I am an assistant professor in Computer Science at Kansas State University. I recently earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Penn State University. I was honored to be advised by Tom La Porta and Trent Jaeger. I am also grateful for the IBM Research collaboration and guidance from Teryl Taylor and Fred Araujo. My research focuses on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) security, optimization for defense placement, P4 programming, and machine learning–assisted security. My work has appeared in ACM CCS and USENIX Security and has led to the disclosure of multiple CVEs affecting widely used SDN controllers. I have hands-on experience with open-source SDN platforms, having contributed code to OpenDaylight earlier in my career. I also serve on program committees and artifact evaluation boards in the security community.

PhD Openings

I am recruiting two fully funded PhD students for Spring or Fall 2026 to design and build a next-generation SDN testbed. Research topics include:

• SDN-orchestrated Smart Agriculture: Our flagship vertical, where a unified orchestrator securely coordinates UAVs, in-field sensors, and edge compute via an SDN controller—abstracting heterogeneous resources and enabling closed-loop sensing-to-actuation for crop monitoring and management, supporting food security.

  Why smart agriculture? We maintain active collaborations with precision-agriculture faculty at K-State.

• Security & Privacy of next-G Network Slicing: Security — enforce trustworthy network state to maintain Service Level Agreement (SLA), isolation, and correct slice routing/placement in network slicing, preventing controller–ground-truth mismatches. Privacy — share synthetic per-slice views that reveal only what’s needed for coordination and resource negotiation.
• Security of SDN and Programmable Data Planes: Build a protocol-agnostic security toolbox—combining misuse-driven testing, interface-aware fuzzing, and dynamic invariants—to uncover and mitigate cross-layer vulnerabilities.

How to apply: Please email your CV, transcript, and a brief research statement.

News

• [05/19/2025] I’m excited to be joining Kansas State University as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in August 2025! I’m looking for motivated PhD students interested in networked systems and security research. Feel free to send me your CV if interested.

• [02/18/2025] I successfully defended my thesis! I am deeply grateful for the invaluable mentorship and guidance from my committee and collaborators!

• [01/29/2025] I am serving as a Program Committee member for the IEEE/ACM Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings 2025).

• [11/26/2024] I am honored to have been selected as a member of the USENIX Security 2025 Artifact Evaluation Committee.

• [10/08/2024] I will be delivering two presentations (11 am Oct 14, 2:45 pm Oct 17) at CCS 2024 in Salt Lake City, USA (Oct 14-18, 2024). Looking forward to engaging in research discussions!

• [10/08/2024] I will be presenting two posters at Penn State Industry Day 2024.

• [08/25/2024] My submission of “Evolving Network Security In the Era of Network Programmability” has been accepted for presentation at the ACM CCS’24 Doctoral Symposium.

• [08/24/2024] I won all badges for the artifacts evaluation of our paper “Manipulating OpenFlow Link Discovery Packet Forwarding for Topology Poisoning” at CCS 24’.

• [08/24/2024] Our paper “Manipulating OpenFlow Link Discovery Packet Forwarding for Topology Poisoning” has been accepted at CCS 24’.

• [07/29-31/2024] I presented our work “Lightweight Coordinated Sampling for Dynamic Flows under Budget Constraints” in ICCCN 24’ (Jul. 29th, 2024, Kona, HI, US).

• [06/10-14/2024] I volunteered at Penn State CSE Summer Camp.

• [05/28/2024] Our paper “OPTISAN: Using Multiple Spatial Error Defenses to Optimize Stack Memory Protection within a Budget” has been accepted at Usenix Security 24’.

• [05/02/2024] Our paper “Lightweight Coordinated Sampling for Dynamic Flows under Budget Constraints” has been accepted at ICCCN 24’.

Updated: 07/25/2025