Research Subjects

My initial training was in mathematics and theoretical computer science, and I started my PhD on dynamic clustering with Nicolas Schabanel. In the end, I changed subjects to work with Ted Selker on usability of security and its applications to e-democracy.

I very recently joined the DigiTrust Consortium, where I am doing interdisciplinary research, with the general goal of improving people's experience in multiple aspects of their lives (going from online security and privacy to voting). That said, I am still devoting a significant fraction of my energy to research projects on other topics. Here are some of my principal interests at the moment: 

• Online authentication mechanisms;
• Models for human mental computing;
• Institution design;
  
• Voting protocols;
  
• Intersections between crip and queer theory;
  
• Legal issues surrounding data ownership.
  

As I work between multiple fields, I do not have as much expertise as a specialist in a single field, which leads me to create collaborations with a large set of researchers and experts. This allows me to bridge the different fields while making sure that the methodology and end results are sound. I am generally extremely open to new collaborations, so don't hesitate to drop me a line if you have an idea or would like to participate in some of our projects. After a decade of activism, I also recently decided to get involved in the more academic side of queer and crip theories.

Collaborators

The people I do most of my work with are Ted Selker (usable security and voting), Leila Gabasova (planetary science and usability) and Siargey Kachanovich (graph theory and geometry).

I have also worked and still sometimes work on:
- graph theory with Oded Lachish, Eldar Fischer, Janos Makowsky and Elena Ravve; 
- dynamic clustering with Nicolas Schabanel;
- security with Eli Sennesh, Clément Malaingre, Xavier Coquand and Florentin Waligorski;
- voting with David Chaum and Alan Sherman;
- institution design with Géza Tessényi;
- geography with Jacques Lévy;
- legal issues with Sunimal Mendis.

A note on authorship

Three things should be noted when it comes to names and publications, as practices vary between fields and I'm a bit of a special case. First, I changed my first name at the end of 2019, hence the discrepancy between the different papers. I now sign everything as Enka Blanchard (Enka's FAQ). Second, nearly all the papers shown use alphabetical author ordering, with the generally accurate assumption that every author contributed similarly, as is standard practice in many mathematical fields. I tend to use such rules when I create transdisciplinary projects. Two notable exceptions are the paper with Makowsky and Ravve, where I contributed less, and papers in planetary science, where I follow the practice of my partner L. Gabasova as they're the drive behind the projects.
Third, practices of journals versus conferences vary a lot between fields and, although everything shown as published here is peer-reviewed, standards vary wildly. Conference papers in planetology do not tend to "count" career-wise, whereas conferences can be harder to get into than journals in computer science. Trying to make sense of productivity by counting either first-author papers or just the total number of papers is then a biased process (in my favour generally).