Anand Sarwate, Rutgers University

Abstract

Differential privacy has rightly taken pride of place among privacy definitions, but practical implementations have focused on counts and histograms. One application domain in which privacy is a key concern for ethical and legal reasons is human health research. Many research groups studying a the same condition (e.g. schizophrenia) have already joined research consortia. Consortium members commit to collaborate, but the instantiation of that collaboration is rarely specified. Differential privacy offers a framework in which consortium members can share aggregated data derivatives to provide quantifiable privacy and utility guarantees. The COINSTAC project seeks to do just this for studies on mental health using neuroimaging data. This talk will describe the COINTAC system and some research questions and solutions that arise from trying to apply differential privacy to common tasks in neuroimaging research.

Slides     Video