Thanh H. Nguyen

Thanh H. Nguyen is an active Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. She teaches courses including Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (CS 471/571) and Multi-Agent Systems (CS 410/510), with office hours held in Deschutes Hall.

Her educational background includes a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (2016), a postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan (2016-2018), and a B.Sc. from Hanoi University of Science and Technology. Her research bridges theoretical AI with practical applications addressing real-world societal challenges.

Dr. Nguyen's work focuses on Artificial Intelligence applications for societal benefit, particularly in Public Safety and Security (urban crime prevention, counterterrorism), Cybersecurity (protection from stealthy botnets), Sustainability (wildlife and fish protection), and Public Health (diabetes prevention). Her research integrates techniques from Multi-Agent Systems, Game Theory, Machine Learning, and Optimization with insights from Psychology and Conservation Biology.

Her recent publications demonstrate strong trends in security games, adversarial learning, and health applications, with significant focus on strategic deception, robust decision-making under uncertainty, and real-world deployment of AI systems. The work shows increasing interdisciplinary collaboration and practical implementation of theoretical models.

• Deployed Application Award (IAAI 2016) for PAWS wildlife protection system
• Runner-up Best Innovative Application Paper Award (AAMAS 2016)
• WiSE Merit Fellowship from University of Southern California (2015)
• Runner-Up Best Paper Award at Recourse-21 Workshop (ICML 2021)
• Army Research Office Grant (~$343K) for Adversarial Reasoning (2020-2023)

Dr. Nguyen actively advises PhD students including Sarah Kinsey and Michael Dushkoff (co-advised with Prof. Allen D. Malony), along with numerous master's and undergraduate students. Her research has received significant grant funding, including an Army Research Office grant for developing methods to tackle sequential and coordinated attacks in security domains with real-time information. Her work on the PAWS (Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security) system has been deployed by NGOs like Panthera and the Wildlife Conversation Society in conservation areas in Malaysia and Uganda.

She leads the AI Lab at the University of Oregon, which focuses on multiple research projects including AI for Public Health, Deception in Security Games, Security in Data-based Decision Making, Information Leakage and Exploration, and Game Theory for Cybersecurity. The lab maintains strong industry and NGO partnerships for real-world application of research findings.