I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at NC State University and the lead graduate student for the WSPR Lab. I am advised by Dr. Brad Reaves.
My research interest spans the area of system security and privacy, with an emphasis on developing data-driven techniques to study spam, abuse and fraud. I currently work on developing techniques to detect and characterize robocalls — a catch-all term for automated phone calls. Our work on characterizing robocalls won the 2020 First Place Internet Defense Prize and a Distinguished Paper Award.
Research website on all things robocalls: robocall.science
Link to my CV.
News
Oct 2024: Our paper (called Jäger) on automating telephone abuse traceback won the Distinguished Paper Award and the Distinguished Artifact Award at ACM CCS 2024.
Sept 2024: New Paper Accepted: Our work on measuring the robocalling ecosystem from multiple vantage points was accepted for publication at IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2025!
Sept 2024: I was awarded a student travel grant to attend ACM CCS 2024.
Sept 2024: Invited to present at SIPNOC 2024, a premier industry-wide conference on all things related to telephony.
Aug 2024: New Paper Accepted: Our work on automating telephone call tracebacks (identifying the originator of illegal robocalls with strong security and privacy guarantees) was published at ACM CCS 2024! Check out the paper (called Jäger) and the system prototype implementation.
May 2024: Research proposal on studying Non-English Robocalls accepted at the Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro 2024)
May 2024: New Paper Accepted: Our work on characterizing the SMS-Phishing ecosystem ("On SMS Phishing Tactics and Infrastructure") will appear at IEEE S&P 2024!
Feb 2024: Invited talk at the North Carolina Cybersecurity Symposium
Nov 2023: Released a new curated dataset along with a technical report describing the collection of real-world robocall recordings.
Nov 2023: Invited talk at TAPS -- UNC Chapel Hill (Triangle Area Privacy and Security Conference).
Sept 2023: I'm one of the selected senior PhD students serving on a student panel at CAE-R Symposium
Sept 2023: Invited talk at SIPNOC 2023
Aug 2023: Research talk at USENIX Security 2023
Aug 2023: Invited talk at J.P. Morgan AI Research.
May 2023: Invited talk at Resideo.
April 2023: Looking forward to working with the Industry Traceback Group over the summer to combat illegal robocalls.
April 2023: I’m serving on the IEEE Security and Privacy Program Committee
April 2023: I’m serving on the WiSec Artifact Evaluation committee
Feb 2023: I’m presenting a poster on analyzing robocall audio content at NDSS 2023, San Diego.
Feb 2023: Grateful to be nomination for the Carla Savage Award for outstanding service!
Jan 2023: Our paper “Diving into Robocall Content with SnorCall” was accepted at USENIX Security 2023!
Jan 2023: I’m attending the NC-PaCE Cybersecurity Symposium.
Dec 2022: I’m serving on the 2023 ACM WiSec Program Committee!
Oct 2022: I’m serving on the ACSAC Artifact Evaluation committee
May 2022: Looking forward to an exciting summer internship with the Data Science research group at Mandiant (recently acquired by Google).
May 2022: Career Milestone: I passed my Oral Preliminary/Qualifying Exam. I’m officially a Doctoral candidate!
Apr 2022: Excited to attend RAG 2022 as an invited panelist.
Mar 2022: I’m serving on the WiSec 2022 Replicability Committee.
Mar 2022: I’m part of the IEEE S&P 2022 Poster Jury committee.
Feb 2021: I’m virtually attending NDSS 2021!
Feb 2021: I’m excited to deliver an invited talk at the Privacy and Security Seminar at Duke University.
Jan 2021: I’ll be the TA for the Cellular Network Security course. This course will discuss the secure design and operations of cellular and telephone networks, with a focus on recent research in the area.
Jan 2021: Looking forward to my summer internship at Bandwidth where I’ll be working on fraud and abuse mitigation.
Dec 2020: I passed my written prelim exam!
Dec 2020: Participated in an invited discussion at University of Michigan about our work on robocalls.
Nov 2020: Our work was featured in the NC State College of Engineering Magazine! Webpage and Magazine-PDF
Oct 2020: I’ll be (virtually) attending IMC 2020!
Sept 2020: As a co-author, I wrote an article for The Conversation (a non-profit global news network) about our work on robocalls.
Aug 2020: Our work on Robocalls won the Distinguished Paper Award and the Internet Defense Prize ($100,000 Research Grant) at USENIX Security 2020!
Aug 2020: I’m excited to present our work on characterizing robocalls at USENIX Security 2020! Check out our blog and the paper.
July 2020: In an interview, I talk about my role in our team’s initiative to provide accurate information to international students studying in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic.
July 2020: I’ll be attending the ACM WiSec conference!
May 2020: Our paper Who’s Calling? Characterizing Robocalls through Audio and Metadata Analysis was accepted at USENIX Security 2020!
Feb 2020: Won the Best Poster Presentation Award at NDSS 2020!
Jan 2020: Awarded a student travel grant to attend NDSS 2020. I’ll be presenting a poster on our ongoing work about characterizing Robocalls. Thanks ISOC and NDSS!
Oct 2019: Excited to meet fellow security & privacy researchers in the RTP area and present a poster on our ongoing work about Robocalls at TAPS
Sept 2019: Our paper Thou Shalt Discuss Security: Quantifying the Impacts of Instructions to RFC Authors was accepted at SSR 2019
Aug 2018: Excited to start my grad school journey at NC State. Go Wolfpack!