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About

About

João P. Vilela is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Porto and a centre coordinator at CRACS/INESC TEC. He was previously a professor at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra, after receiving the Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Porto in 2011, and a visiting researcher at Georgia Tech and MIT, USA. Dr. Vilela has been coordinator and team member of several national, bilateral, and European-funded projects in security and privacy. His main research interests are in security and privacy of computer and communication systems, with applications such as wireless networks, and mobile devices. Specific research topics include wireless physical-layer security, security of next-generation networks, privacy-preserving mechine learning, location privacy and automated privacy protection.


João Vilela has been the general chair of ACM CODASPY 2024, track-chair for the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2023 and is an Associate Editor for the ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security since April 2025. He has been an expert project evaluator for the CHIST-ERA ERA-NET, the European Union Horizon Europe programme, the National Research Fund of Luxembourg, and the Dutch Research Council of Netherlands. Dr. Vilela has presented his research work on relevant international institutions such as PUC-Rio, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Unicamp and University of São Paulo (Brazil), IMDEA Networks (Spain), INRIA (France), Harvard University and MIT (USA), and University of Cambridge (UK), among others.

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

  • Name

    João Paulo Vilela
  • Role

    Centre Coordinator
  • Since

    01st March 2020
002
Publications

2025

Geo-Indistinguishability

Authors
Mendes, R; Vilela, P;

Publication
Encyclopedia of Cryptography, Security and Privacy, Third Edition

Abstract
[No abstract available]

2025

QIDLEARNINGLIB: A Python library for quasi-identifier recognition and evaluation

Authors
Simoes, SA; Vilela, JP; Santos, MS; Abreu, PH;

Publication
NEUROCOMPUTING

Abstract
Quasi-identifiers (QIDs) are attributes in a dataset that are not directly unique identifiers of the users/entities themselves but can be used, often in conjunction with other datasets or information, to identify individuals and thus present a privacy risk in data sharing and analysis. Identifying QIDs is important in developing proper strategies for anonymization and data sanitization. This paper proposes QIDLEARNINGLIB, a Python library that offers a set of metrics and tools to measure the qualities of QIDs and identify them in data sets. It incorporates metrics from different domains-causality, privacy, data utility, and performance-to offer a holistic assessment of the properties of attributes in a given tabular dataset. Furthermore, QIDLEARNINGLIB offers visual analysis tools to present how these metrics shift over a dataset and implements an extensible framework that employs multiple optimization algorithms such as an evolutionary algorithm, simulated annealing, and greedy search using these metrics to identify a meaningful set of QIDs.

2025

Fast Computation of the Discrete Fourier Transform Square Index Coefficients

Authors
Queiroz, S; Vilela, P; Monteiro, H; Li, X;

Publication
IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING MAGAZINE

Abstract
Provides society information that may include news, reviews or technical notes that should be of interest to practitioners and researchers. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

2025

Delving Into Security and Privacy of Joint Communication and Sensing: A Survey

Authors
Martins, OG; Akesson, H; Gomes, M; Osorio, DPM; Sen, P; Vilela, JP;

Publication
IEEE OPEN JOURNAL OF THE COMMUNICATIONS SOCIETY

Abstract
Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) systems are emerging as a core technology for next-generation wireless systems due to the potential to achieve higher spectral efficiency, energy savings, and new services beyond communications. This paper provides a review of the state-of-the-art in JCAS systems by focusing on obtrusive passive sensing capabilities and inherent security and privacy challenges that arise from the integration of communication and sensing. From this point of view, we discuss existing techniques for mitigating security and privacy issues, as well as important aspects for the designing of secure and privacy-aware JCAS systems. Additionally, we discuss future research directions by emphasizing on new enabling technologies and their integration on JCAS systems along with their role in privacy and security aspects. We also discuss the required modifications to existing systems and the design of new systems with privacy and security awareness, where the challenging trade-offs between security, privacy and performance of the JCAS system must be considered.

2025

WiFi-Based Location Tracking: A Still Open Door on Laptops

Authors
Cunha, M; Mendes, R; de Montjoye, YA; Vilela, JP;

Publication
IEEE OPEN JOURNAL OF THE COMPUTER SOCIETY

Abstract
Location privacy is a major concern in the current digital society, due to the sensitive information that can be inferred from location data. This has led smartphones' Operating Systems (OSs) to strongly tighten access to location information in the last few years. The same tightening has, however, not yet happened when it comes to our second most carried around device: the laptop. In this work, we demonstrate the privacy risks resulting from the fact that major laptop OSs still expose WiFi data to installed software, thus enabling to infer location information from WiFi Access Points (APs). Using data collected in a real-world experiment, we show that laptops are often carried along with smartphones and that a large fraction of our mobility profile can be inferred from WiFi APs accessed on laptops, thus concluding on the need to protect the access to WiFi data on laptops.

Supervised
thesis

2024

Privacy-Preserving Joint Communication and Sensing

Author
Óscar Gabriel Bernardes Martins

Institution
UP-FCUP

2023

Increasing Data Capturing Abilities of HoneyNets: a Proof of Concept

Author
Diogo Miguel Marcos Ribeiro

Institution
UP-FCUP

2023

Privacy-Preserving Face Detection: A Comprehensive Analysis of Face Anonymization Techniques

Author
Ricardo Gonçalves de Andrade

Institution
UP-FCUP

2023

Privacy-Preserving Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Data Types

Author
Mariana da Cruz Cunha

Institution
UP-FCUP

2023

Privacy-Preserving Mechanisms for Heterogeneous Data Types

Author
Mariana da Cruz Cunha

Institution
UP-FCUP