Mustaque Ahamad

Mustaque Ahamad

Mustaque Ahamad

Associate Director, Education and Outreach IISP; Professor

Mustaque Ahamad, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of Education & Outreach for the Institute for Information Security & Privacy (IISP) and professor in the College of Computing at Georiga Tech. Within the IISP, he seeks to proactively address challenges associated with workforce development in cybersecurity. With oversight of formal degree programs and continuing education for working professionals, he is an advocate for greater cybersecurity education and training in order to meet the collective needs of industry and government. Ahamad's research interests are in the areas of converged communications security and security of healthcare systems. As smart-phone-like devices enable ubiquitous access to web and voice channels, the convergence of telephony with the Internet gives rise to new cross-channel threats that can combine online and voice attacks. For example, voice phishing with caller-ID spoofing has been reported for stealing online banking credentials. His data-driven research approach for exploring cross-channel threats has resulted in a better understanding of these threats and more effective ways to combat them. In the healthcare security area, he has worked on monitoring for detection of abuse and fraud. Ahamad co-founded Pindrop Security, which commercialized his group's research in the telephony security area, and he continues to serve as its chief scientist. He also serves as co-chair of the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) special interest group on voice and telephony abuse. He also served as an external advisor for the Federal Trade Commission for telephony abuse. For nearly 20 years, he has been a leading figure in information security as an associate of the IISP's predecessor -- the Georgia Tech Information Security Center -- since 1998 and including serving as its director from 2004 to 2012. He earned his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Computer Science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a B.E. (Hons.) degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India. Mustaque Ahamad, Ph.D., is the Associate Director of Education & Outreach for the Institute for Information Security & Privacy (IISP) and professor in the College of Computing at Georiga Tech. Within the IISP, he seeks to proactively address challenges associated with workforce development in cybersecurity. With oversight of formal degree programs and continuing education for working professionals, he is an advocate for greater cybersecurity education and training in order to meet the collective needs of industry and government. Ahamad's research interests are in the areas of converged communications security and security of healthcare systems. As smart-phone-like devices enable ubiquitous access to web and voice channels, the convergence of telephony with the Internet gives rise to new cross-channel threats that can combine online and voice attacks. For example, voice phishing with caller-ID spoofing has been reported for stealing online banking credentials. His data-driven research approach for exploring cross-channel threats has resulted in a better understanding of these threats and more effective ways to combat them. In the healthcare security area, he has worked on monitoring for detection of abuse and fraud. Ahamad co-founded Pindrop Security, which commercialized his group's research in the telephony security area, and he continues to serve as its chief scientist. He also serves as co-chair of the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) special interest group on voice and telephony abuse. He also served as an external advisor for the Federal Trade Commission for telephony abuse. For nearly 20 years, he has been a leading figure in information security as an associate of the IISP's predecessor -- the Georgia Tech Information Security Center -- since 1998 and including serving as its director from 2004 to 2012. He earned his Master's and Doctoral degrees in Computer Science from the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a B.E. (Hons.) degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.

mustaq@cc.gatech.edu

404.894.2593

Website

Research Focus Areas:
  • Network and Security Vulnerability Analysis
  • Additional Research:
    Healthcare Security; Mobile & Wireless Communications

    IRI Connections:

    Alberto Dainotti

    Associate Professor Alberto Dainotti

    Alberto Dainotti

    Associate Professor

    Alberto Dainotti is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech where is the Director of the Internet Intelligence Lab. His research is at the intersection of Internet measurement, data science and cybersecurity. He is interested in understanding when and how Internet infrastructure can fail and proposing remedies. To this end, he develops methods and builds near-real-time streaming data analytics systems (IODA, BGPStream, GRIP) that combine diverse data to monitor and improve Internet infrastructure security and reliability. He is also interested in understanding political motivations and implications of Internet cybersecurity events and phenomena. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was an Associate Research Scientist and Principal Investigator at CAIDA, the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. He received my Ph.D. in Computer Engineering and Systems at University of Napoli "Federico II", Italy, in 2008.

    dainotti@gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    Klaus Advanced Computing Building, #3336

    Internet Intelligence Lab @ Georgia Tech

    Google Scholar

    Additional Research:
    • Data Analytics
    • Internet Data Science
    • Internet & Democracy
    • Networking, Systems, Security
    • Network Measurements

     


    IRI Connections:

    Vijay Ganesh

    Vijay Ganesh, Professor of Computer Science

    Vijay Ganesh

    Professor

    Dr. Vijay Ganesh is a professor of computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2023, Vijay was a professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada from 2012 to 2023 and a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2007 to 2012. Vijay completed his PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2007. Vijay's primary area of research is the theory and practice of SAT/SMT solvers, and their application in AI, software engineering, security, mathematics, and physics. In this context he has led the development of many SAT/SMT solvers, most notably, STP, Z3str4, AlphaZ3, MapleSAT, and MathCheck. He has also proved several decidability and complexity results in the context of first-order theories. More recently he has started working on topics at the intersection of learning and reasoning, especially the use of machine learning for efficient solvers, and the use of solvers aimed at making AI more trustworthy, secure, and robust. For his research, Vijay has won over 30 awards, honors, and medals to-date, including an ACM Impact Paper Award at ISSTA 2019, ACM Test of Time Award at CCS 2016, and a Ten-Year Most Influential Paper citation at DATE 2008.

    vganesh@gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Room 2320

    CoC Profile Page

  • Personal Website
  • Google Scholar

    Additional Research:
    • AI for Scientific and Mathematical Discovery
    • Automated Reasoning - SAT/SMT Solvers and Provers
    • NeuroSymbolic AI via Reasoning and Learning
    • Secure and Trustworthy AI and Machine Learning

    IRI Connections:

    Qirun Zhang

    Qirun Zhang

    Qirun Zhang

    Assistant Professor
    Qirun Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His main area of research is programming languages, focusing on program analysis and testing. His compiler testing work has led to 300+ confirmed/fixed bugs in important production/research compilers (such as GCC/LLVM/CompCert, Scala, and Rust) and enjoyed wide public acknowledgments from the community. His work on InterDyck-reachability received a PLDI Distinguished Paper Award. Zhang completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his B.E. in Computer Science from Zhejiang University.

    qrzhang@gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    KACB 2324

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
  • Software & Systems Security
  • Additional Research:
    Programming Languages & Correctness;

    IRI Connections:

    Roberto Perdisci

    Roberto Perdisci

    Roberto Perdisci

    Adjunct Assistant Professor
    Roberto Perdisci is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science at the University of Georgia; an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a faculty member of the UGA Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Before joining UGA, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the College of Computing of the Georgia Institute of Technology, working under the supervision of Wenke Lee. He also worked as Principal Scientist at Damballa, Inc., and prior to joining Damballa, he was Research Scholar at the Georgia Tech Information Security Center and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cagliari, Italy with the Pattern Recognition and Applications Group. His research focuses on securing networked systems. He is particularly interested in web security, automating the analysis of security incidents, and defending networks from malware. He often combines systems research with machine learning and large-scale data mining techniques to solve challenging computer and network security problems. Perdisci also is interested in broader aspects of networked systems, including Internet-scale measurements, analysis and optimization of systems performance, and the design of networking protocols. In 2012, he received the National Science Foundation CAREER award for a project titled "Automatic Learning of Adaptive Network-Centric Malware Detection Models."

    perdisci@gtisc.gatech.edu

    404.385.7624

    Website

    Additional Research:
    Data Mining & Analytics; Machine Learning; Network Security

    IRI Connections:

    Paul Pearce

    Paul Pearce

    Paul Pearce

    Assistant Professor, Computer Science
    Paul Pearce is an Assistant Professor at the Georgia Tech School of Computer Science and a Visiting Researcher at Facebook. By developing Internet-scale measurement platforms and new empirical methods, his research brings grounding and understanding to the study of large-scale, hidden Internet security problems. His work spans the areas of cybercrime, censorship, and “advanced persistent threats” (APTs). His work has been distinguished at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and he has been recognized as an EECS Distinguished Graduate Student Instructor.  Paul completed his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley advised by Vern Paxson and was a member of the Center for Evidence-based Security Research (CESR).

    pearce@gatech.edu

    Webpage

    Research Focus Areas:
  • Cybersecurity Public Policy
  • Systems and Software Security
  • Threat Intelligence and Security Analytics
  • Additional Research:
    Data Security & Privacy; Defense / National Security; Internet Infrastructure & Operating Systems; Network Security;

    IRI Connections:

    Santosh Pande

    Santosh Pande

    Santosh Pande

    Associate Professor
    Santosh Pande is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technolohgy. Pande's primary interest is in investigating static and dynamic compiler optimizations on evolving architectures. His research philosophy involves tackling practical problems which are relevant and important to the current issues in systems research and propose foundational solutions to them for good impact. Currently, his research is focused on developing compiler optimizations for embedded and configurable systems to improve code size, efficiency and power consumption. His work in this area has resulted in several techniques for efficient compilation given limited memory sizes, limited addressing modes and data paths on embedded processors. His research is primarily supported by the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.  He has published more than 40 papers in journals and conferences which include ACM Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), IEEE Real Time Systems Symposium (RTSS) and Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC) and IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS). He has also done extensive compiler development and is a part of SUIF collaborative program amongst universities. He has also managed and delivered large scale software projects to the funding agencies such as DARPA. He served as a co-guest editor for the special issue of Journal of Parallel and Distributed Systems on `Compilation Techniques for Distributed Memory Systems' published in December 1996 and also for the special issue of the Parallel Processing Letters journal on `Challenges in Compiler Optimizations for Scalable Parallel Systems' published in December 1997. He has also served on program committees of many conferences. He co-chaired ACM LCTES '01 and served on the program committee of PLDI '01. He served as an IEEE Distinguished Visitor for the period of 1996-2000.

    santosh.pande@cc.gatech.edu

    404.385.2169

    Website

    Additional Research:
    Computer Engineering; Architecture & Design; Large-Scale or Distributed Systems

    IRI Connections:

    Alessandro Orso

    Alessandro Orso

    Alessandro Orso

    Professor
    Associate School Chair
    Alessandro Orso, Ph.D., is a Professor and Associate School Chair in the School of Computer Science, College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in the areas of software engineering, with emphasis on software testing and program analysis, and include the development of techniques and tools for improving software reliability, security, and trustworthiness, and the validation of such techniques on real-world systems. Orso has received funding for his research from both government agencies, such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation as well as from industry leaders, such as Fujitsu Labs, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. He served on the editorial boards of ACM TOSEM and on the Advisory Board of Reflective Corp, served as program chair for ACM-SIGSOFT ISSTA 2010 and program co-chair for IEEE ICST 2013 and ACM-SIGSOFT FSE 2014, and will serve as program co-chair for ACM-SIGSOFT/IEEE ICSE 2017. He has also served as a technical consultant to DARPA. He is a senior member of the ACM and of the IEEE Computer Society. Orso received his Master's in Electrical Engineering (1995) and his Ph.D. in Computer Science (1999) from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Since March 2000, he has taught at Georgia Tech.

    alessandro.orso@cc.gatech.edu

    404.385.2066

    Office Location:
    KACB 2342

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
  • Systems and Software Security
  • Additional Research:
    Mobile & Wireless Communications; Programming Languages & Correctness; Software & Applications;

    IRI Connections:

    Ling Liu

    Ling Liu

    Ling Liu

    Professor
    Ling Liu, Ph.D., is a Professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology and an elected IEEE Fellow. She directs the research programs in Distributed Data Intensive Systems Lab (DiSL), examining performance, availability, security, privacy, trust and data management issues in big data systems, cloud computing and distributed computing systems. Liu and the DiSL research group have been working on various aspects of distributed data intensive systems, ranging from Big Data systems and data analytics, Cloud Computing and cloud datacenters, distributed systems, decentralized and social computing, mobile and location based services, sensor network and event stream processing, to service oriented computing and architectures. She has published over 300 international journal and conference articles. Her research group has produced a number of open source software systems, among which the most popular ones include WebCQ,  XWRAPElite, PeerCrawl, GTMobSIM, and SHAPE. Liu is a co-recipient of the best paper award from a number of conferences and organizaitons, including ICDCS 2003, WWW 2004, 2005 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award, IEEE Cloud 2012, IEEE ICWS 2013, Mobiqutious 2014, APWeb 2015, IEEE/ACM CCGrid 2015. She is a recipient of IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award in 2012 and an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor award from Georgia Institute of Technology. She has served as a general chair and a progam committee chair of numerous IEEE and ACM conferences in data engineering, very large databases and distributed computing fields. In 2006, Liu served as a co-general chair of IEEE Compsac 2016 and a co-PC chair of IEEE 2016 Big Data Conference. She has been on editorial boards of more than a dozen international journals. Currently, Liu is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Service Computing, and serves on the editorial board of numerous international journals, including ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), ACM Transactions on Web (TWEB), Distributed and Parallel Databases (Springer), and the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC). Liu's current research is primarily sponsored by the National Science Foundation, IBM, and Intel Corp.

    ling.liu@cc.gatech.edu

    404.385.1139

    Office Location:
    KACB 3340

    Website

    Additional Research:
    Cloud Security; Data Mining & Analytics; Large-Scale or Distributed Systems; Trust

    IRI Connections:

    Vladimir Kolesnikov

    Vladimir Kolesnikov

    Vladimir Kolesnikov

    Associate Professor
    Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Vlad Kolesnikov was a member of the technical staff in Bell Labs' Enabling Computing Technologies domain in Murray Hill, NJ. Kolesnikov has worked on cryptography and security since 2000. His current research interest is practical and foundational aspects of secure computation, especially of two-party computation. He has authored a number of papers and patent applications about improving and using garbled circuits, homomorphic encryption, and related techniques. His other interests include key exchange, especially its definitional aspects. Kolesnikov has been involved in the design and analysis of smart grid networks, storage area networks, wireless and biometric authentication, and other secure systems. He served on standards committees (WiMAX), and was and is a principal investigator on projects for the Office of Naval Research and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 2006.

    kolesnikov@gatech.edu

    Research Focus Areas:
  • Network and Security Vulnerability Analysis
  • Additional Research:
    Encryption; Mobile & Wireless Communications;

    IRI Connections: