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Yinzhi CaoView profile

Associate Professor

• Security and privacy of machine learning
• Web security and privacy
• Mobile security and privacy
• +1 more

Yinzhi Cao is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science . He serves as Technical Director of the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and is affiliated with the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute and the Institute for Assured Autonomy . Cao joined JHU in 2018 from Lehigh University, where he was an Assistant Professor. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Computer Science, Northwestern University (2014) Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University (2008) Research Interests focus on security and privacy of web, mobile, and machine learning systems . Key projects include Vulnerability Analysis of Web Applications and Security, Privacy, and Fairness Analysis of ML Systems . His work addresses prototype pollution in JavaScript, node.js vulnerabilities, browser fingerprinting, federated learning privacy, and automated exploit generation. Scientific Recognition includes the NSF CAREER Award (2021) DARPA Young Faculty Award (2022) & Director's Fellowship (2024) Amazon Research Awards (2022, 2017) IEEE Security & Privacy Test of Time Award (2025) Distinguished Paper Awards at IEEE S&P 2025, CCS 2023, USENIX Security 2022 Advising & Grants highlight mentorship of 20+ PhD and Master’s students across institutions. Major grants include $1.2M collaborative CICI TCR grant (2024-2026) with Dr. John Aucott $750K DARPA YFA grant (2022-2025) $500K NSF SaTC grant (2022-2025) NSF EAGER grant (2016-2017) Labs & Teams : Affiliated with Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute , Data Science AI Institute , and Institute for Assured Autonomy . Collaborates with institutions like Columbia, UC Santa Barbara, and SRI International. His group investigates real-world vulnerabilities in over 2,500 websites and NPM packages, uncovering 80+ zero-day issues.

Meng XuView profile

Assistant Professor

• System Security
• Software Security
• Automated Program Analysis
• +4 more

Meng Xu is an Assistant Professor in the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is affiliated with the Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) group and the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI). His research focuses on system and software security, emphasizing secure-by-design languages (e.g., Rust, Move), automated program analysis, and runtime defense techniques. Education : Ph.D., Computer Science (2020), Georgia Institute of Technology B.Eng. and B.Business (First Class Honors), Nanyang Technological University (2014) Research Interests : Secure-by-design languages Automated security analysis (fuzzing, symbolic execution) Runtime defense mechanisms (moving target defense, secure hardware) Key Awards : EAPLS Best Paper Award (2022) USENIX Security Distinguished Paper Award (2018) Grants & Funding : BlackBerry Research Grant (CAD $200,000) Amazon Research Award (USD $60,000) NSERC Discovery Grant (CAD $170,000) Labs & Collaborations : CrySP (Cryptography, Security, and Privacy Group) Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI)

Alexandre BartelView profile

Professor

• software security
• software engineering
• system security
• +5 more

Alexandre Bartel is a Professor in the Department of Computing Science at Umeå University, Sweden, specializing in software security and software engineering. His research focuses on system security and analysis of permission-based software stacks, particularly Android. With numerous publications in top-tier security and software engineering conferences and journals, Bartel has established himself as a leading researcher in vulnerability analysis and software security. Bartel's research interests primarily center around software security, with a particular emphasis on Java and Android ecosystems. His work delves into vulnerability analysis, deserialization attacks, control flow integrity, and security mechanisms for complex software systems. He investigates how to verify security properties through efficient algorithms and examines existing software layers from a security perspective. His research bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implementation challenges in real-world systems. Analysis of Bartel's recent publications reveals a strong focus on Java deserialization vulnerabilities, control flow integrity mechanisms, and Android security. His work demonstrates a consistent trajectory from fundamental vulnerability analysis to developing practical security solutions and benchmarks. The research spans both theoretical frameworks and empirical evaluations, with significant contributions to understanding long-term security adoption patterns and developing tools for vulnerability detection. Scientific Awards: Most influential Paper ICSE N-10 Award for IccTA: Detecting Inter-Component Privacy Leaks in Android Apps Bartel actively contributes to the academic community through service roles, having served on program committees for major conferences including ASE, ESEC/FSE, ICSE, and FSE. His research has practical implications for software developers and security practitioners, particularly in the areas of vulnerability detection and security mechanism implementation. While specific grant information isn't detailed in the provided materials, his extensive publication record suggests successful funding for his research initiatives. Though not explicitly detailed in the provided information, Bartel's research likely involves collaboration with students and researchers on projects related to software security analysis. His work on benchmarks like Gleipner and CONFUZZION suggests involvement in developing tools and resources for the security research community.

Vasileios P. KemerlisView profile

Associate Professor

• Software Security
• Hardware Security
• Systems Security
• +4 more

Vasileios P. Kemerlis is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, where he conducts research in systems and software security. He serves as the director of the Secure Systems Lab (SSL) and is a recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER Award. His work focuses on practical security solutions for real-world systems. Dr. Kemerlis specializes in software, hardware, and systems security with particular emphasis on OS kernel protection, software hardening, fuzz testing, and information flow tracking. His research bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implementations that can be deployed in commodity systems. His work often leverages hardware features to build more robust security mechanisms while maintaining system performance. His recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on memory safety, control flow integrity, and practical security mechanisms that can be deployed in real-world systems. His work spans multiple security domains including kernel security, network security, and application security, with a strong emphasis on developing solutions that balance security guarantees with practical performance considerations. Scientific Awards: NSF CAREER Award Dr. Kemerlis teaches advanced security courses at Brown University including CSCI 1650: Software Security and Exploitation (offered Fall 2016-2024) and CSCI 2951U: Topics in Software Security (offered Spring 2016-2018, 2020, 2021, 2024). As director of the Secure Systems Lab, he leads research efforts that have resulted in numerous publications at top security venues including IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, ACM CCS, and USENIX Security. The Secure Systems Lab under his direction focuses on developing practical security solutions that can be deployed in real-world systems, with recent work exploring hardware-assisted security mechanisms, binary hardening techniques, and novel approaches to memory safety.

Joanna Cecilia da Silva SantosView profile

Assistant Professor

• Software Engineering
• Software Security
• Program Analysis
• +3 more

Joanna Cecilia da Silva Santos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. She leads the Security and Software Engineering research lab (S²E) and has established herself as a significant contributor to software security and program analysis research. Her educational background includes: Ph.D. in Computing and Information Sciences from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) M.Sc. in Software Engineering from RIT B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Federal University of Sergipe (UFS) Dr. Santos's research spans multiple domains at the intersection of Software Engineering and Security. Her work encompasses Software Security, Program Analysis, Code Generation, Software Architecture, and emerging work in Quantum Software Engineering. She investigates vulnerabilities in software systems, develops static analysis techniques, and critically examines the security implications of AI-generated code. Her recent publications reveal a strategic shift toward evaluating the security risks of large language models in software development, while maintaining expertise in traditional program analysis. This dual focus positions her work at the cutting edge of both established and emerging software engineering challenges. Dr. Santos has received notable recognition: Best Paper Award at the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) Distinguished Reviewer Award at ESEC/FSE 2023 Research Pitch Competition winner at JOBS Workshop @MICRO'20 CAPES Scholarship recipient for masters studies at RIT (2014) As an active member of the research community, she serves on program committees for major conferences including ICSE, FSE, and ASE across multiple years. Her leadership extends to mentoring students through the S²E lab at Notre Dame, where she guides research in security-focused software engineering.

• System Security
• Automatic Software Testing
• Threat Mitigation
• +6 more

Dr. Flavio Toffalini serves as Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity at Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) since September 2024, holding the Chair for Automated Security Analysis. His research group focuses on advancing system security through innovative approaches to software testing and trusted computing. Dr. Toffalini completed his Ph.D. at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in 2021 under Professor Jianying Zhou, followed by postdoctoral research at EPFL's HexHive group with Professor Mathias Payer. His educational background includes a Master's degree from the University of Verona (2015) focused on web security. His research centers on system security with emphasis on automatic software testing (particularly fuzzing), threat mitigation, and trusted execution environments (SGX, TrustZone). Current projects explore browser/interpreter testing, memory safety mechanisms, and compiler-assisted security hardening. He actively develops novel fuzzing techniques to uncover deep vulnerabilities in complex systems. Analysis of his 2023-2025 publications reveals dominant themes in JavaScript engine security (DUMPLING), adaptive fuzzing (TuneFuzz), and trusted computing hardening (TLBlur). His work bridges theoretical security concepts with practical implementations, often yielding tools adopted by the security community. Notable scientific recognition includes: Distinguished Paper award at NDSS 2025 for JavaScript engine fuzzing research Distinguished Paper award at NDSS 2025 for type confusion mitigation Best Paper award at ACNS 2022 for IoT attestation systems Dr. Toffalini currently supervises three Ph.D. students (Tobias Wienand at RUB, Nicolas Badoux and Han Zheng at EPFL) and has guided multiple MSc theses. His research is supported through projects in software analysis, vulnerability detection, and system security, with active recruitment for students specializing in fuzzing and trusted computing. He leads the Automated Security Analysis research group at RUB, maintaining strong collaborations with EPFL's HexHive group. The team actively develops tools for interpreter testing, reverse engineering, and trusted execution environment security, with current projects focusing on extending fuzzing to new programming languages and mitigating microarchitectural vulnerabilities.

Junfeng YangView profile

Professor

• Reliable Systems
• Computer Security
• Software Engineering
• +3 more

Junfeng Yang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University and co-director of the Software Systems Lab. His research focuses on reliable and secure systems, including tools for software protection, cloud programming systems, and machine learning robustness. He earned his BS from Tsinghua University and PhD from Stanford University, where he developed eXplode, a system for detecting storage system errors. Yang has held roles at Microsoft Research and co-founded NimbleDroid, a Columbia spin-off focused on app performance analysis. Key awards include the Sloan Research Fellowship (2012), AFOSR YIP Award (2012), and NSF CAREER Award (2011). His work has been featured in venues like ACM Tech News and Linux Weekly News. He advises numerous PhD students and has contributed to projects such as DeepXplore (best paper at SOSP '17) and Chablis (best paper at CIDR '24). His teaching includes courses on software engineering, blockchain systems, and reliable software design. Yang’s contributions span academic grants from NSF, ONR, and DARPA, alongside industry collaborations with Google, Facebook, and Amazon. His lab develops systems for concurrency, security, and AI-driven software tools, reflecting a commitment to bridging theory and practical system implementation.

Qing YangView profile

Professor

• Computer Architectures
• Hardware/Software Designs for AI
• Machine Learning
• +2 more

Qing Yang is a Professor at the University of Rhode Island's College of Engineering , specializing in Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering. His research spans Computer Architectures , Hardware/Software Designs for AI , Machine Learning , Data Storage , and Computer Networks . Ph.D., Computer Engineering, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 1988 M.A., Electrical Engineering, University of Toronto, 1985 B.S., Computer Science, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, 1982 Yang's work focuses on advanced computing systems, including FPGA optimization, in-sensor processing for ADAS, and secure die-to-die communication architectures. His publications highlight innovations in storage systems, graph processing acceleration, and thermal monitoring for data centers. Recent research trends emphasize AI hardware acceleration , runtime security mechanisms , and smart storage solutions , with articles published in venues like FPGA, IEEE NAS, and ACM Transactions on Storage. Yang has secured multiple National Science Foundation grants for projects such as "Introducing a New In-Sensor Computing Architecture for Intelligent 3-D Imaging Systems." His inventions in data recovery and cache coherence have resulted in 14 U.S. patents , several of which were commercialized through a startup.

Alexandre BartelView profile

Professor

• Software Engineering
• Computer Security
• Android Security
• +3 more

Alexandre Bartel is a Professor at Umeå University's Department of Computing Science and a member of the Research Management Group Software at the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP). His primary research focuses on software engineering and computer security, with particular emphasis on Java vulnerabilities, Android security, and cryptographic systems. His recent publications highlight trends in Control Flow Integrity (CFI) adoption Java deserialization attacks Android malware detection using BERT Blockchain wallet security JVM fuzzing for type confusion Secure development practices As head of the Software Engineering and Security research group, he contributes to advancing security methodologies for complex software systems, particularly in collaboration with European research initiatives.