David Froelicher

Research Manager

Swisscom Digital Lab

Hi, I’m David Froelicher, a Research Manager at the Swisscom Digital Lab. Together with Master’s students from Swiss universities, we tackle real-world research challenges, bridging the gap between academia and industry across diverse fields like analytics, networking, AI, and security.

Before joining Swisscom in 2024, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, where I focused on secure distributed analytics, AI, and genomic privacy, leveraging advanced privacy-enhancing technologies and distributed algorithms.

Earlier in my academic journey, I earned my PhD from EPFL in 2021, specializing in the design of cryptography-based solutions for secure distributed computation. I also hold a Bachelor’s (2014) and Master’s (2016) degree in Computer Science, with a focus on IT security, from EPFL.

Contact

david.froelicher2@swisscom.com
Swisscom Digital Lab, 1015 Lausanne

Education

Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2022-2024
MIT & The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2016-2021
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Bachelor (2014) & Master (2016) of Science in Communication Systems
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Publications

H. Cho, David Froelicher, N. Dokmai, A. Nandi, S. Sadhuka, M. Man-Hou Hong, B. Berger (2024). Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in Biomedical Data Science. Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science.

PDF Link

M. Hong, David Froelicher, R. Magner, V. Popic, B. Berger, H. Cho (2023). Secure Discovery of Genetic Relatives across Large-Scale and Distributed Genomic Datasets. Recomb 2024 (M.H. received best student paper award) & Under Revision at Genome Research.

Code bioRxiv

H. Cho, David Froelicher, J. Chen, M. Edupalli, A. Pyrgelis, J. R. Troncoso-Pastoriza, J.-P. Hubaux, B. Berger (2023). Secure and Federated Genome-Wide Association Studies for Biobank-Scale Datasets. Under review.

PDF Cite Code Link

David Froelicher, H. Cho, M. Edupalli, J. S. Sousa, J.-P. Bossuat, A. Pyrgelis, J. R. Troncoso-Pastoriza, J.-P. Hubaux, B. Berger (2023). Scalable and Privacy-Preserving Federated Principal Component Analysis. IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2023.

PDF Cite Link Trailer Video Video

S. Mendelsohn, David Froelicher, D. Loginov, D. Bernick, B. Berger, H. Cho (2023). sfkit: A Web-Based Toolkit for Secure and Federated Genomic Analysis. Nucleic Acids Research 2023.

PDF Cite Link

See all publications

Talks

Invited Talk in the Translational Medical Informatics track at ISMB 2023

Enabling collaborative analysis of genomic data silos with privacy

Jul 22, 2023 Lyon, France

Seminar Lecture at the Topics in Computational Biology Class at MIT

Privacy-Preserving Federated Genomics with Multi-party Homomorphic Encryption

Mar 12, 2023 MIT, Cambridge, MA

Seminar Lecture at the Institute for IT Security at Lübeck University

Privacy-Preserving Federated Analytics with Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption

Feb 15, 2023 Online - Lübeck University

Flash Talk in 2022 Annual NHGRI Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science Meeting

Secure and Federated Genome-Wide Association Studies

Oct 18, 2022 Online - Durham, NC

Invited Talk in Genomic Privacy & Security Special Session at ISMB 2022

Privacy-Preserving Federated Biomedical Analysis with Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption

Jul 12, 2022 Madison, Wisconsin

See all events

Awards & Press Articles

Best Student and Young Researcher Award at RECOMB 2024

Best Student and Young Researcher Award at RECOMB 2024 for the paper entitled “Secure Discovery of Genetic Relatives across Large-Scale and Distributed Genomic Datasets”

Jul 11, 2024

Among Winners at IDash Privacy & Security Workshop – Secure Genome Analysis Competition 2023

Secure Relative Detection in (Forensic) Databases

Oct 15, 2023

Runner-up Team for Finale Phase of the U.S. PETS Prize Challenge, Winning Team for Phase 1

Privacy-preserving federated learning for pandemic forecasting

Mar 15, 2023

Work Featured in a Joint Press Article by MIT, EPFL and CHUV - A cryptography game-changer for biomedical research at scale

This federated analytics system enables different healthcare providers to collaboratively perform statistical analyses and develop machine learning models, all without exchanging the underlying datasets.

Oct 11, 2021

Selected for Microsoft Private AI Bootcamp 2019

The Private AI Bootcamp offered by Microsoft Research (MSR) focuses on tutorials of building privacy-preserving machine learning services and applications with homomorphic encryption (HE).

Nov 15, 2019

Thesis

Privacy-Preserving Federated Analytics using Multiparty Homomorphic Encryption

PhD Thesis at EPFL

Oct 15, 2021

Experience

Research Manager

Swisscom Digital Lab

September 2024 – Present Lausanne, Switzerland

Post-Doctoral Researcher

MIT & The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

February 2022 – September 2024 Cambridge, MA

Working with Prof. B. Berger’s group in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and with Dr. H. Cho’s group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

PhD Student

EPFL

September 2016 – November 2021 Lausanne, Switzerland

Working in the laboratory for data security (LDS), led by Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux) and the Decentralized and Distributed Systems Lab (DeDiS), led by Prof. Bryan Ford)

Research Assistant

EPFL

March 2016 – September 2016 Lausanne, Switzerland

Working in the laboratory for data security (LDS), led by Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux)

Master Thesis

NEC

March 2016 – September 2016 Heidelberg, Germany

Working in the laboratory for data security (LDS), led by Prof. Jean-Pierre Hubaux)

Teaching

I am now supervising two graduate students.
I have supervised two master’s theses, twelve master’s semester projects, two bachelor’s semester projects, and 2 master’s level summer internships. I was a teaching assistant for the following courses at EPFL:

Mobile Network, Master
Information Security & Privacy, Master
Advanced Topics on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Master
Introduction to Object-oriented Programming, Bachelor

Academic Service

I have served on the program committee or editorial board of the following journals, conferences and workshops:

RECOMB-PRIEQ 2024
International Society for Molecular Biology (ISMB) 2024

Reviewer

I have served as a reviewer (and sub-reviewer) for the following conferences and journals:

IEEE S&P
PLOS Genetics
Nature Communications
Genome Research
Recomb
Bioinformatics
International Society for Molecular Biology (ISMB)
Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium
Digital Signal Processing Journal
EURASIP Journal on Information Security
Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation
International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy