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| PETs (conference) | |
|---|---|
| Name | PETs (conference) |
| Status | Active |
| Discipline | Privacy engineering, cryptography, data protection |
| Frequency | Annual |
| First | 2001 |
| Venue | Rotating |
| Country | International |
PETs (conference) is an annual international conference focused on privacy-enhancing technologies, bringing together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates from fields such as cryptography, law, computer science, and public policy. Founded to bridge theoretical advances with applied systems and regulatory concerns, the conference addresses technical, social, and legal dimensions of privacy and data protection. Participants commonly include contributors from universities, industry research labs, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society groups.
The conference emerged in the early 2000s amid debates following Electronic Frontier Foundation, World Wide Web Consortium, Internet Engineering Task Force, and rising scholarly work from institutions like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, and University of Oxford. Early meetings featured collaborations with projects from European Union research initiatives, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and nonprofit groups such as Privacy International and Open Rights Group. Over successive years the event attracted speakers affiliated with Google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple Inc., and labs like Microsoft Research, Google Research, and IBM Research. The conference has occasionally co-located with workshops tied to ACM SIGSAC, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and Network and Distributed System Security Symposium.
PETs spans a range of topics including cryptographic primitives developed at centers such as Crypto Group at UC Berkeley, privacy architectures explored by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and ETH Zurich, and policy analyses influenced by European Commission directives and rulings from the European Court of Justice. Technical sessions frequently cover work on homomorphic encryption prototypes from groups like Microsoft Research and IBM Research, designs of differential privacy mechanisms promoted by teams at Google and Apple Inc., implementations of secure multiparty computation from projects at Aalto University and INRIA, and federated learning experiments linked to OpenMined and TensorFlow contributors. Legal and ethical papers reference frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation and reports from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and United Nations bodies.
The conference is organized by a rotating program committee drawn from universities including Columbia University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, and research labs like Bell Labs and X (company). Sponsorship has been provided at times by entities such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon Web Services, and philanthropic organizations including the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation. Institutional partners have included National Science Foundation, European Commission, Horizon 2020, and research consortia at Max Planck Society and Fraunhofer Society.
Typical programs feature peer-reviewed paper presentations, invited talks from speakers affiliated with Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, and practitioner panels with representatives from United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and civil society groups like Amnesty International. Workshops and tutorials often run alongside collaborations with groups such as ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security and USENIX. Demonstration tracks showcase prototypes from startups incubated by Y Combinator and research spinouts from MIT Media Lab and Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Birds-of-a-feather sessions and hackathons encourage interaction with standards bodies like IETF and W3C.
Published work at the conference has influenced deployments and standards, including advances in zero-knowledge proofs inspired by research from Zcash teams and theoretical contributions building on the work of Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, and Adi Shamir. Contributions on secure enclave usage relate to implementations by Intel and ARM. Papers on privacy-preserving analytics informed product decisions at Google and regulatory discussions involving the European Commission and national data protection authorities. Several influential presentations were later cited in proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, ACM CCS, and standards documents from IETF and W3C.
Attendees include academics from institutions such as University of California, Berkeley, University of Toronto, National University of Singapore, industry researchers from Apple Inc., Facebook, Amazon.com, and representatives of NGOs like Electronic Frontier Foundation and Privacy International. The community maintains mailing lists and repositories hosted on platforms like GitHub and conducts year-round workshops at venues including MIT, ETH Zurich, and University of Cambridge.
The conference presents awards for best paper, best student paper, and outstanding contribution, judged by committees with members from ACM, IEEE, and national funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and European Research Council. Past awardees have gone on to receive broader honors like the Gödel Prize, ACM Prize in Computing, and Turing Award-acknowledged work from researchers at Stanford University and MIT.
Category:Academic conferences Category:Privacy