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Shaohu Zhang, Ph.D.


Assistant Professor in Computer Science and Cybersecurity

University of North Carolina at Pembroke

Email: shaohu.zhang@uncp.edu
shaohu2013@gmail.com

CV

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News
[11/21/2024] Congrates Mohammad received Mobicom'25 travel grant and attended such a top-tier conference in computing and networking.
[11/01/2024] I was invited to serve TPC for PETS'25 and ICNC'25.
[10/01/2024] I gave a guest talk about Digital Privacy in the Thomas College of Business and Economics at UNCP.
[09/15/2024] Welcome Muhammad and Sam joined my research group.
[04/10/2024] Najmul, Andrew, Kai, and Mushfique presented their poster in the UNCP PURC Symposium.
[02/26/2024] Welcome Mushfique Rahman, Andrew Cart, and Kai Anderson to our research team on the project of Neighborhood Microscope!
[12/20/2023] Our UNCP team has been selected to participate in Cohort II of the Capacity Building for Research at Minority-Serving Institutions: Infrastructure Research Readiness (CyBR-MSI: IRR) program.
[12/14/23] Congrats Najmul Hasan won the Semester Long Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) for Spring 2024 ($2K).
[12/11/23] Chathura Perera joined our lab.
[12/01/23] Cyber Escape Rooms proposal is funded from UNCP($10K, Co-PI).
[10/26/23] Our Neighborhood Microscope proposal has been selected for funding ($86K, PI)!
[10/01/23] Ruoyu Zhao joined our lab.
[09/15/23] Najmul Hasan joined our lab.
[08/16/23] Chunsheng Zhang joined our lab.
[06/22/23] Glad to serve on TPC for SmartWear 2023 in conjunction with MobiCom 2023.
[06/21/23] Invited to serve on TPC for VTC2023-Fall Hong Kong.
[05/23/23] I will join the faculty as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Computer Science department at UNC Pembroke this Fall.
[05/17/23] I defended and graduated. Cheers!
[04/26/23] INSPIRE paper on pedestrian and vehicle privacy preserving being accepted to IEEE ICCCN 2023!
[03/29/23] Glad to serve PC for DSN 2023 Doctoral Forum.
[03/29/23] VoicePM paper on speech privacy-preserving framework being accepted to WiSec 2023!
[03/28/23] I gave a talk on "Web Privacy in the Digital World" at UNC Pembroke.
[03/27/23] Again, glad to serve as Replicability Committee in WiSec'23.
[03/17/23] HeadTalk paper on thwarting the misactivation of voice assistants being accepted to IEEE DSN 2023!
[02/17/23] Passed my oral prelim!!!!
[01/27/23] Awarded HotMobile 2023 travel grant.
[01/09/23] I co-instruct CSC773 Adv. Internet Protocols with Dr. Harfoush in Spring 2023.
[12/22/22] Glad to receive the COE Mentored Teaching Fellowship.
[11/26/22] Our research proposal (Physical Context-aware Voice Assistant for Smart Homes. Lead PI: Anupam Das ) won research funding of $75K from Meta.
[09/06/22] Glad to serve Artifact Review Committee in ACSAC'23 and Security'23.
[08/30/22] Glad to serve Artifact Review Committee in PoPets'23.

My research focuses on Trustworthy AI, Mobile Computing, and Cybersecurity. I apply AI/ML to explore the use of ubiquitous modalities, such as WiFi signals, cameras, and acoustics, for developing novelty applications to protect human personal sensitive data and secure the operations of AI systems. I collaborate with professionals across diverse domains, such as Civil Engineering, Sociology, Health, and Data Science. I earned my PhD degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University in 2023. During my PhD study, I had worked in the Wolfpack Interactive, Sensing, and Networking Lab with Prof. Muhammad Shahzad. I was a member of Wolfpack Security and Privacy Research Lab under guidance from Prof. Anupam Das. I currently lead the X+ Lab. I teach undergraduate students programming, software engineering, and cybersecurity courses at UNCP.

Research Interest:

  • Security and Privacy: fingerprinting and human biometric security, with a focus on safeguarding privacy and authentication through embedded sensors in digital devices.
  • Trustworthy and Explainable AI: designing context-aware mobile systems to bridge CPS and AI for reliable and adaptive interactions.
  • Mobile Computing: sensing with ubiquitous modalities, such as WiFi, camera, IMU, VR, UAV, and sound in intelligent transportation and smart homes.
  • LLM and NLP: speech privacy, speech translation, and LLM applications.

Teaching at UNCP:

  • CSC 2920 Software Engineering (in-person and online), Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025
  • CYB4020 Network Security (in-person), Fall 2024
  • CYB 4030 Introduction to Digital Forensics, Spring 2024, Spring 2025
  • CSC 1750 Introduction to Algorithms (29 undergrads), Fall 2023
  • CSC 1760 Introduction to Programming (27 undergrads), Fall 2023
  • CSC 1850 Object-oriented Programming (29 + 26 undergrads), Fall 2023

Award:

  • 2023 COE Mentored Teaching Fellowship, College of Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2023.
  • 2022 Summer Graduate Fellowship, College of Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2022.
  • Travel Award from SenSys'16, Mobicom'17, Mobicom'21 and CCS'21.
  • COE Graduate Research Award, College of Engineering, North Carolina State University, 2018.
  • Sigma Xi Graduate Research Award, South Dakota State University, 2016.
  • Best Undergraduate Thesis Award, Zhejiang Ocean University, China, 2010.
  • Excellent Student Scholarship, Zhejiang Ocean University, China, 2008.

Professional Service

  • Technical Program Committee

    • 2025 International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC, Honolulu, Hawaii).
    25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2025 Washington DC).
    The First International Workshop on IoT Datasets for Multi-modal Large Model (IoT-MMLM 2024) In Conjunction with SenSys 2024.
    The 2024 IEEE 100th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2024-Fall Washington DC).
    2nd ACM Workshop on Smart Wearable Systems and Applications (SmartWear 2023) In Conjunction with MobiCom 2023. October, 6, 2023, Madrid, Spain.
    The 2023 IEEE 98th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2023-Fall Hong Kong).
    PhD Forum, The 53rd Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN’23).

  • Artifact Review Program Committee

    • USENIX Security Symposium: 2023
    Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PoPETs): 2023
    ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security (AsiaCCS): 2023
    Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC): 2023
    ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (ACM WiSec): 2022-2023

  • Conference/Journal reviewer

    • ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS): 2021-2024.
    Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P): 2021.
    ISOC Networked and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS): 2021-2023.
    Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC): 2022-2023.
    Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec): 2021-2022.
    ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation (BuildSys): 2019.
    ACM Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT): 2019, 2021, 2022.
    ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems: 2021.
    IEEE Internet of Things Journal: 2021-2024.
    IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing: 2021-2024.
    Journal of Transportation Research Record (TRR): 2023
    International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI): 2023

  • My Erdös number is 4 (Paul Erdös--Daniel J. Kleitman--Joseph Y.-T. Leung--Sang Hyuk Son--Me).

Selected Publications: