I currently work as a Research Scientist in Applied Privacy Tech (APT) team at Meta. We develop and deploy large scale privacy-preserving systems in Meta. I finished my PhD program in August 2021. I worked at InfoLab , Computer Science Department , Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California , under the supervision of Prof. Cyrus Shahabi . I also worked closely with Prof. Peter Kuhn at USC CSI-Cancer for several cancer-related projects. I received my Degree of Engineer from Hanoi University of Science and Technology in Vietnam, in 2013. Upon graduation, I worked at the Research and Development Department of VNG Corporation in Hanoi, Vietnam. I am interested in spatial-temporal data mining, location privacy, marketplaces, and their applications.

Here are my CV and resume if you prefer: CV, Resume, LinkedIn.

Publications

Reliable Geofence Activation with Sparse and Sporadic Location Measurements, Kien Nguyen, John Krumm, IEEE MDM’22, Paphos, Cyprus, 2022 [link, pdf]

Quantifying Intrinsic Value of Information of Trajectories, Kien Nguyen, John Krumm, Cyrus Shahabi, ACM SIGSPATIAL’21, Beijing, China, 2021 [link, pdf, code]

Spatial Privacy Pricing: The Interplay between Privacy, Utility and Price in Geo-Marketplaces, Kien Nguyen, John Krumm, Cyrus Shahabi, ACM SIGSPATIAL’20, Seattle, WA, 2020 [link, pdf, code]

A secure location-based alert system with tunable privacy-performance trade-off, Gabriel Ghinita, Kien Nguyen, Mihai Maruseac, Cyrus Shahabi, GeoInformatica, 2020 [link, pdf]

A Privacy-Preserving, Accountable and Spam-Resilient Geo-Marketplace, Kien Nguyen, Gabriel Ghinita, Muhammad Naveed, Cyrus Shahabi, ACM SIGSPATIAL’19, Chicago, IL, 2019 [link, pdf, code]

Artificial Intelligence for Improving Access to Sexual Health Necessities for Youth Experiencing Homelessness, Gabriel Ghinita, Kien Nguyen, Mihai Maruseac, Cyrus Shahabi, Tambe, M., & Rice, E. (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence and Social Work, Artificial Intelligence for Social Good, chapter, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018 [link]

Los Angeles Metro Bus Data Analysis Using GPS Trajectory and Schedule Data (Demo Paper), Kien Nguyen, Jingyun Yang, Yijun Lin, Jianfa Lin, Yao-Yi Chiang, Cyrus Shahabi, ACM SIGSPATIAL’18, Seattle, WA, 2018 [link, pdf]

Differentially Private Publication of Location Entropy, Hien To*, Kien Nguyen*, Cyrus Shahabi, ACM SIGSPATIAL’16, San Francisco, CA, 2016 (* equal contribution) [link, pdf]

Exploiting Direct and Indirect Information for Friend Suggestion in ZingMe, Kien D. Nguyen, Tuan P. Minh, Quang N. Nguyen and Thanh T. Nguyen, NIPS 2013 workshop on Frontiers of Network Analysis: Methods, Models, and Applications, Lake Tahoe, NV, 2013 [link, pdf]

Working experience

Here are very brief summary. Ask me if you want to know more.

Meta Platforms, Inc.

Applied Privacy Technology team, Research Scientist
2021 - present, Menlo Park, CA

We develop and deploy large scale privacy-perserving systems in Meta. (I am still not sure to what extend I can describe my projects.)

University of Southern California

CSI-Cancer Institute
2018 - 2021

As the name of the institution and my own major may imply, I brought more technical skills to some cancer-related projects. More specifically, I designed and implemented back-end and front-end systems for some clinical trials:

  • SCORE: This is a system for remote data collection for participants in clinical trials. Currently we can collect questionnaires, photos, location, and cough. It also designed for clinical trials with HIPAA compliance, separation of identifiable and non-identifiable information, consent forms integrated with RedCap, and ID capture. Mobile clients are available for iOS and Android.
  • PrecisionPS (former ATOM-HP): utilizes patients’ in-clinic mobility captured by Microsoft Kinect and daily activities captured by wearable devices to measure their health status. The Android mobile client allows participants to view and submit their Fitbit data and answer questionnaires.

Integrated Media Systems Center
2017 - 2018

Analyze Los Angeles Metro bus data using GPS trajectory and schedule data to gain better understanding of bus performance.

Facebook Inc.

Applied Privacy Technology team, Software Engineer Intern
Summer 2020, Menlo Park, CA (actually, remote due to COVID)

I developed algorithms for a new location privacy definition. Industrial internship so cannot say much though.

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft Research AI, Research Intern
Summer 2019, Redmond, WA

Developed new methodologies for efficient and accurate mobile geofences applications with energy consumption consideration.

VNG Corporation

R&D Department, Software Engineer 2012 - 2015, Hanoi, Vietnam

I mainly worked on implementing recommender systems to recommend friend, news, group, blog to 20 million users of ZingMe, a social network in Vietnam.

Teaching experience

In my first 2 years in my PhD program at USC, I was the teaching assistant for Introduction to Software Development, an undergraduate-level course for sophomores, and Machine Learning for Data Informatics, a master-level course. Not only these teaching positions funded me during those years, it tremendously boosted my communucation skill and my understanding of American cultural. If you are an international TA and do not communicate well enough, just like me at that time, embrace and get the most out of it.

Technical skills

I learn technical skills when I need them for specific work. So at least I have enough skills for work I mentioned.