Alexandros Mittos

Career Profile

I received my M.Eng. in Software Engineering in 2014 and my M.Sc. in Information Security in 2016. I then joined UCL's Information Security Research Group to do my Ph.D under the supervision of Prof. Emiliano De Cristofaro. Currently, I am a Research Assistant at Queen Mary University of London researching state of the art Machine Learning methods for the identification of online hate speech.

Experiences

Research Assistant

Nov 2019 - Present

Queen Mary University of London

My research focuses on the identification of online hate speech using state of the art machine learning methods. Specifically, I am investigating how different methods, features, and datasets affect the performance of hate speech classifiers.

Machine Learning Hate Speech Detection Natural Language Processing

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow

Aug 2016 - Jul 2019

University College London

I was awarded a 3-year Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship for the Privacy & Usability Innovative Training Network. My research focused on the unexplored challenges of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Specifically, I studied the security and privacy limitations of the technologies used for testing, storing, and sharing genomic data, and how direct-to-consumer genetic testing is being misused online by far-right groups to promote racist ideologies.

Natural Language Processing Social Network Analysis Hate Speech Detection Privacy Security

Visiting Researcher

Sep 2017 - Dec 2017

Bonn University

I visited the Privacy in Ubiquitous Computing group at the University of Bonn, where, under the supervision of Prof.-Ing. Delphine Reinhardt, I designed and ran a survey on the public perceptions of DTC genetic testing.

Qualitative Research Surveys

Visiting Researcher

Apr 2017 - May 2017

Data Protection Authority of Bavaria for the Private Sector (BayLDA)

I visited BayLDA where I studied how health and genetic data is being handled under GDPR.

GDPR

Publications

• Mittos Alexandros, Savvas Zannettou, Jeremy Blackburn, and Emiliano De Cristofaro. 'And We Will Fight For Our Race!' A Measurement Study of Genetic Testing Conversations on Reddit and 4chan. In Fourteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. 2020 (ICWSM).
  Media Coverage The Times, StatNews
  Acceptance Rate: 21%
  


• Mittos Alexandros, Bradley Malin, and Emiliano De Cristofaro. Systematizing Genome Privacy Research: A Privacy-Enhancing Technologies Perspective. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2019, no. 1 (2019): 87-107 (PoPETs).
  Acceptance Rate: 22%
  


• Mittos Alexandros, Jeremy Blackburn, and Emiliano De Cristofaro. '23andMe Confirms: I'm Super White' Analyzing Twitter Discourse On Genetic Testing. (2018).
  

Skills & Proficiency

Techical Skills

My main expertise.

Machine Learning Natural Language Processing Python Data Handling Data Visualization

Libraries

A selection of python libraries that I am proficient in.

sklearn nltk pandas

Transferable Skills

Skills that I have gained through experience.

Project Management Public Speaking Academic Writing

Open-Source Projects

Oblivious Transfer Extensions: A concrete implementation of the IKPN03 protocol written in Java, using the SCAPI interface.
Java Cryptography

Daedalus: An academic schedule manager made for the department of Information and Communications Systems Engineering at the University of the Aegean.
Full Stack Development

Awards

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow Scholarship

2016 - 2019

University College London

Received a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow scholarship for 3 years to investigate the societal challenges stemming from the rise of personal genomic testing. Acceptance Rate: 6%

University of the Aegean Scholarship

2015 - 2016

University of the Aegean

Received a scholarship for my M.Sc. studies at the University of the Aegean.