Dr Erik Buchholz

Dr. Erik Buchholz is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Cybersecurity at UNSW Sydney and GuardWare Australia, where his work focuses on encrypting unstructured data in the defence supply chain. His broader research interests include privacy-enhancing technologies, differential privacy, generative models, and applied cryptography.

He completed his PhD at UNSW Sydney and CSIRO’s Data61, supported by the competitive CSCRC scholarship. His doctoral research investigated the privacy of location trajectories using differential privacy and generative models. This research was recognised with the Best Paper Award at PST 2024 and publications at top venues such as PETS, ACSAC, and AsiaCCS. Erik's thesis identified shortcomings of existing privacy mechanisms, proposed a novel reconstruction attack, and explored synthetic data generation as a privacy-preserving solution.

In 2025, he was named one of Australia’s Top100 Future Leaders. He is deeply committed to open science, releasing the code for all his publications on GitHub. He has supervised over 20 students on theses, capstone projects, and internships, with multiple projects leading to international publications. Moreover, he contributed to the AGSE Industry PhD program as an advisory board member and acted as system administrator his research group.

He frequently presents his work to both academic and public audiences, with recognition including the AGSE 3MT People’s Choice Award and the SecEdu Best Poster Award. These experiences highlight his commitment to making research accessible beyond academia. He welcomes opportunities to collaborate and give talks.