Intelligenz, Cognitive Computing usw. machen Daten noch wertvoller, womit sich auch die Risiken für die Privatsphäre laufend erhöhen. Problematisch wird es vor allem dann, wenn der Schutz der Privatsphäre im Konflikt mit der Benützung von Online-Dienstleistungen steht. In solchen Fällen wird es für die Nutzer besonders schwierig, potentielle Risiken der Freigabe von vertraulichen Daten einzuschätzen, was zu Unsicherheiten bei Datenschutz-Entscheiden führen kann. Kommt hinzu, dass das Datenschutzverhalten von persönlichen und kontextuellen Motiven abhängt und daher von Person zu Person unterschiedlich sein kann, weshalb ein personalisierten Schutz der Privatsphäre nötig wird. Die vorliegende Dissertation stellt ein Privacy Setting Framework vor, das für eine Plattform für politische Partizipation entwickelt wurde. Es ermöglicht es, die Präferenzen der Bürger bezüglich des Schutzes ihrer Privatsphäre zu schätzen und deren Datenschutzprofile mittels Fuzzy-Clustering-Methoden zu modellieren. Unter Anwendung der Algorithmen Fuzzy C-means (FCM) und Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) werden Datenschutzprofile für die Architektur eines Systems zur Empfehlung von personalisierten Datenschutzeinstellungen verwendet. Zusätzlich werden zwei anwenderzentrierte Evaluationen durchgeführt, um die Wahrnehmung der Datenschutz Empfehlungen durch die Nutzer zu messen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Akzeptanz von Datenschutz Empfehlungen von den persönlichen Eigenschaften des einzelnen Bürgers abhängt. Sie weisen ebenfalls auf die Existenz von inkonsistentem Verhalten der Nutzer hin, wenn es um den Schutz der eigenen Privatsphäre geht

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Digital Finance

This open access book presents how cutting-edge digital technologies like Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain are set to disrupt the financial sector. The book illustrates how recent advances in these technologies facilitate banks, FinTech, and financial institutions to collect, process, analyze, and fully leverage the very large amounts of data that are nowadays produced and exchanged in the sector. To this end, the book also describes some more the most popular Big Data, AI and Blockchain applications in the sector, including novel applications in the areas of Know Your Customer (KYC), Personalized Wealth Management and Asset Management, Portfolio Risk Assessment, as well as variety of novel Usage-based Insurance applications based on Internet-of-Things data. Most of the presented applications have been developed, deployed and validated in real-life digital finance settings in the context of the European Commission funded INFINITECH project, which is a flagship innovation initiative for Big Data and AI in digital finance. This book is ideal for researchers and practitioners in Big Data, AI, banking and digital finance

Law in the present future : approaching the legal imaginary of smart cities with science (and) fiction

This doctoral research concerns smart cities, describing digital solutions and social issues related to their innovative technologies, adopted models, and major projects around the world. The many perspectives mentioned in it were identified by online tools used for the textual analysis of two databases that were built from relevant publications on the main subject by authors coming from media and academia. Expected legal elements emerged from the applied process, such as privacy, security, transparency, participation, accountability, and governance. A general review was produced on the information available about the public policies of Big Data in the two municipal cases of Rio de Janeiro and Montréal, and their regulation in the Brazilian and Canadian contexts. The combined approaches from science and literature were explored to reflect on the normative concerns represented by the global challenges and local risks brought by urban surveillance, climate change, and other neoliberal conditions. Cyberpunk Science Fiction reveals itself useful for engaging with the shared problems that need to be faced in the present time, all involving democracy. The results achieved reveal that this work was, in fact, about the complex network of practices and senses between (post)modern law and the imaginary of the future.Cette recherche doctorale centrée sur les villes intelligentes met en évidence les solutions numériques et les questionnements sociétaux qui ont trait aux technologies innovantes, ainsi qu’aux principaux modèles et projets développés autour d’elles à travers le monde. Des perspectives multiples en lien avec ces développements ont été identifiées à l’aide d’outils en ligne qui ont permis l’analyse textuelle de deux bases de données comprenant des publications scientifiques et des écrits médiatiques. De ce processus analytique ont émergé des éléments juridiques relatifs aux questions de vie privée, de sécurité, de transparence, de participation, d’imputabilité et de gouvernance. De plus, à partir de ces informations a été réalisée une revue des politiques publiques relatives aux mégadonnées dans les villes de Rio de Janeiro et de Montréal, ainsi que des réglementations nationales du Canada et du Brésil en lien avec ce sujet. Finalement, à travers l’exploration d’écrits scientifiques et fictionnels de la littérature, les principaux enjeux normatifs soulevés localement et mondialement par la surveillance urbaine, les changements climatiques et les politiques néolibérales ont pu être mis à jour. Le courant cyberpunk de la science-fiction s’est avéré particulièrement utile pour révéler les principaux problèmes politiques, en lien avec la préservation de la démocratie, auxquelles sont confrontées nos sociétés présentement. Les résultats de la recherche démontrent finalement la présence d’un réseau de pratiques et de significations entre le droit (post)moderne et les représentations imaginaires du futur

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Digital Finance

This open access book presents how cutting-edge digital technologies like Big Data, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Blockchain are set to disrupt the financial sector. The book illustrates how recent advances in these technologies facilitate banks, FinTech, and financial institutions to collect, process, analyze, and fully leverage the very large amounts of data that are nowadays produced and exchanged in the sector. To this end, the book also describes some more the most popular Big Data, AI and Blockchain applications in the sector, including novel applications in the areas of Know Your Customer (KYC), Personalized Wealth Management and Asset Management, Portfolio Risk Assessment, as well as variety of novel Usage-based Insurance applications based on Internet-of-Things data. Most of the presented applications have been developed, deployed and validated in real-life digital finance settings in the context of the European Commission funded INFINITECH project, which is a flagship innovation initiative for Big Data and AI in digital finance. This book is ideal for researchers and practitioners in Big Data, AI, banking and digital finance

European elections in the Italian web sphere: campaigning 2.0?

This article investigates the use of web 2.0 during the European elections campaign in Italy. The research was articulated in two phases: an analysis of candidates\u2019 websites and use of web 2.0 tools, on the one hand, and the monitoring of the campaign within social media (Facebook and YouTube). Though a persisting divide exists in the distribution of parties and coalitions online, most candidates who have a personal website have integrated web 2.0 tools. It is seemingly a strategic appropriation and adaptation of web 2.0, resulting in a hybrid communication model, in between 1.0 and 2.0. The campaigning activity on social media, instead, seems innovative insofar as it enables a re- embedding and re-localization of previously centralized and nationally coordinated campaigns