Greetings! I am a Full Professor of the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Texas A&M University (A&M), and the Associate Director of Texas A&M Global Cyber Research Institute (GCRI), and served as a Dean’s Research Fellow, 2022-23, at the College of Engineering & Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station. Broadly, I work in the areas of computer and network security, and applied cryptography. My particular focus is on fundamental, transformative, inter-disciplinary and game changing research, which can go beyond the traditional confines of academic domain and make a positive impact to the lives of end users hopefully relatively quickly.
I am currently looking for a post-doc.
My students and I run the SPIES — Security and Privacy In Emerging computing and networking Systems — research lab. Besides research, I have a major emphasis on workforce development, especially in areas related to cybersecurity. In this line, I am currently a co principal Investigator of the TAMU CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program, funded by NSF. Previously, I was the principal investigator and director of the UAB CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program (2017-2021), and had served as the Co-Director of UAB’s M.S. program in Cyber-Security (2012-2021). I also co-led UAB’s Center for Cyber Security (2018-2021), which is an NSA/DHS National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research (CAE-R).
My research has been externally supported by NSF (multiple grants and multiple programs, including SaTC, CICI and SFS), DOD, NSA, NIJ/DoJ, Google (2 Faculty Research Awards), Comcast, Cisco, Microsoft Research, MxD, Intel, Nokia, and Research in Motion.
I obtained my Ph.D. in Information and Computer Science from UC Irvine. I hold an M.S. in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara, and a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Computing from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. Before joining A&M, I was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and before then, I was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering.
Note for Students: I am actively looking for exceptionally bright prospective PhD/MS/BS students to join my research group. If interested, please contact me with your CV.
Recent Selected Contributions/Grants/Awards (2013-2024):
- PI on a $473,000 AFRL grant on privacy-preserving machine learning, 2024
- Leading a $75,000 MxD Grant, 2023
- Associate Director, Global Cyber Research Institute (GCRI), 2023
- TAMU Sole PI on a $6.2M Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) Award, 2023, based on our neuro security work.
- Co Leading a $687K grant from the National Security Agency (NSA), 2023
- Leading a $1.2 Million NSF Medium Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Grant (SaTC) Grant, 2022
- Co Leading TAMU’s $4.5 Million NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) Grant, 2022
- Dean’s Research Fellow, 2022
- Fortune’s Top Master’s Program in Cybersecurity, 2022 (architected and directed for a decade previously at UAB)
- Leading a $75,000 MxD Grant, 2021
- $500,000 NSF Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) Grant, 2021
- Leading a $900,000 NSF Medium Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Grant (SaTC) Grant, 2020
- A $550,000 supplement on our ongoing grant NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) Grant, 2019
- Runner Up, The Mark Weiser Best Paper Award, Percom 2019
- Research grant from Microsoft Research to study security warnings via the Neuro Security methodology introduced at the SPIES lab, 2019
- NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Grant (SaTC) Grant, 2017
- Graduate School Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship, 2016/17
- NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) Grant, 2016/17
- The NIJ GRF-STEM fellowship, 2016/17 (for my PhD student, Ajaya Neupane)
- NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Grant (SaTC) Grant, 2015
- NSF Cybersecurity Innovation for Cyberinfrastructure (CICI) Grant, 2015
- Comcast Research Award, 2014
- NDSS 2014 Distinguished Paper Award
- Google Research Award, 2013
- Cisco Grant, 2013
- Papers at ACM TOPS’21, TMC’21, MobiCom’21, EuroS&P’21 (2 papers), AsiaCCS’21 (3 papers), WiSec’21 (2 papers); ACSAC’20 (3 papers), WiSec’20; NDSS’19, Percom’19, ACSAC’19 (2 papers); Oakland’18, TDSC’18, TMC’18, ACSAC’18, WiSec’18; CCS’17 (2 papers), WWW’17, TDSC’17, ICDCS’17, ACSAC’17, WiSec’17 (2 papers); CCS’16, NDSS’16, ACSAC’16 (2 papers), WiSec’16 (2 papers), TIFS’16; CCS’15, ACSAC’15 (2 papers), ESORICS’15, Percom’15, TIFS’15; CCS’14, NDSS’14 (2 papers), Percom’14, ICME’14; TETC’13, TIFS’13, TDSC’13, WiSec’13
- Extensive Media Coverage including NY Times, MSN, NBC, Fox, CNN, Discovery News, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Tech, CNBC, CNET, MIT Tech Review, ACM TechNews, Bloomberg, Economist, ZDNet, CACM News, Slashdot, Guardian, Register, HackerNews, Bleeping Computer, Science Daily, Motherboard and Conversation.
Editorial Boards:
- ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS) (since 2021)
- Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs) (since 2019)
- IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS) (from 2013 to 2016)
- Springer’s International Journal of Information Security (IJIS) (from 2013 to 2018)
Recent Program Committees:
- 2024: CNS (TPC Area Chair), ACSAC, MetaCom, ICICS
- 2023: CCS, ACSAC, CNS, ICICS, MetaCom
- 2022: USENIX Security, CCS, ACSAC, ACNS, ASIACCS, WWW (S&P track), WiSec
- 2021: CNS (TPC Co-Chair); WWW (S&P Track), ASIACCS, PETS, SADFE, WiSec, ACSAC, ICICS, WPES
- 2020: SecureComm (TPC Co-Chair), IJCB (Area Chair), Oakland, PETS, ASIACCS; WWW (S&P Track), ACSAC, ACSAC Artifact Evaluation, WiSec, CNS, ICICS
- 2019: Oakland, CNS (TPC Area Chair), CCS, ACSAC, ACSAC Artifact Evaluation Track, PETS, WiSec
- 2018: WWW (S&P Track); CCS; Wisec: ISI (TPC Chair); SciSec
- 2017: IEEE ISBA (TPC Co-Chair), WiSec, SEC, ESORICS, WPES
- 2016: IEEE RFID (TPC Co-Chair), Protocols and Security Track), CCS, ESORICS, WiSec, CANS, WPES, SPVAN, RFIDSec
- 2015: USENIX Security, NSS, RFIDSec, ESORICS, CCS, ICCCN, LightSec, ICISC