Dr. Sonia Ben Mokhtar

CNRS Senior Researcher (Directrice de Recherche)

Head of the Distributed Systems and Information Retrieval group (DRIM@LIRIS)

Laboratoire LIRIS (UMR 5205)20 Avenue Albert Einstein69621 Villeurbanne, FRANCEEmail: sonia (dot) ben-mokhtar (at) cnrs.fr

Short Bio

I have been a CNRS researcher at the LIRIS lab since October 2009. Since 2017, I am also the leader of the distributed systems and information retrieval group (DRIM). Before joining CNRS, I was a research associate at University College London (UCL) for two years, working with Licia Capra.

I received my PhD in 2007 from University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), which I did under the supervision of Valérie Issarny and Nikolaos Georgantas in the former INRIA ARLES project-team (currently MiMove).

News : Congrats to Yacine Belal, Julien Nicolas, Ousmane Touat for their papers accepted at ICDCS'25, CIKM'25 and Middleware'25!

Research interests

Reliable and Privacy-Preserving Distributed Systems
- Byzantine and selfish-resilient systems
- Resilient Distributed/Federated Learning
- Location Privacy, Private Web search, Private Recommender Systems,...
- Blockchains and the DWeb

Service

Program committee co-chair of EDCC 2026.
Keynote speaker at Closer 2025, EDCC 2025.
Program committee co-chair of IEEE DSN 2022.
Steering committee member of IEEE SRDS.
Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions of Dependable and Secure Computing.
Publicity chair of ACM Eurosys 2022
General co-chair of IEEE SRDS 2019 in Lyon.
Doctoral workshop co-chair at ACM Eurosys 2019.
Shadow PC co-chair of ACM Eurosys 2018.
Student forum co-chair of IEEE/IFIP DSN 2018.
Track chair of the Distributed Systems and Algorithms track at Euro-Par 2018.
Program committee co-chair of the ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2016 conference.
Steering committee member of the ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware conference.
Program committee co-chair of the workshop on Middleware for Next Generation Computing MW4NGC 2014, co-located with Middleware 2014.
Publication chair for IEEE IC2E 2016, IEEE/Usenix ICAC 2015, ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2014.
Co-organiser of the ASF/RSD Winter School on Distributed Systems and Networks (2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016)

Former chair of the French chapter of the ACM SIGOPS (ASF) 2018-2020. Before that I served as vice-chair of ASF from 2012-2018.
Head of the international relations of the LIRIS laboratory.
Co chair of the GDR Réseaux et Systèmes Distribués.

Publications

Please refer to my HAL, Google Scholar and DBLP pages for a complete list of publications.

Ongoing Projects

(New!) I am happy to co-chair the Industrial Chaire Data & Services for Sustainable Cities (DSVD) supported by Renault and Labex IMU. In this project we will be investigating the use of federated learning for imroving drivers' safety through the analysis of their physiological state. A specific focus will be given on enforcing privacy and resilience to attacks.
- Start date 01/03/2021
(New!) I am happy to announce the creation of RedChain-Lab, a joint laboratory with the iExec Blockchain Tech company. In this project we will investigate blockchain interoperability solutions as well as decentralized algorithms (including decentralized learning) for private recommender systems and private web search.
- Start date 01/05/2021
ANR - DFG PRIMATE (2018 - 2022): Privacy preserving Multi-Compratment Trusted Execution Environments. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Rüdiger Kapitza (TU Braunschweig) and Prof. Gaël Thomas (Telecom Sud Paris).

Past Projects

MobiCampus (Labex IMU): Mobility Analysis of students and staff in the 18 campuses of the city of Lyon. 2016-2019.
- In this project my focus was on crowdsensing human mobility using smartphones and working on novel location privacy mechanisms.
PRIVA'MOV (Labex IMU): Mobility & Privacy: from crowdsensing to data analysis. 2013-2016.
- In this project my focus was on enforcing location privacy on mobility datasets.
EEXCESS (EU FP7 IP): Enhancing Europe’s eXchange in Cultural Educational and Scientific Resource. 2012-2016.
- In this project my focus was on investigating private Web search.
ANR SocEDA: Plate-forme EDA sociale, largement distribuée pour l’informatique dans les nuages. 2010-2013.

Program committees (a selection)

ACM Middleware 2021, 2019, 2017, 2015...
PoPETs/PETs 2022, 2021, 2020
IEEE DSN 2021, 2018, 2017...
The Web Conference 2020
ACM Eurosys 2020, 2019, 2018
IEEE ICDCS 2018, 2017, 2016...
IEEE SRDS 2022, 2017, 2016...

Software

SFERA: A toolkit to experiment on re-identification attacks on mobility traces.
HMC: A toolkit to test Location Privacy Protection Mechanism HMC (Heat-Map Confusion) and evaluate Privacy and Utility Metrics
ACCIO: A Location Privacy Framework.
Seine: A domain specific language for specifying and injecting selfish behaviors in distributed systems. Seine is used within the PeerSim simulator.
RACOON++: A Semi-Automatic Framework for the Design and Simulation of Selfish-Resilient Cooperative Systems.

PhD Students

[Ongoing][TEE-based Federated Learning] Aghiles Aït Messaoud.
[Ongoing][Distributed learning] Yacine Belal with Vlad Nitu.
[Ongoing][Blockchains] Matthieu Bettinger with Lionel Brunie.
[Ongoing][Privacy] Besma Khalfoun with Sara Bouchenak.
[Defended][Privacy] Mohamed Maouche with Sara Bouchenak. Currently post-doc @INRIA Lyon.
[Defended][Mobile Systems] Hayam Mousa (in co-tutelle with university of Mennoufia, Egypt) with Lionel Brunie. Currently associate professor in Egypt.
[Defended][Dependability] Vikas Jaiman (@Grenoble) with Vivien Quéma. Currently working in a company.
[Defended][Privacy] Sophie Cerf (@Grenoble) with Sara Bouchenak, Nicolas Marchand and Bogdan Robu. Currently INRIA researcher in Lille.
[Defended][Privacy] Vincent Primault. Currently working in a company located in Grenoble.
[Defended][Dependability] Guido Lena Cota (in co-tutelle with the university of Milan) with Ernesto Damiani, Gabriel Gianini and Lionel Brunie. Currently working in a company in Berlin, Germany.
[Defended][Privacy] Albin Petit (in co-tutelle with the university of Passau) supervised with Michael Granitzer and Lionel Brunie. Currently research engineer at INRIA.
[Defended][Dependability][Privacy] Jérémie Decouchant. Currently associate professor @TU Delft.
[Defended][Dependability] Amadou Diarra. Currently working in a company located in Grenoble.
[Defended][Dependability] Pierre-Louis Aublin. Currently researcher in the IIJ Innovation Institute, Japan.
[Defended][Dependability][Privacy] Gautier Berthou. Currently researcher at SICS, Sweden.
[Defended][Mobile Systems] Jingwei Miao. Currently working in a company in Beijing, China.

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Dr. Sonia Ben Mokhtar

Short Bio

I have been a CNRS researcher at the LIRIS lab since October 2009. Since 2017, I am also the leader of the distributed systems and information retrieval group (DRIM). Before joining CNRS, I was a research associate at University College London (UCL) for two years, working with Licia Capra.

I received my PhD in 2007 from University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), which I did under the supervision of Valérie Issarny and Nikolaos Georgantas in the former INRIA ARLES project-team (currently MiMove).

Research interests

Reliable and Privacy-Preserving Distributed Systems

Byzantine and selfish-resilient systems

Location Privacy, Private Web search, Private Recommender Systems,...

Blockchains and the DWeb

Service

Program committee co-chair of EDCC 2026.

Program committee co-chair of IEEE DSN 2022.

Steering committee member of IEEE SRDS.

Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions of Dependable and Secure Computing.

General co-chair of IEEE SRDS 2019 in Lyon.

Doctoral workshop co-chair at ACM Eurosys 2019.

Shadow PC co-chair of ACM Eurosys 2018.

Student forum co-chair of IEEE/IFIP DSN 2018.

Track chair of the Distributed Systems and Algorithms track at Euro-Par 2018.

Program committee co-chair of the ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2016 conference.

Steering committee member of the ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware conference.

Program committee co-chair of the workshop on Middleware for Next Generation Computing MW4NGC 2014, co-located with Middleware 2014.

Publication chair for IEEE IC2E 2016, IEEE/Usenix ICAC 2015, ACM/IFIP/Usenix Middleware 2014.

Publications

Ongoing Projects

Start date 01/03/2021

ANR - DFG PRIMATE (2018 - 2022): Privacy preserving Multi-Compratment Trusted Execution Environments. This project is in collaboration with Prof. Rüdiger Kapitza (TU Braunschweig) and Prof. Gaël Thomas (Telecom Sud Paris).

Past Projects

MobiCampus (Labex IMU): Mobility Analysis of students and staff in the 18 campuses of the city of Lyon. 2016-2019.

In this project my focus was on crowdsensing human mobility using smartphones and working on novel location privacy mechanisms.

PRIVA'MOV (Labex IMU): Mobility & Privacy: from crowdsensing to data analysis. 2013-2016.

In this project my focus was on enforcing location privacy on mobility datasets.

EEXCESS (EU FP7 IP): Enhancing Europe’s eXchange in Cultural Educational and Scientific Resource. 2012-2016.

In this project my focus was on investigating private Web search.

ANR SocEDA: Plate-forme EDA sociale, largement distribuée pour l’informatique dans les nuages. 2010-2013.

Program committees (a selection)

Software

SFERA: A toolkit to experiment on re-identification attacks on mobility traces.

HMC: A toolkit to test Location Privacy Protection Mechanism HMC (Heat-Map Confusion) and evaluate Privacy and Utility Metrics

ACCIO: A Location Privacy Framework.

Seine: A domain specific language for specifying and injecting selfish behaviors in distributed systems. Seine is used within the PeerSim simulator.

RACOON++: A Semi-Automatic Framework for the Design and Simulation of Selfish-Resilient Cooperative Systems.

PhD Students

[Ongoing][TEE-based Federated Learning] Aghiles Aït Messaoud.

[Ongoing][Distributed learning] Yacine Belal with Vlad Nitu.

[Ongoing][Privacy] Besma Khalfoun with Sara Bouchenak.

[Defended][Privacy] Mohamed Maouche with Sara Bouchenak. Currently post-doc @INRIA Lyon.

[Defended][Mobile Systems] Hayam Mousa (in co-tutelle with university of Mennoufia, Egypt) with Lionel Brunie. Currently associate professor in Egypt.

[Defended][Dependability] Vikas Jaiman (@Grenoble) with Vivien Quéma. Currently working in a company.

[Defended][Privacy] Sophie Cerf (@Grenoble) with Sara Bouchenak, Nicolas Marchand and Bogdan Robu. Currently INRIA researcher in Lille.

[Defended][Privacy] Vincent Primault. Currently working in a company located in Grenoble.

[Defended][Dependability] Guido Lena Cota (in co-tutelle with the university of Milan) with Ernesto Damiani, Gabriel Gianini and Lionel Brunie. Currently working in a company in Berlin, Germany.

[Defended][Privacy] Albin Petit (in co-tutelle with the university of Passau) supervised with Michael Granitzer and Lionel Brunie. Currently research engineer at INRIA.

[Defended][Dependability][Privacy] Jérémie Decouchant. Currently associate professor @TU Delft.

[Defended][Dependability] Amadou Diarra. Currently working in a company located in Grenoble.

[Defended][Dependability] Pierre-Louis Aublin. Currently researcher in the IIJ Innovation Institute, Japan.

[Defended][Dependability][Privacy] Gautier Berthou. Currently researcher at SICS, Sweden.

[Defended][Mobile Systems] Jingwei Miao. Currently working in a company in Beijing, China.