KMi doctoral student Audrey Ekuban won second place, in the Year 3 and 4 category, at the STEM PhD Student 3-Minute-Thesis (3MT) Conference 2024 on 7 November in the Berrill Lecture Theatre. Audrey’s research presentation focused on student data privacy and self-sovereignty, exploring how universities can personalise learning experiences while preserving student privacy. 

Her project, EMPRESS (Educational Models with Privacy Rights and Ethics for Student Self-Sovereignty), proposes a framework empowering students to control their data. Audrey introduced the concept of Structured Transparency, outlining data access guidelines based on necessity and timing to balance privacy and personalised support.

Audrey emphasised two core principles: Input Privacy and Output Privacy. Input Privacy can be attained by Federated Learning, a technique whereby models are directly trained on students’ devices without sharing raw data centrally. Output Privacy can be obtained by Differential Privacy, a technique that ensures individual data is obscured in aggregate outputs. Audrey plans further testing to refine these privacy-preserving techniques.