Brown CS Alum Olya Ohrimenko Has Received The First Commendation Award For Outstanding Research Contribution
- Posted by Robayet Hossain
- on Feb. 17, 2025
Last semester, Brown CS PhD alum Olya Ohrimenko (now a professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne) received the 2025 Commendation Award for Outstanding Research Contribution from the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE). CORE will co-host ACSW 2025 (Australian Computer Science Week) with the Australian Council of Deans of Information and Communications Technology (ACDICT) in early February, where Olya and other CORE winners will receive their awards formally in Brisbane. This was the first time in the history of the CORE Research Award to have a commendation category.
“Olya Ohrimenko received this award for her significant work in privacy and security, uncovering vulnerabilities in Google and Meta open-source libraries,” says Rachel Cardell-Oliver, CORE President. “She served on the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Methodology Advisory Committee (2021) and was a finalist for the APAC Women in AI Awards in Cybersecurity (2023 & 2024).”
Prior to teaching at the University of Melbourne, Olya spent six years at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where she was a principal researcher working on confidential AI. She received her Master’s degree and PhD from Brown CS, advised by faculty member and current Department Chair Roberto Tamassia. During her PhD, she completed internships at IBM Research Zurich, Microsoft Research Redmond, and Google.
Olya’s research interests include security, privacy, and integrity of machine learning algorithms, data analysis tools, and multi-party systems relying on cloud storage, computation, and hardware. Her research has made major contributions to the fields of privacy and security, uncovering vulnerabilities in Google and Meta open-source libraries. She served on the Methodology Advisory Committee of the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2021, and became a finalist for the APAC Women in AI Awards in Cybersecurity for both 2023 and 2024.
“I was deeply humbled by this recognition and grateful to the students, postdoctoral researchers, and colleagues with whom I had the privilege to work,” Olya says. “This honor also highlights the importance of advancing research in privacy and security, a field that continues to play a critical role in our society.”
“This award recognizes Olya’s research leadership and the impact of her work on addressing the complex security challenges that arise as AI-driven applications become pervasive,” notes Roberto, further stressing how "Olya’s research contributions combine foundational scientific advances and profound practical relevance.”
A full list of CORE award recipients can be found here.
For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.
