Roya Ensafi

Roya Ensafi is the Morris Wellman Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. She is the Founder and Director of the Censored Planet Lab, which focuses on Internet censorship measurement and digital equity. Her research lies at the intersection of networking, security, and privacy, with a strong emphasis on detecting censorship, surveillance, and digital inequity through scalable systems.

• Positions: Associate Professor (University of Michigan), Lab Director (Censored Planet)
• Recent Awards: Sloan Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER (2023), IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2016, 2022, 2023), USENIX Security Internet Defense Prize (2022)

Her work develops systems like Censored Planet for global censorship monitoring, VPNalyzer for evaluating commercial VPN security, and Splintering Net for studying regionalized Internet access. By combining remote measurement techniques with user studies, her research addresses both technical and policy dimensions of digital freedom. Key methodologies include TLS handshake analysis, cross-layer latency metrics, and large-scale network probing.

The Censored Planet project operates a global censorship detection network covering 221 countries, while VPNalyzer received the Consumer Reports Digital Lab fellowship. Collaborations include Google Jigsaw for data visualization systems used by over 100 organizations. Her 2024 work on digital discrimination in sanctioned states extends earlier groundbreaking research on Kazakhstan's HTTPS interception (2019) and Russia's Twitter throttling (2021).

Scientific Awards:
• 2024: Distinguished Paper Awards at USENIX Security Symposium
• 2023: NSF CAREER Award
• 2022: IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize, USENIX Security Internet Defense Prize, First Prize in Internet Defense Prize, CSAW '22 Applied Research Competition First Place
• 2021: Recognized as Highest Scoring Short Paper at ACM IMC
• 2015: IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize
• 2022: Finalist for ACUM Outstanding Advisor Award

Her lab trains both current and alumni PhD/Master's students including Ram Sundara Raman, Diwen Xue, Reethika Ramesh (now at Palo Alto Networks), and Victor Ongkowijaya (PhD at Princeton). She teaches EECS 388 Introduction to Security at the University of Michigan, covering software and network security principles. Her work has been featured in The Economist, New York Times, and BBC for analyzing global censorship trends.