Peng Gao

Peng Gao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. He is affiliated with the Virginia Tech Security & Intelligence Lab and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. Prior to his faculty position, he was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley and held research internships at Microsoft Research, Facebook, and NEC Laboratories America.

Education includes a B.Eng. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2009-2013), M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton (2013-2019), and an exchange program at the University of Hong Kong (2012). Key roles include Technical Program Committee memberships for conferences like IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, and CCS.

Research focuses on

• Cybersecurity (APT prevention, network security with P4/eBPF)
• AI applications (LLMs for security, AI safety)
• Systems security (attack investigation, threat intelligence)
• AI for science (molecular/materials prediction)

Notable awards include the 2022 Amazon-VT Initiative Faculty Award, CCI Fellowships, and multiple best paper nominations. His lab has received grants from CCI, NSF, and industry partners like Google Cloud and Cisco.

Teaching includes courses on Principles of Computer Security (CS 4264) and Blockchain Technologies (CS 5594). He advises ~20 students across Ph.D., MS, and undergraduate levels.