Professor Reza Shokri Honoured with ACM CCS Test-of-Time Award for Pioneering Privacy-Preserving Modern AI
A Decade of Impact: Professor Reza Shokri Honoured with ACM CCS Test-of-Time Award for Pioneering Privacy-Preserving Modern AI
Professor Reza Shokri from the NUS School of Computing and Google Research has been awarded the ACM CCS 2025 Test-of-Time Award for his work on “Privacy-Preserving Deep Learning,” co-authored with Professor Vitaly Shmatikov. This prestigious award recognises research that has had a profound and enduring influence on the field of privacy in AI.
Published in 2015, the paper introduced one of the earliest and most influential solutions for collaborative AI without exposing sensitive raw data—a concept Professor Shokri calls “sharing without sharing.” The framework demonstrated how multiple parties could train powerful models together by exchanging only privacy-preserving (and norm-bounded model updates, aka clipped gradients, with differentially private randomisation), rather than entire datasets.
Ten years on, this work has become a cornerstone for privacy-preserving machine learning, inspiring advances in federated learning, secure AI infrastructure, and privacy standards across healthcare, finance, and mobile applications.
“This work was about reimagining how we build AI systems by unlocking the power of deep learning without forcing people to give up their sensitive data,” said Professor Shokri. “A decade later, it’s rewarding to see those principles drive innovation around the world.”
The ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) is one of the most prestigious venues for cybersecurity research. Its Test-of-Time Award celebrates landmark contributions whose impact continues to shape the field a decade after publication.
This year, NUS researchers clinched two out of the three Test-of-Time Awards — a remarkable recognition of the university’s sustained leadership in producing research that shapes the field and stands the test of time, and a testament to its excellence, as the award typically honours only one or two winners each year.
👉 Read more about the other award winner, Professor Prateek Saxena, here.
👉 Read more about the ACM CCS Test-of-Time Awards here.