Sean Peisert

Students & Postdocs

I have had the absolute privilege to work with and learn from insanely great students.

Mathematics Genealogy Project

Current Students and Postdocs

Former Students and Postdocs

Former Ph.D. Students

• Adrian Chavez, Ph.D. November 2017
  Dissertation: "Parametrization and Effectiveness of Moving Target Defense Security Protections within Industrial Control Systems"
  Employment: Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Sandia National Laboratories
  Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)

• Bogdan Copos, Ph.D. June 2017
  Dissertation: "Modeling Systems Using Side Channel Information"
  Employment: Research Scientist, SRI International → Software Engineer, Google

• Jonathan Ganz, Ph.D. June 2017
  Dissertation: "Leveraging Security Metrics to Enhance System and Network Resilience"
  Employment: Software Engineer, Cloudflare

• Julie Ard, Sept. 2010– (on leave; co-advising with Prof. Matt Bishop)
  Employment: Director of Insider Threat Operations, Haystax Technology → Senior Manager, Cybersecurity, Noblis

• Anhad Singh, Ph.D., March 2015 (co-advised with Prof. Matt Bishop)
  Dissertation: "An Iterative Approach to Examining the Effectiveness of Data Sanitization"
  Employment: Technical Lead / Enterprise Architect, Dataguise, Inc. → Sr. Privacy Engineer, Google → Founder, STYRK AI

• Sisi Duan, Ph.D., December 2014 (co-advised with Prof. Karl Levitt)
  Dissertation: "Building Reliable and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance"
  Leiv Eiriksson mobility programme awardee ("BSID: Byzantine Fault-Tolerance from Specification-Based Intrusion Detection")
  Employment: Alvin M. Weinberg Fellow, ORNL → Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County → Research Scientist, Tsinghua University

• Haibin Zhang, Ph.D., October 2014 (unofficially co-advised; official advisor was Prof. Matt Franklin)
  Dissertation: "Building Efficient, Secure, and Reliable Distributed Systems"
  Employment: Postdoc, University of Connecticut → Postdoc, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill → Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County → Professor, Beijing Institute of Technology → Director / Department Head, Tsinghua University

• Steven Templeton, October 2009–December 2014 (unofficially co-advised; major professor is Prof. Karl Levitt)

• Kevin Griffin (LLNL), March 2012–April 2014 → Senior Engineer, NVIDIA → KSG Technology Consulting

• Sophie Engle, Ph.D., March 2010 (unofficially co-advised; official advisor was Prof. Matt Bishop)
  Dissertation: "A Policy-Based Vulnerability Analysis Framework"
  Employment: Assistant Professor, → Associate Professor → Professor, University of San Francisco

Former M.S. Students

• Chitrabhanu Gupta, M.S., June 2022.
  Project: "A Differential Privacy Framework for Clinical Data Analytics"
  Current: UC Davis ECE Ph.D. program → Postdoctoral Scholar, UC Davis Health

• Vishak Muthukumar, M.S., December 2015.
  Project: "Cyber Security Techniques Using Device Physics to Secure Cyber-Physical Systems"
  Employment: Software Engineer, Aruba/Hewlett Packard Enterprise

• Gary Kean (Health Informatics Graduate Program), M.S., March 2015.
  Thesis: "Using Census Demographics to Enhance Geomasking"
  Employment: GIS Analyst, Privacy Analytics, Inc. → GIS Analyst E2 Engineering → California Department of Health Care Services

• Vinod Balachandran, M.S., September 2013.
  Thesis: "Lightweight Change Detection and Response Inspired by Biological Systems" [CDL]
  Employment: Software Engineer, SAP → Microsoft

• Chaoyi Du (USF), M.S., June 2012.
  Project: "Flexible Access Control for Statistical Databases"
  Employment: Software Engineer, MORE Health, Inc.

• Bo Hu (USF), M.S., June 2012.
  Project: "Flexible Access Control for Statistical Databases"
  Employment: Machine Learning Engineer, LinkedIn

• Srikar Reddy, M.S., Dec. 2010
  Employment: multiple Software Engineering Roles, Salesforce → Senior Software Engineer, workday → Software Engineer, Apple → Director, Software Engineering, Salesforce

Former Postdoctoral Scholars

• Dr. Yize Chen, July 2021–August 2022
  Research Areas: Power Systems, Machine Learning, Control, Optimization
  Employment: Assistant Professor, University of Hong Kong → Assistant Professor, University of Alberta

• Dr. Anna Giannakou, August 2017–January 2020.
  Research Areas: Cloud security, network security, network performance monitoring.
  Employment: Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

• Dr. Sisi Duan, Postdoc, December 2014–June 2015
  Research Areas: Fault tolerance, distributed systems, security
  Employment: Alvin M. Weinberg Fellow, ORNL → Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, Baltimore County → Research Scientist, Tsinghua University

• Dr. Michael Clifford, Postdoc, June 2013–September 2013
  Research Areas: Trust logics and network security.
  Employment: Computer Security Researcher, National Security Agency → Analytics Researcher, Noblis NSP → Toyota InfoTechnology Center

• Dr. Sean Whalen, 2010 I3P Fellow, Sept. 2010–Sept. 2011
  Research Areas: Multiple applications of machine learning and graph theory ranging from computational genomics to computer security.
  Employment: Postdoc, Columbia University → Postdoc, Mount Sinai School of Medicine → Senior Research Scientist, Gladstone Institutes at UC San Francisco

Former Undergraduate Students

• Vishak Muthukumar, June. 2012–September 2013
  Previous: Admitted in Sept. 2013 Ph.D Student at University of California, Davis
  Employment: Software Engineer, Aruba/Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Former Visiting Students and Postdocs

Former Visiting Graduate Students

• Amir Teshome Wonjiga (Inria Rennes), April 2017–March 2018 (advisors: Dr. Christine Morin, Dr. Louis Rilling, and Prof. Jean-Louis Pazat) Postdoctoral Scientist, Orange Labs → DevOps Engineer, Inspeere

• Anna Giannakou (Inria Rennes), August 2016–July 2017 (advisors: Dr. Christine Morin and Dr. Louis Rilling)
  Employment: Postdoctoral Scholar → Research Scientist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

• Marieta Georgieva Ivanova (Technical University of Denmark), October 2014–January 2015 (advisor: Prof. Christian W. Probst)
  Employment: Software Developer, Soliton Systems → Security Engineer, Milestone Systems → Security Architect, Novo Nordisk