Gang (Gary) Tan is a Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University, co-directing the Institute for Networking and Security Research (INSR). His research bridges computer security, formal methods, and programming languages to develop practical solutions for software vulnerabilities and AI fairness. Education: B.E. in Computer Science from Tsinghua University Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University Dr. Tan specializes in applying compiler techniques and formal verification to security challenges, with seminal work on cache side-channel attacks and fairness in machine learning. His Security of Software (SOS) Group develops frameworks that integrate theoretical guarantees into real-world systems, emphasizing measurable security outcomes and ethical AI. Recent projects focus on quantifying bias in neural networks and mitigating speculative execution vulnerabilities. Analysis of his 2021-2025 publications reveals a strategic pivot toward AI security, where he pioneers methods for fairness testing (e.g., information-theoretic debugging) and repair (e.g., NeuFair). Concurrently, his security work evolves from foundational side-channel research (SpecSafe, 2021) toward hardware-software co-design solutions, demonstrating consistent innovation across theoretical and applied domains. Scientific Awards: James F. Will Career Development Professorship NSF CAREER Award Google Research Award (two instances) Distinguished Reviewer Award at 2018 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy Outstanding Research Award at Penn State Ruth and Joel Spira Excellence in Teaching Award Best Paper Award at PLDI 2024 Dr. Tan leads the SOS Group with funding from NSF (including CAREER), DARPA (ISAT study group membership), and industry partners like Google. His grants support interdisciplinary projects spanning secure compilation, fairness engineering, and hardware security, while his teaching excellence award reflects commitment to pedagogy in core systems courses. He co-directs Penn State's Institute for Networking and Security Research (INSR), fostering collaboration between systems, security, and AI researchers. The SOS Group maintains active partnerships with industry security teams and contributes to open-source tools for vulnerability detection, with recent work expanding into fairness certification for machine learning pipelines.



