On December 19-20, 2024, Sonia Ben Mokhtar, CNRS Research Director at the LIRIS Laboratory in Lyon, France, visited INESC-ID as part of the BIG ERA Chair project. The two-day visit marked a significant step in deepening institutional partnerships and advancing research on trustworthy AI and distributed systems.
Sonia delivered a seminar at the Computer Science and Engineering Department (DEI) at IST, titled “Towards Trustworthy AI in Untrusted (Cloud) Environments.” During her presentation, she addressed the increasing need for decentralized AI systems that preserve user privacy and reduce the concentration of decision-making power. She also explored cutting-edge solutions, including distributed AI and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), to strengthen security and trust in cloud-based systems.
Sonia also participated in a series of productive discussions with the BIG ERA Chair coordinators, as well as INESC-ID researchers and Ph.D. students, which further highlighted both institutions’ shared commitment to driving innovation and making significant contributions to the advancing AI, distributed systems, and privacy-centric technologies.
About Sonia Ben Mokhtar
Sonia Ben Mokhtar is a CNRS Research Director at LIRIS Laboratory, Lyon, and head of the Distributed Systems and Information Retrieval Group (DRIM). She received her PhD from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007 and has co-authored over 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Her research focuses on privacy-preserving distributed systems.