I am the Director of the National Security Institute, an Associate Professor of Computer Science
at Stony Brook University, and the Founder CEO of Virtalica and Private Machines Inc.

I build systems mainly but also enjoy elegant foundations, especially if of the very rare practical variety. A large part of my research lies in cyber-security. I am also interested in large-scale systems. Examples of stuff we have fun with: secure storage and data management (clouds, outsourcing, queries over encrypted data), cellular and wireless security, data privacy mechanisms, trusted hardware, regulatory compliant systems, digital rights management, smart cards, identity management, healthcare privacy systems, and fun (always applied) crypto. I am also working on cloud-scale scheduling and efficient/green computing. Overall, I find myself increasingly preoccupied with discovering real-world relevance in research and resisting the temptation of writing papers for purely the sake of increasing each other's citation counts.

Stuff I am involved in: 2021: USENIX Security, PoPETS, ESORICS; 2020: ACM CCS, ACM CCSW @ CCS (program co-chair and steering chair); 2019: ACM CCSW @ CCS (program and steering chair); 2016: IEEE TCC (Associate Editor, 2016-2019), WWW, VLDB/PVLDB; 2015: Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS); 2014: ACM TISSEC (Associate Editor, 2010-2015), ESORICS, PETS, Oakland, CCGrid, VLDB/PVLDB (Editor); 2013: ACM CCS, ESORICS, Oakland, ACNS, ICDCS, ACM CCSW @ CCS, VLDB/PVLDB (Editor), CIKM, PETS, NDSS; 2012: ACM CCS, NDSS (program chair), SIGMOD, Oakland, ACNS, ACM CCSW @ CCS; 2011: SIGMOD, WWW, Oakland, NDSS; 2010: Financial Crypto (program chair), ACM CCSW @ CCS (program co-chair); ISC, STC, ICDE, ICDCS, NDSS, Oakland, ACNS, USENIX Sustain-IT; 2009: ACM CCSW @ CCS (program and steering chair); ACM CCS, WPES, Oakland, SIGMOD, Financial Crypto; 2008: SIGMOD, ICISS, Security and Privacy Day (co-chair), Financial Crypto (general chair), ACM CCS, WPES, EDBT PhD Workshop; 2007: East Coast DB/IR Fall (chair), ACM-DRM at CCS, USENIX Security (poster chair), WISA, ACM CCS, Financial Crypto, ICDCS, ICDE; 2006: USENIX Security (poster chair), SKM (publicity chair), StorageSS 2006 at CCS, WISA, NPSec at ICPN, WIDM at CIKM

If you have been admitted to the PhD program and would like to work with me please feel free to email and then drop by my office. Before coming please read these thoughts for (prospective) PhD students. If you are a senior undergraduate student or a MS student please read thoughts for (prospective) MS students. If you have not been admitted to our department please read thoughts for (prospective) students not admitted yet.

And here is the "PhD: What Matters. And What Doesn’t" CSE600 talk.