POURIA HADJIBAGHERI

How anonymous is our “anonymous” data, after all? In an age where artificial intelligence, surveillance, and digital identities intersect in real time, full anonymity will soon be undermined.

Pouria Hadjibagheri will speak at the anniversary stage of TEDxPatras 2025, highlighting why the notion that data can be fully anonymised is deeply flawed. While cookie agreements and opt-out mechanisms create a sense of control, they do little to prevent individuals from being identified through seemingly harmless data points. Research has shown that minimal information — such as location patterns, media consumption, or anonymised medical records — can be linked to other datasets to re-identify individuals with high accuracy. 

This talk examines the limitations of current anonymisation techniques, the risks of data sharing, and the broader implications for privacy, particularly in sensitive areas like healthcare. It also considers the role of regulatory interventions in ensuring that personal data are truly protected in an increasingly interconnected world.

About the speaker

Pouria is a London-based software engineer, data scientist, and cloud architect with a multidisciplinary background encompassing computational biology, bioinformatics, and large-scale data infrastructure. A passionate advocate for open data, he has designed and delivered data science and machine learning courses for doctoral programmes in the UK, Germany, and China, while engaging the public through conferences and social media to promote accessibility and transparency.

He is best known for leading the UK Health Security Agency’s COVID-19 Dashboard, helping establish new standards for transparency, real-time reporting, and accessibility in government data services. In 2023, Pouria was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his contributions to data transparency, and also became a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS). His team’s work at UKHSA was recognised with the Royal Statistical Society’s Award for Statistical Excellence.

Away from work, Pouria can be found wrangling vintage film cameras and joyfully embracing the deliberate process of analogue photography, where there’s no such thing as a “quick edit.” He speaks several languages to varying degrees of fluency, all of which improve dramatically after his 4th coffee of the day.

This talk will be delivered in English.