Associate ProfessorKanchana Thilakarathna

While the majority of us now carry at least one smart mobile device with us every day, few of us are fully aware of the cost of this convenience in terms of exposing our personal information to third parties. Dr Kanchana Thilakarathna’s research aims to improve our security and privacy in this regard.

“Smart devices – such as smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and other wearables – have literally changed human lifestyles, providing endless innovative services in every aspect of our life. I am passionate about their ever-growing capabilities to take human experience far beyond expectations.

“But while we enjoy many of these services ‘for free’, they come at the cost of these devices having the ability to continuously monitor, store and transmit sensitive personal information to third parties, such as service providers.

“Most users are unaware of exactly what information service providers are collecting about them, and the majority of providers currently gather information without properly informing users or giving them an alternative.

“It is technically challenging to provide secure, private and efficient services on top of these resource-constrained devices, especially with limited battery life and without negatively impacting the cost or usability of these services.

“My research aims to develop distributed computing platforms that exploit the computational, storage and energy resources available on and around the personal area to provide safe, secure, private, useful and efficient services to mobile users.

“One example of my work is a social media app I developed called Yalut, which enables users to retain control over their own photos, videos and other content. Users keep their content on their own devices and, when they choose to share some of it with online friends – whether through Yalut or an existing social media platform – it is uploaded directly to their friends’ devices, so that it is now only on their own and their friends’ devices.

“My aim is to develop mobile apps such as these and make them available to everyone.

“I’ve been working in this field since 2010, and joined the University of Sydney in 2017.”