PhDs

I am looking to work with students from all background (first generation students, and students from underrepresented and marginalized groups are encouraged to apply) and at all level (undergraduate students, master’s students, and PhD students). Please, visit the prospective applicant page on UBC website and on the CS website. You can also find information about financial matters on the CS website. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me via e-mail but, please, do read the following suggestions before doing so.

A few facts

• Do check the application deadline on UBC’s website.
• The department starts processing applications in January for the next academic year.
• Students are admitted by the department, not by individual faculty members.
• Even if you are well fitted for my group, I cannot guarantee admission.

Before contacting me

• Have a look at my publications.
• Identify matching interests.
• Understand that I will not supervise students outside of my area of expertise.
• Find a set of papers which aligns with your interests.
• Read the abstracts.
• Read at least one paper in full.

What to send when contacting me?

• CV/resume
• Transcripts
• Why do you want to work with me? (one paragraph)
• Why do you want to work on this topic? (one paragraph)
• Which paper(s) did you read and why did you find it interesting? (one paragraph)
• Previous research experience (if any)
• Summary of your undergraduate/master thesis (if any)

Statement of Intent

• Check the guidelines on the department website
• The relationship between a student and their advisor is an extremely important one
• It is a collaboration that will last for years
• The commonality of interest should be clear from your statement
• Listing half a dozen potential advisors from very different areas is most probably detrimental to your application
• On the other hand, co-supervision is common and can be very positive
• Therefore link clearly potential advisors to your experience and your aspirations
• Everything else being equal, an applicant that understands and shows why they should be working with a specific advisor are more likely to be successful
• This is my personal opinion and may not be universally true

Some ideas

• By observing workload executions it is possible to optimize the configuration of a big data analytics framework [1,2,3]. How far can such techniques be improved? Can we apply similar techniques to other domains? What are the obstacles to a practical deployment?
• Provenance-based intrusion detection [4,5] open new opportunities in intrusion detection research. Further, we have demonstrated that capture and runtime processing were practical [6,7]. How far can we improve such techniques? Can we learn from more traditional host-based intrusion detection techniques? Can we improve capture accuracy and trustworthiness while reducing overhead? Can we automatically explain an intrusion?

Students

• Soo Yee Lim (PhD student, Bristol)
• Priyanka Badva (PhD student, Bristol) co-supervised with Ryan McConville and Eleonora Pantano
• Bogdan Stelea (MEng, Bristol)
• Josh Turner (MEng, Bristol)

Past students

• Chetankumar Mistry (MEng, Bristol), 2020, ARM.
• Xiaoxiao Wu (MSc, Bristol), 2020, TBC.
• Yangyang Teng (MSc, Bristol), 2019, Innovez.
• Ziying Shao (BSc, Bristol), 2019, Beijing Institute Of Big Data Research.

I teach/taught the following units at the University of Bristol:

• COMS20012: Computer Systems B (Year 2) 20-21
• COMSM0049: Systems and Software Security (Year 4) 20-21
• COMSM1500: Systems Security (Year 4) 18-19, 19-20

I am the Study Abroad Academic Director for the Department of Computer Science. If you have questions about exchange program as an incoming or outgoing student, please, do get in touch.

I run a reading group on Network, Software and Systems Security, the list of paper is online.

List of undergraduate project suggestions.