Faculty
Patrick McDaniel is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and
Engineering Department at the Pennsylvania State University and
co-director of the Systems and Internet Infrastructure Security
Laboratory. Patrick's research efforts centrally focus on network,
telecommunications, and systems security, language-based security, and
technical and public policy issues in digital media. Patrick was awarded
the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and has chaired several top
conferences in security including, among others, the 2007 and 2008 IEEE
Symposium on Security and Privacy and the 2005 USENIX Security
Symposium. Patrick is the editor-in-chief of the ACM Journal
Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), and serves as associate
editor of the journals ACM Transactions on Information and System
Security, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and IEEE
Transactions on Computers.
Prior to
pursuing his Ph.D. in 1996 at the University of Michigan, Patrick was a
software architect and program manager in the telecommunications industry.
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Trent Jaeger is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and
Engineering Department at the Pennsylvania State University and
director of the Systems and Internet Infrastructure Security
Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in
1997 where he studied mechanisms and policies for controlling the
execution of mobile code. Prior to joining Penn State, Trent was a
research staff member in the Security and Networking Department at IBM
Research in the T. J. Watson Research Center.
Trent has interests in the security mechanisms and policies of
operating systems, as well as an interest in source code analysis for
improving security. Trent has been an active member of the Linux
community, including the contribution of code to the Linux Security
Modules (LSM) framework for mandatory access control, tools for
testing the correctness of the LSM framework prior to its inclusion in
Linux 2.6, and techniques for policy and source code analysis for the
SELinux community. Trent's current goals are to build tools that
enable practical retrofitting of a variety of security functions in
programs and the development of a distributed, trusted reference
monitor that enables coherent security controls across distributed
systems. Trent has participated in the program committees of several
major security conferences, and has been the Program and General Chair
of the ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies
(SACMAT) in 2001 and 2004, respectively, and Program Chair of the ACM
Conference on Communications Security (Industry Track) in 2003.
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Adam Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer
Science. He completed his B.Sc. at McGill University and his S.M. and
Ph.D. at M.I.T. under the supervision of Madhu Sudan. His research
focuses on cryptography and its connections with information theory,
statistics, and coding theory. Most recently he has been working on
protocols for handling noisy keys in cryptography, such as those based
on biometrics, and on privacy-preserving methods for publishing
aggregate statistical data.
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Lead Graduate Student
William Enck is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Computer Science
and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his
B.S. with highest distinction and honors in Computer Engineering from
Penn State in 2004 under the supervision of Dr. Chita R. Das and his
M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Penn State in 2006 under
the supervision of Dr. Patrick McDaniel.
William has worked in various aspects of computer systems. His
undergraduate research focused on NoC architectures and in 2003 he
interned at IBM Corp. in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he aided in the
development of mainframe processors. He also spent many summers working
for a small ISP in Lebanon, PA where he administered servers and
installed terrestrial wireless broadband equipment. William's graduate
studies have focused on the security of networks and computer systems,
and his investigation of vulnerabilities in SMS-capable cellular
networks, of which formed the basis of his M.S. thesis, received
international recognition in both academic venues and the press.
William's research primarily focuses on the security of mobile phone
operating system architectures, with a current focus on the Android
platform. However, his interests continue to span the vast area of
systems security.
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Graduate Students

Note: Given the large number of
applicants, the laboratory must defer all admissions issues to the
department of Computer Science and
Engineering. Hence, if you are a student looking to be admitted
to Penn State University, contact the department directly. If you are
already a student at Penn State and wish to participate in SIIS
research, please contact Professor McDaniel.
PhD Students
Kevin Butler is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science and
Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his
M.S. in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 2003 and
his B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Queen's University at
Kingston, Ontario, in 1999. He is a past recipient of a University Graduate
Fellowship as well as the C. Norwood Wherry
Graduate Fellowship in Engineering at Penn State.
Kevin has previously worked as a network operator at UUNET Canada in
Toronto, Ontario, and as a research scientist in the Applied Research
group at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bellcore) in Morristown, NJ.
He completed an extended internship in the Secure Systems Group at
AT&T Labs-Research in Florham Park, NJ, working on efficient
cryptographic constructions to secure Internet routing with Dr. Patrick
McDaniel, now his advisor at Penn State.
Kevin's research primarily focusses on systems and storage security.
He has also closely examined security and policy considerations for
interdomain routing, and has investigated issues in secure hardware,
privacy, and worm propagation across the Internet and in wireless
networks. Kevin has served on numerous program and organizing
committees for conferences and workshops, and is the Submissions
Chair for the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
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Stephen McLaughlin joined the SIIS lab in Fall 2007 and the PhD program
at The Pennsylvania State University in Spring 2008. He received his BS
in computer science and a minor in mathematics from The Pennsylvania
State University in 2007. He is interested the security applications of
novel storage technologies.
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Thomas Moyer is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science
and Enginering at Penn State. He is completing his MS thesis and will
continue with his PhD. Thomas received his BS in Computer Engineering
from Penn State in Spring 2006. During the summer of 2007, he interned
at AT&T Research at Shannon Labs in Florham Park, NJ, where he aided in
the design and development of an automated tool for router
configuration. His current work is in virtual machine security.
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Divya Muthukumaran is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering and a member of the SIIS Laboratory. She
graduated with distinction from Anna University in India with a BE in
Computer Science and Engineering. She was employed with Tata Consultancy
services as an Assistant Systems Engineer prior to pursuing graduate
studies at PSU. She is currently working on Mobile phone system
security.
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Machigar Ongtang is a PhD candidate in the department of Computer
Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. She
graduated from Mahidol University, Thailand with B.Eng. in Computer
Engineering with first class honors. In September 2004, she received her
M.Sc. with Distinction from the University of Warwick, UK. Machigar
entered the PhD program at Penn State in Spring 2006. Her initial
research focused on mobile database, transaction management, and mobile
agents paradigm.
Machigar joined the SIIS laboratory in Spring 2008. She is now exploring
the area of pervasive storage, context-aware security, and the security
of telecommunication networks.
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Devin J. Pohly
Devin J. Pohly is a Ph.D. student in the SIIS lab. He received his
baccalaureate in computer science summa cum laude from Messiah
College in 2008 and is starting his graduate work at Penn State in the fall of
2009. Previously he has worked on projects analyzing the security of
applications and embedded systems networks, and he plans to continue his
studies in the field of vulnerability analysis.
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Sandra is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering. She has BS and MS degrees
from Los Andes University (Bogotá, Colombia).
Her undergraduate research was on projects that studied the
client/server and multi-agent models. After
graduating, Sandra worked in the area of networks and IT
management. A couple of years ago she went back to Los Andes as
an Instructor, and became interested in computer and network
security and decided to pursue a Ph.D. Sandra then came to Penn
State sponsored by the Fulbright.
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Josh Schiffman is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer
Science and Engineering. He is also a member of the SIIS
Laboratory. He graduated with honors from The Pennsylvania
State University with a BS in Computer Science and minors in
Mathematics and Japanese Language. His undergraduate research
was in spatial database queries, but now focuses on system
security and trusted computing.
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Hayawardh Vijayakumar is a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science
and Engineering starting Fall 2007 and a member of the SIIS laboratory from Fall 2008.
He graduated with distinction from Anna University in Chennai, India with a BE in
Computer Science and Engineering in Spring 2007. His general interest is in systems
security and he has previous work in network security during his undergraduate studies.
He is currently working on security in virtual machines.
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Youngtae Youn is a PhD candidate in the department of Computer Science
and Engineering. He is a member of the SIIS Laboratory and Theory
Group. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Seoul
National University, Korea and MS in communication engineering from
POSTECH, Korea. He is interested in theoretical analysis of
cryptography, but also focuses on practical cryptographic systems after
joining the SIIS laboratory.
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Masters Students
Guruprasad Jakka is a Masters student in the Department of Computer Science and
Engineering. He graduated with distinction from the National Institute of Technology,
Surathkal (India) in 2005 with a B.E in Information Technology. After graduation,
he worked for a brief period in Huawei Technologies, India, in the Telecom domain.
Later, he moved to Network Appliance, Bangalore, where he worked on its proprietary
WAFL File system used on all its storage appliances.
Guruprasad joined the SIIS lab in Spring 2008. His current research interests are
storage and systems security.
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Damien Octeau joined the Master of Science program in the department
of Computer Science and Engineering in Fall 2008 and the SIIS Laboratory
in Spring 2009. He received his BS from Ecole Centrale de Lyon (Lyon,
France). He is now taking advantage of an agreement between Ecole
Centrale de Lyon and the Pennsylvania State University: when he
graduates from Penn State he will also receive his Master's degree
from Ecole Centrale de Lyon.
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Alumni
- Dave King - Ph.D., Fall 2009. Working for Rackspace's email and applications division.
- Patrick Traynor - Ph.D., Spring 2008, Assistant Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
- Boniface Hicks - Ph.D., Summer 2007, Assistant
Professor at St. Vincent College.
- Yogesh Sreenivasan - M.S., Summer 2008
- Luke St. Clair - M.S., Summer 2008
- Lisa Johansen - M.S., Spring 2008
- Sunam Ryu - M.S., Spring 2007
- Dhananjay Bapat - M.S. EE, Fall 2006
- Jennifer Plasterr - M.Eng., Summer 2006
- Wesam Lootah - M.S., Spring 2006
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