Hongsheng Hu

Dr. Hongsheng Hu is currently a Lecturer in the School of Information and Physical Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia, specializing in the Data Science and Statistics focus area. Prior to this position, he served as a Postdoc Research Fellow at CSIRO's Data61 from October 2022 to August 2024. His academic journey includes a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, establishing his foundation in advanced computing systems.

Dr. Hu's research centers on enhancing the trustworthiness of machine learning systems, with particular emphasis on identifying critical privacy vulnerabilities within machine learning models and developing robust defensive strategies. His work spans several key domains including adversarial machine learning (30% focus), statistical data science (30% focus), and data and information privacy (40% focus). He investigates membership inference attacks, machine unlearning techniques, and privacy-preserving mechanisms in federated learning environments. His research addresses fundamental challenges in AI security, exploring how machine learning models can be compromised through sophisticated privacy attacks and developing methods to mitigate these vulnerabilities while maintaining model utility.

Analysis of Dr. Hu's publication record reveals a strong research trajectory focused on machine learning security and privacy. His work consistently addresses vulnerabilities in machine learning systems, particularly examining membership inference attacks, machine unlearning mechanisms, and privacy-preserving techniques in federated learning. The research spans top-tier venues including IEEE Security & Privacy, USENIX Security, NDSS, NeurIPS, IJCAI, AAAI, and WWW, demonstrating both technical depth and recognition by the research community. His publications show an evolving focus from foundational privacy attacks to developing more sophisticated unlearning techniques and robust defense mechanisms, with increasing citation counts indicating growing impact in the field.

• Active Program Committee member for USENIX Security, NDSS, ICLR, IJCAI, WWW, ICDM, ECML, and PKDD
• Invited reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (IPAMI), and ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)

Dr. Hu currently serves as Course Coordinator for STAT6020 and STAT2020 Predictive Analytics at the University of Newcastle. As an academic supervisor, he co-supervises one PhD student working on 'Identifying and Mitigating Vulnerability in Recommender Systems' at Macquarie University. His research collaborations span multiple countries, with significant publication counts in Australia (18), China (12), New Zealand (10), and the United States (7), reflecting an active international research network focused on AI security challenges.