Horizon- Becoming Dataware - Richard Mortier (Nottingham University, Horizon Digital Economy Research)

Abstract: As we go about our lives, each of us creates and manages personal digital data about our online and real-world activities.  Horizon Digital Economy Research is an RCUK research hub investigating the many different challenges surrounding collection and exploitation of these personal contextual footprints.  Currently, many companies exploit our contextual footprints for their own gain, often without much explicit understanding or involvement on our part.  Building an ecosystem around exploitation of our contextual footprints that maintains acceptable levels of privacy, both when our data is being exploited individually and as part of a group, is key to enabling growth in value of our social and personal data.  After introducing Horizon, I will describe our initial steps toward a system in which we are trying to enable third parties to compute over personal data while providing individually acceptable privacy guarantees.

Bio: Mort (Richard Mortier) is a Horizon Transitional Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.  His research interests are currently focused around networked technologies connected with the Digital Economy.  In general he is interested in systems and networking, covering operating systems, distributed systems, and local and wide-area networking.  Prior to joining Nottingham he spent two years as founder at Vipadia Limited designing and building the Clackpoint and Karaka products, six years as a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and seven months as a visitor at Sprint ATL, CA. He received a Ph.D. from the Systems Research Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, and a B.A. in Mathematics, also from the University of Cambridge.