Alumni Information

Former PhD Students and Inital Positions

• Mestan Firat Celiktug (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Enhancing Privacy and Security in Distributed Data Analytics Using Statistical Learning
  Graduation year: Dec. 2025
  First employer: Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
• Chengen Wang (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Towards Secure, Reliable, and Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning
  Graduation year: Dec. 2025
  First employer: Data Security Technologies LLC
• Kunal Mukherjee (Ph.D.) (co-advised with Dr. Kangkook Jee)
  Thesis title: IOT Integration, Adversarial Attacks, and Threat Explanations In Provenance-based Intrusion Detection Systems
  Graduation year: May 2025
  First employer: Post-doc @VT -> Zillow
• Mustafa Sefa Ozdayi (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Towards Trustworthy Machine Learning
  Graduation year: Dec. 2023
  First employer: Qualtrics
• Vibha Chandramouli Belavadi (Ph.D., co-advised with Prof. Thuraisingham)
  Thesis title: Adversarial Machine Learning for Social Good
  Graduation year: Aug 2022
  First employer: Adobe
• Harsh Bimal Desai (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Using Public and Private Blockchains for Secure Data Sharing and Analytics
  Graduation year: Aug 2022
  First employer: Mandiant
• Aref Asvadishirehjini (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Ensuring Integrity, Privacy and Fairness for Machine Learning using Trusted Execution Environments
  Graduation year: Dec 2021
  First employer: Facebook
• Imrul Anindya (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Risks Raised By Record Linkage
  Graduation year: Dec 2020
  First employer: Microsoft
• Kelvin Mai (Ph.D., co-advised with Alvaro Cardenas)
  Thesis title: Anomaly Detection in SCADA Networks Using Expert Models and Machine Learning Based Techniques
  Graduation year: Dec 2020
  First employer: Department of Defense
• Fahad Shaon (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Secure Cloud Data Analytics with Trusted Processors
  Graduation year: Dec 2019
  First employer: DataSecTech
• Ceren Abay (Ph.D., co-advised with Prof. Thuraisingham)
  Thesis title: Using Machine Learning Techniques for Prediction and Data Generation with Applications to Data Privacy
  Graduation year: Dec 2019
  First employer: Visa Inc.
• Yasmeen Alufaisan (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Towards Algorithmic Accountability in Data Mining
  Graduation year: August 2018
  First employer: Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University
• Huseyin Ulusoy (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Towards Accountable Big Data Management Systems
  Graduation year: Dec 2015
  First employer: SAP
• Erman Pattuk (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Enhancing Privacy in Cloud-Based Data Management Services
  Graduation year: May 2015
  First employer: Linkedin
• Saiful Islam (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Security Issues Due to Outsourcing Sensitive Data to the Untrusted Remote Server
  Graduation year: May 2014
  First employer: Microsoft
• Vaibhav Khadilkar (Ph.D., co-advised with Prof. Thuraisingham)
  Thesis title: Assured Information Sharing Using the Cloud
  Graduation year: December 2013
  First employer: NutraSpace LLC
• Mehmet Kuzu (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Practical Privacy Preserving Record Integration and Search
  Graduation year: August 2013
  First employer: Google
• Robert Nix (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Efficient incentive compatible secure data sharing
  Graduation year: December 2012
  First employer: Lipscomb University
• Raymond Heatherly (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Privacy-preserving social network analysis
  Graduation year: August 2011
  First employer: Vanderbilt University
• Mustafa Canim (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: Exploiting modern hardware for secure data management
  Graduation year: May 2011
  First employer: IBM Watson Research Center
• Ali Inan (Ph.D.)
  Thesis title: A hybrid approach to private record linkage
  Graduation year: August 2010
  First employer: Isik University
• Ryan Layfield (Ph.D., co-advised with Prof. Thuraisingham)
  Thesis title: Using game theory to mitigate the effects of a bioterrorist attack.
  Graduation year: 2008
  First employer: Cisco
• Li Liu (Ph.D., co-advised with Prof. Thuraisingham)
  Thesis title: Perturbation based privacy preserving data mining techniques for real-world data.
  Graduation year: 2008
  First employer: Ebay

Former MS Students

• Mughees Ur Rehman (M.S.)
  Thesis title:Synthesizing Suricata Rules from Raw Network Traffic
  Graduation year: May 2026
  First employer: PhD student at Purdue University
• Kanchan Waikar (M.S.)
  Thesis title: Big Data Sanitization Using Scalable In-Memory Frameworks
  Graduation year: May 2017
  First employer: Amazon
• Ankit Malhotra (M.S.)
  Thesis title: Privacy preserving Data Stores for Mobile Platforms
  Graduation year: May 2014
  First employer: Verizon
• Abhijith Shastry (M.S.)
  Thesis title: Behavioral analysis resistant malware for mobile phones
  Graduation year: August 2011
  First employer: Google
• Jack Lindamood (M.S.)
  Thesis title: Privacy preserving methods in social networking data
  Graduation year: 2008
  First employer: Facebook