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My research develops theory and tools to aid the construction of provably dependable and secure cyber-physical systems (CPS). In a typical CPS platform, distributed embedded computers monitor and control physical processes, often through feedback loops in which the physical processes affect computations and vice versa. Specifically, my work focuses on:
i) offline cyber-physical systems modeling and security/safety-aware verification: mathematical modeling of cyber-physical platforms using conventional control-theoretic and emerging data-driven machine learning techniques, and their theoretical security and safety analyses for formal hybrid verification including software modules (discrete sequential logic) and physical processes (continuous dynamics).
ii) Online cyber-physical system security monitoring and attack detection: design of efficient solutions to monitor real-time execution of cyber and physical components via various modalities such as direct/indirect observations (e.g., software probes, physical sensors, and side-channel signals) and detect and locate malicious misbehaviors and accidental failures in cyber-physical platforms.
iii) Real-time cyber-physical resilience and intrusion response: design of effective mathematical optimization, cyber-physical security metrics, and decision-making algorithms and modules to select the best cyber and physical countermeasure strategies against misbehaviors to recover and restore the safe normal cyber-physical operation with minimal cost and in a timely manner.
My teaching philosophy is about building a harmony between formal rigor and intuitive understanding. Advancing science is my passion, and I believe it can be realized through scattering of the known, i.e., teaching and advising students, and exploration of the unknown, i.e., research on the cutting-edge scientific problems. My lifetime academic endeavor has been to foster a collaborative, collegial, and healthy competitive environment for education and knowledge growth, as well as an ecosystem that promotes innovative research. I truly enjoy engaging with students as a teacher and mentor, and I find that rewarding. The education path, in my view, is more than mere lecturing and does not end in the classroom. Effective teaching stimulates students’ minds, encourages them to think independently, and initiates their life-long learning process.
FIRA: Enabling Automatic Forensic Investigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
A Sea of Cyber Threats: Maritime Cybersecurity from the Perspective of Mariners
One Video to Steal Them All: 3D-Printing IP Theft through Optical Side-Channels
The Challenges and Opportunities with Cybersecurity Regulations: A Case Study of the US Electric Power Sector
Release the Hounds! Automated Inference and Empirical Security Evaluation of Field-Deployed PLCs using Active Network Data
ERACAN: Defending Against a Game-Changing CAN Threat Model
Compromising Industrial Processes using Web-Based Programmable Logic Controller Malware
GraphMP: Graph Neural Network-based Motion Planning with Efficient Graph Search
Get Your Cyber-Physical Tests Done! Data-Driven Vulnerability Assessment of Robotic Vehicles
Hiding in Plain Sight? On the Efficacy of Power Side Channel-Based Control Flow Monitoring
Hiding My Real Self! Protecting 3D Printer Intellectual Property Against Optical Side-Channel Attacks
Reverse Engineering and Retrofitting Robotic Aerial Vehicle Control Firmware using Dis Patch