Bio

I am an assistant professor at TU Delft in the Distributed Systems group since March 2021. I am responsible for the blockchain pillar of the Delft Fintech Lab.   

From Feb. 2016 to Feb. 2021, I was a research associate and then a research scientist in the CritiX research group, which at the time was led by Paulo Esteves-Veríssimo, at SnT/FSTM in Luxembourg.  

I did my PhD at Grenoble-Alpes University (FR) under the supervision of Sonia Ben Mokhtar and Vivien Quéma. 

Profiles:  ResearchGate, Linkedin, Google Scholar, Orcid 

Research Interests

• Resilient Distributed Systems, Blockchain

• Privacy and Sensitive Data, Federated Learning

Publications    (* denotes student advised)

Conference Proceedings

1. Partition Detection in Byzantine Networks. D. Bromberg, J. Decouchant, M. Sourisseau*, F. Taiani (alphabetical order). ICDCS 2024  (to appear) 

2. OneShot: View-Adapting Streamlined BFT with TEEs. J. Decouchant, D. Kozhaya, V. Rahli, J. Yu (alphabetical order). IPDPS 2024  (to appear) 

3. Tolerating Disasters with Hierarchical Consensus . W. Yahyaoui, J. Bruneau-Queyreix, M. Voelp, J. Decouchant. INFOCOM 2024  (to appear) 

4. LØ: An Accountable Base Layer for Permissionless Blockchains . B. Nasrulin, G. Ishmaev, J. Decouchant, J. Pouwelse. Middleware 2023.  [doi] 

5. Liveness Checking of the HotStuff Protocol Family. J. Decouchant, B.  Kulahcioglu Ozkan, Y. Zhou* (alphabetical order). PRDC 2023 (to appear). 

6. Leveraging the Verifier’s Dilemma to Double Spend in Bitcoin. T. Cao*, J. Decouchant, J. Yu. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2023). [arXiv version] 

7. I-GWAS: Privacy-Preserving Interdependent Genome-Wide Association Studies. T. Pascoal*, J. Decouchant, A. Boutet, M. Völp. Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium  (PETS 2023) [arXiv version] 

8. Aergia: Leveraging Heterogeneity in Federated Learning  Systems. B. Cox*, L. Y. Chen,  J. Decouchant. Middleware 2022 [arXiv version] [doi] 

9. Secure and Distributed Assessment of Privacy-Preserving Releases of GWAS. T. Pascoal*, J. Decouchant, M. Völp. Middleware 2022 [arXiv version] [doi] 

10. SyncPCN/PSyncPCN: Payment Channel Networks without Blockchain Synchrony. O. Ersoy, J. Decouchant, S. Prabhu Kumble, S. Roos. ACM AFT 2022  [arXiv version] [doi] 

11. Distributed Attestation Revocation in Self-Sovereign Identity. R. Chotkan*, J. Decouchant, J. Pouwelse. IEEE LCN 2022 [arXiv version] [doi] 

12. AGIC: Approximate Gradient Inversion Attack on Federated Learning. J. Xu*, C. Hong, J. Huang, L. Y. Chen, J. Decouchant. SRDS 2022. [arXiv] [doi] 

13. Damysus: Streamlined BFT Consensus Leveraging Trusted Components. J. Decouchant, D. Kozhaya, V. Rahli, J. Yu (alphabetical order). EuroSys 2022 [doi, open access] 

14. Characterizing the Impact of Network Delay on Bitcoin Mining. T. Cao*, J. Decouchant, J. Yu, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. SRDS 2021. [preprint] [doi] 

15. Threat Adaptive Byzantine Fault Tolerant State-Machine Replication. D. Simões Silva, R. Graczyk, J. Decouchant, M. Völp, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. SRDS 2021. [preprint] 

16. Practical Byzantine Reliable Broadcast on Partially-Connected Networks. S. Bonomi, J. Decouchant, G. Farina, V. Rahli and S. Tixeuil (alphabetical order).  ICDCS 2021 [arXiv] [doi] 

17. DyPS: Dynamic, Private and Secure GWAS. T. Pascoal*, J. Decouchant, A. Boutet, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium  (PETS) 2021 [pdf]  

18. Exploring the Monero Peer-to-Peer Network. T. Cao*, J. Yu, J. Decouchant, X. Luo, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC) 2020 [pdf] [doi] 

19. P3LS: Plausible Deniability for Practical Privacy-Preserving Live Streaming. J. Decouchant, A. Boutet, J. Yu, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. SRDS 2019,  Lyon, France.  [pdf] [doi] 

20. MaskAl: Privacy Preserving Alignment of Masked Reads until Intel SGX. C. Lambert*, M. Fernandes*, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo, Salvador, Brazil. SRDS 2018 [pdf] [doi] 

21. Cloud-assisted read alignment and privacy. M. Fernandes*, J. Decouchant, F. Couto, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. PACBB 2017, Porto, Portugal. [pdf] [doi] 

22. PAG: privacy and accountability in gossip. J. Decouchant, S. Ben Mokhtar, A. Petit, V. Quéma.  ICDCS 2016, Nara, Japan. [pdf] [doi] 

23. Acting: accurate freerider tracking in gossip. J. Decouchant, S. Ben Mokhtar, V. Quéma. SRDS 2014, Nara, Japan. [pdf] [doi] 

24. Huge pages may be harmful on NUMA systems. F. Faud, B. Lepers, J. Decouchant, J. Funston, A. Fedorova, V. Quéma. Usenix ATC 2014, San Diego, USA. [pdf][slides]

Journal Articles

1. Trusted Hardware-Assisted Leaderless Byzantine Fault Tolerance Consensus. L. Zhao*, J. Decouchant, J. Liu, Q. Lu, J. Yu. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2024. [doi] 

2. SI-AKAV: Secure Integrated Authentication and Key Agreement for Cellular-Connected IoT Devices in Vehicular Social Networks. A. Esfahani, J. Decouchant, M. Völp, S. Mumtaz, K. K. Igorevich. Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies 2021. [preprint] [doi] 

3. PISTIS: From a Word-of-Mouth to a Gentleman's Agreement. D. Kozhaya, J. Decouchant, V. Rahli, P. Esteves-Verissimo. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 2021 / Arxiv. [arXiv] [doi] 

4. DNA-SeAl: Sensitivity Levels to Optimize the Performance of Privacy-Preserving DNA Alignment. M. Fernandes*, J. Decouchant, M. Völp, F. M. Couto, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics 2019 [pdf] [doi] 

5. RepuCoin: Your Reputation is Your Power. J. Yu, D. Kozhaya, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. IEEE Transactions on Computers 2018 [pdf] [doi] 

6. RT-ByzCast: Byzantine-Resilient Real-Time Reliable Broadcast. D. Kozhaya, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. IEEE Transactions on Computers 2018 [arxiv] [doi] 

7. Accurate filtering of privacy-sensitive information in raw genomic data. J. Decouchant, M. Fernandes*, M. Völp, F. M. Couto, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. Journal of Biomedical Informatics (Elsevier) 2018 [pdf] [doi] 

Workshops

1. Parameterizing Federated Continual Learning for Reproducible Research. B. Cox*, J. Galjaard, A. Shankar, J. Decouchant, L. Y. Chen. 1st Workshop on Advancements in Federated Learning (WAFL@ECML) 2023. 

2. Towards Practical Genome-Wide Association Studies: Overview and Challenges. PETS'22 Workshop on Interdependent and Multi-party Privacy. T. Pascoal*, J. Decouchant. 

3. Privacy-Preserving Processing of Filtered DNA Reads. GenoPri 2020. M. Fernandes*, J. Decouchant, M. Völp, P. Esteves-Veríssimo 

4. Accurate filtering of privacy-sensitive information in raw genomic data. Eurosys Doctoral Workshop 2018. M. Fernandes*, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo

5. Revisiting network-level attacks on Blockchain network. Workshop on Byzantine Consensus and Resilient Blockchains 2018 (@DSN). T. Cao*, J. Yu, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo. [pdf]

6. Permanent reencryption: how to survive generations of cryptanalists to come. Workshop on Security Protocols 2017. M. Völp, F. Rocha, J. Decouchant, J. Yu, P. Esteves-Veríssimo [pdf]

7. Enclave-based privacy preserving alignment of raw genomic information. Workshop on System Software for Trusted Execution 2017. M. Völp, J. Decouchant, M. Fernandes, C. Lambert, P. Esteves-Veríssimo, Shanghai, China [pdf]

8. Meeting the challenges of critical and extreme dependability and security, Workshop on Security Protocols 2017. P. Esteves-Veríssimo, M. Völp, J. Decouchant, F. Rocha [pdf]

9. Avoiding leakage and synchronization attacks through enclave-side preemption control, Workshop on System Software for Trusted Execution 2016. M. Völp, A. Lackorzynski, J. Decouchant, V. Rahli, F. Rocha, P. Esteves-Veríssimo, Trento, Italy [pdf]

10. The big data deluge in biomedicine: addressing the privacy vs. sharing dilemma. Grande Region Security and Reliability Day 2016. P. Esteves-Veríssimo, J. Decouchant. [pdf]

Chapters

• Security, privacy, and trust management in DNA computing. Advances in Computers. Elsevier. [doi] 

Technical Reports

• PriLok: Citizen-protecting distributed epidemic tracing. Arxiv 2020. P. Esteves-Veríssimo, J. Decouchant, M. Völp, A. Esfahani, R. Graczyk. [pdf]

• Acting: accurate freerider tracking in Gossip. Extended version of the SRDS 2014 paper. J. Decouchant, S. Ben Mokhtar, V. Quéma.  [pdf]

Patents

• Method and apparatus for distributed privacy preserving DNA alignment and processing, Patent application LU100449, filed on Sep. 19th 2017, J. Decouchant, P. Esteves-Veríssimo, M. Völp, M. Fernandes.  

• Method and apparatus for tolerating faults and intrusion to a limited number of operating-system instances and hardware tiles and for enabling their self-recovery (Codename Münchhausen), Patent application LU100069, filed on Feb. 10th 2017, M. Völp, P. Esteves-Veríssimo, J. Decouchant, V. Rahli, F. Rocha.    

PhD Thesis

Title: Collusions and Privacy in Rational-Resilient Gossip [pdf]

Defended on November 9th, 2015. Grenoble-Alpes University, France. National PhD grant. 

Awards/Challenges

• Distinguished paper award of the LASIGE laboratory (University of Lisbon) - 12th February 2019, for the article Accurate filtering of privacy-sensitive information in raw genomic data, Journal of Biomedical Informatics 2018 , J. Decouchant, M. Fernandes, M. Völp, F. M. Couto, P. Esteves-Veríssimo [pdf]

• Winner of the iDASH 2021 Track 1 (Smart contract for data sharing consent)  contest with Mohammed Alghazwi and Fatih Turkmen from RUG Security. (SmartCOmics team).  [GitHub Repository] 

Grants & Projects

• Involvement as participant in 2 EU project proposals - 2023

• FNR CORE - Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) - ThreatAdapt - Starting in January 2019 (36 months) - 876,000 euros. Role: One of 4 authors. Author of one of the two PhD proposals.   

• FNR CORE - Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) - HyLit - Starting in January 2019 (36 months) - 777,000 euros. Role: One of 4 authors.    

• Jump PoC - Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) - GenoMask - February 2019 to February 2021 - 234,000 euros. Role: Principal Investigator

• Nvidia - Academic sponsorship (one TITAN Xp GPU) - 2018  

• Jump Pathfinder - Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) - GenoMask - May 2018 to August 2018 - 30,000 euros. Role: Principal Investigator

• Intel ICRI-CARS - Involved through the work realized with Gowher Parry's PhD thesis, which concerns Byzantine-resilient real-time communications for vehicular networks.

Press articles

About Damysus, our hybrid Blockchain consensus protocol: 

• https://techxplore.com/news/2022-04-algorithm-stronger-faster-blockchains.html  

• https://www.itnews.com.au/digitalnation/news/monash-uni-develops-algorithm-for-stronger-blockchains-578314 

About genomic data privacy:

• https://paperjam.lu/article/sequencage-champs-bataille-a-c 

• https://www.100komma7.lu/program/episode/255507/201905310940-201905310950 [radio interview]

About RepuCoin, our reputation-based Blockchain consensus protocol:

• https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/world-first-secure-blockchain-with-good-reputation 

• https://www.zdnet.com/article/monash-uni-claims-reputation-based-blockchain-capable-of-defending-itself/

• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190321102829.htm

• https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/03/27/repucoin/

Supervision

PhD thesis

Current students: 

• Bart Cox, TU Delft. Since Dec 2021. 

I am part of the thesis committee of: 

• Wassim Yahaoui, Uni. Luxembourg, (2021-). 

• Douglas Silva, Uni. Luxembourg, (2020-). 

Past students: 

• Túlio Pascoal (100%), Privacy-preserving and intrusion tolerant genomic cloud. Uni. Luxembourg.  Defended.

• Tong Cao (50%) [Defended], Network-level attacks on Blockchains, 2018-2022. Uni. Luxembourg. Defended. With Dr. Jiangshan Yu. 

• Gowher Parry (100%) [Interrupted], Network communication in autonomous vehicular networks,  2017 -2019. Uni. Luxembourg 

• Maria Fernandes (100%) [Defended] Privacy preserving genomic workflows, 2016 - 2020. Uni. Luxembourg. Defended. With Pr. Francisco Couto. Currently postdoc at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford.

MSc thesis

Current students: 

• (not up-to-date)

Past students:

• Mohamed Rashad (co-supervision with Lydia Y. Chen). Vertical Federated Learning. 2023, TU Delft. 

• Yuncong Zuo. Asynchronous Federated Learning. 2023, TU Delft. 

• Abel Mălan (co-supervision with Lydia Y. Chen and ASML). Federated Learning for Probabilistic Models. 2023, TU Delft. 

• Aditya Shankar (co-supervision with Lydia Y. Chen and ASML). Federated Continual Learning. 2023, TU Delft. 

• Yanzhuo Zhou (co-supervision with Burcu Ozkan). Twins-based testing of Byzantine consensus. 2022, TU Delft.

• Jin Xu (co-supervision with Lydia Y. Chen), Approximate Gradient Inversion Attack in Federated Learning, 2021-2022. TU Delft. 

• Christoph Lambert (100%), Privacy preserving alignment of masked reads in the cloud, 2017. Uni. Luxembourg. 

Master level projects

• Parallel and Grid Computing project [MICS-COMMSYST-024], Privacy attacks on aggregate genomic data, 2019 (1 month project). 

BSc projects

• Rafael Braga Medeiros Mota Borges [Honours project],  Robust Asynchronous Federated Learning, 2022-2023.  

• Giulio Segalini [Honours project], Memory oblivious algorithms for privacy-preserving release of statistics, 2021-2022. 

• [CSE3000 - Research project] 1 group of 5 students in 2021, 2022, 2023.

• [CSE2000 -  Software project] 2021, 2022. 

Service

• Scientific expert for the European Commission 2023, and 2024. 

• Selection committee member Descartes study grant  2023

• Scientific expert for the French National Research Agency (2021, 2023)

• Artifact committee member & External reviewer - PoPETS 2022

• ACM Sigops France - Vice treasurer, 2021

Organization

• Workshop chair Esorics 2023 

• Co-Chair of CompSys 2022 

• Co-chair of CERTS 2020 - Colocated with ECRTS 2020 [Cancelled - Covid19]

Program Committees

• EuroSys 2024 Doctoral Workshop

• ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS 2024)

• IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN 2022, 2024)

• ACM/USENIX/IFIP Middleware Conference (Middleware 2023,  2024)

• IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2023)

• International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024)

• Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS 2022, 2023, 2024)

• International Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology (CBT 2022)

• EuroSys Doctoral Workshop (EuroDW  2022) 

• International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (Inscrypt 2020) 

• Workshop on Formal Methods for Blockchains (FMBC 2020, 2021)

• IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2020)

• Conférence francophone d'informatique en Parallélisme, Architecture et Système (COMPAS 2020)

• International Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (Inscrypt 2019) 

• International Conference on Electrical Engineering, Computing Science and Automatic Control (CCE 2019) 

Reviews (subset, not always updated)

• IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (2022 - 1)

• Blockchain: Research and Applications (2022 - 1)

• IEEE Internet of Things (2021 - 1)

• IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (2021 - 1)

• IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (2021 - 1)

• Elsevier Journal of Information Security and Applications (2020 - 1)

• Journal of Biomedical Informatics (2020 - 1) 

• IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2020 - 1, 2021 - 2)

• EuroSys 2020 (2)

• Elsevier Information Systems (2019 - 1)

• IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2019 - 1)

• Health (2019, 1)

• Shadow PC member of ACM Eurosys 2018 (13 reviews and physical participation)

• Euro-Par 2018 (2 subreviews)

• Trans. on Cloud Computing (2017 - 1)

• EuroSys 2016 (3) 

• IFIP SEC 2017 (1)

Teaching

• Main instructor of the Distributed Algorithms course (IN4150), starting from Q2 2022, MSc

• Main instructor of the Operating Systems course (CSE2430), starting from Q3 2021, BSc

• Coordinator of the ASCI blockchain course , starting from 2022 

• Software project CSE2000 (2 groups of 5 students, 2.5 months, 1x 2021, 2x 2022), TU Delft - Bachelor

• Research Project CSE3000 (5 students, 2 months, 2021, 2022), TU Delft - Bachelor

• Guest professor in the Computer Networks course CSE1405, TU Delft [2021, Bachelor]

• Research project of a group (2 students) in the Parallel and Grid Computing [MICS-COMMSYST-024] (eq. 30h) option of the Master in Information and Computer Sciences (Semester 3) at Uni. Luxembourg, which aimed at parallelizing a privacy attack on aggregate genomic data. [2020, 2021]  

• Real-Time Distributed Systems, Lecture, University of Luxembourg, M2 level, 2020, 3h.

• Network Programming, Practical, INSA Lyon, L3 level, 2020, 16h.

• Privacy-Preserving Distributed Systems (Lecture). University of Luxembourg. M2 level. 2019. 1h.

• Real-Time Distributed Systems (Lecture). University of Luxembourg. M2 level. 2019. 1h.

• Introduction to Genomic Privacy. University of Luxembourg. M2 level. 2016-2017. 1.5 h. 

• User Networks. Joseph Fourier University (Grenoble, France). L3 level. 2014-2015. 6 h.

• Introduction to Networks. Ensimag engineering school (Grenoble, France). L3 level. 2013-2015. 3 x 18h.

• Distributed Systems and Fault Tolerant Applications. Ensimag engineering school (Grenoble, France). M2 level. 2013-2015. 2 x (9h theory + 18h practical).

• Database Project. Ensimag engineering school (Grenoble, France). M1 level. 2013-2014. 2 x 18h. 

Languages

• • French (Mother tongue)

  • English

  • Spanish (B1 level)

  • German (A1 level)

  • Dutch (A1 level)

Formations

• Dutch University Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO) -  Final Interview - 04/04/2023 (Passed the 4 UTQ modules: Develop 07/2021, Supervise 10/2021, Teach 03/2022, and Assess 11/2022) 

• NVIDIA Training: NVIDIA DLI Fundamentals of Deep Learning for Computer Vision [29 April 2019]

• NVIDIA DLI Fundamentals of Accelerated Computing with CUDA C/C++ [27 March 2019]

• Supervision of Ph.D. Candidates [17 February 2017]