Dominique Schröder

Professor of Privacy Enhancing Technologies

About Me

I am a full professor of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies at TU Wien. My research aims to make security a design property—specified, verified, and certifiable— rather than an afterthought tested by audits.

I work at the intersection of cryptography, formal methods, and systems, with the goal of building infrastructures that are both innovative and trustworthy. My contributions span password-hardened encryption and privacy-preserving analytics, secure ledgers and messaging protocols, and automated tools for formal certification.

At stake is not only technical correctness but societal legitimacy: citizens must trust that their data is safe, that services will not collapse under attack, and that privacy is a guarantee, not a luxury.

E-Mail: schroeder AA@TT me.com (replace AA@TT by @)

Research Interests

My research focuses on making security a design property—specified, verified, and certifiable—rather than an afterthought tested by audits. I connect cryptography, privacy, and formal methods to real-world infrastructures, guided by four main pillars.

From password-hardened encryption to secure cloud storage and encrypted genomics, I design mechanisms that give users control while integrating seamlessly into existing infrastructures. Usability and efficiency are as critical as theoretical guarantees.

My work measures and mitigates privacy risks in data-driven services. Tools like conditional anonymity sets (visualAnon) quantify re-identification risks, while locally differentially private methods enable meaningful analytics without exposing raw data.

I study and improve the cryptographic foundations of distributed ledgers and secure communication. Contributions include Omniring for scalable confidential transactions, adaptor signatures for payment channels, and the first formal security analysis of the Threema messenger’s IBEX protocol.

To scale security, we need composable models and automation. My work includes verifiable data streaming, automated synthesis of cryptographic primitives, and threshold protocols. The long-term vision is auditable certification, where properties are treated like types in programming languages.

I view teaching and mentoring as integral to my research. I enjoy working with motivated students and researchers, guiding them to connect rigorous foundations with applied systems, and fostering a culture of collaboration and discovery.