Research Areas

Core themes powering dependable, secure, and human-centered intelligent systems.

  • Cybersecurity & Privacy | Data-Driven Dependability
  • Trustworthy and Responsible AI/ML
  • Wireless Sensing, Biometrics, and Authentication
  • Behavioral Data Mining and Intelligent Modeling
  • ML for Security in IoT/CPS and HCI
  • Post-Quantum Security (PQS) and Secure Quantum ML (SQML)
  • Secure and Trustworthy Sensing for UAV/Drone/Self-driven Vehicle
  • Emerging IoT/CPS applications: healthcare monitoring, event monitoring, structural health monitoring, and sensing application
DependSys Lab Research Areas visual

The lab focuses on building robust security and intelligence systems that can be trusted in real-world environments. Work combines theory, system design, and deployment-centered validation.

Research Opportunities

Open Research Opportunities (PhD/MS/Undergraduate) within an Integrated Research Program on Trustworthy Data, Intelligent Systems, and IoT/Cyber Physical Technologies, spanning the following interconnected research thrusts:

Recruiting Now

Our research spans interconnected thrusts centered around the core paradigm of Data Verification-Driven Trust in dynamic and adversarial environments.

Dr. Bhuiyan's Work Dynamic and Adversarial Environments

Data Verification-Driven Trust

Cybersecurity
Artificial
Intelligence
Wireless
Technologies
Trustworthy/Reliable
Data, Models and Systems
Networking
Systems
IoT/CPS
Internet of Things-Cyber-Physical Systems
Trustworthy/Reliable
Data, Models and Systems
Private Data
Models and Systems
Resilient Data
Models and Systems
Resilient Data
Models and Systems
vSeries Framework
vData
vPrivacy
vWiMonitor
AIData

Full Lifecycle of IoT & Cyber-Physical Systems

Sensing
Communication
Processing
Actuation
Maintenance

Open Research Positions

We are actively recruiting curious and driven researchers at all levels.

PhD Candidates

Fully funded research assistantships. Strong technical foundations in cybersecurity protocols, deep learning, wireless engineering, or embedded systems are required.

Fully Funded
MS Thesis Projects

Exciting hands-on hardware prototyping and validation. Focus areas include physical-layer signal analysis, private federated learning, and IoT testbed hacking.

Thesis Track
Undergraduate Research

Ideal for capstone works or senior projects. Gain immediate mentorship, publish peer-reviewed papers, and build highly-visible open-source cybersecurity tools.

Capstones / Honors
How to Apply

If you are passionate about building the next generation of Trustworthy IoT & Cyber-Physical Systems, we want to hear from you. Please prepare your CV, recent academic transcripts, and a brief statement (1-2 paragraphs) detailing which thrust you'd love to contribute to.

Get In Touch with Dr. Bhuiyan
Research Pillars

Cybersecurity & Privacy

Robust security and privacy for distributed systems, IoT, and critical infrastructures.

Trustworthy AI / ML

Explainable, reliable, and privacy-preserving AI for secure decision making.

Wireless Sensing & Biometrics

Pioneering Wi-Fi CSI based sensing for authentication without cameras or user interaction.

IoT & Cyber-Physical Systems Security

Secure, resilient, and scalable solutions for connected and autonomous systems.

Data Mining & Behavioral Modeling

Intelligent data analytics and behavioral insights for security and trust assessment.

vSERIES FRAMEWORK

Verification-Driven Trust Across the Lifecycle

vDataData Trustworthiness
vPrivacyPrivacy Assurance
vWiMonitorWireless Signal Trustworthiness
vAIDataAI & Decision Trustworthiness

RESEARCH IMPACT

Proven Track Record of Excellence

250+Publications
14,000+Citations
28+Highly Cited Papers
7Best Paper Awards

INNOVATION & IMPACT

From Research to Real-World Solutions

wAuthContinuous biometric authentication
vIDShieldDigital identity protecting
mDataGuardMobile data monitoring
LeakSense AIData leakage detection
OUR VISION

Building secure, ethical, and trustworthy digital infrastructures for next-generation applications and contributing to global initiatives through AI-driven national development.

Global Collaborations with Industry & Academia
Mentoring the Next Generation of Leaders
Turning Research into Real-World Impact

Active Research Projects

Leading-edge exploration in security, dependability, and intelligent computing paradigms.

Trustworthy AI & Resilient IoT/CPS Frameworks

Developing robust security protocols for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) while ensuring the transparency and privacy of AI/ML models integrated into the Internet of Things.

Secure Signal Intelligence & Physical-Layer Authentication

Advancing methods for secure wireless signal collection and engineering, with a focus on hardware-level authentication and signal integrity.

Mitigating Algorithmic Bias in Autonomous AI Systems

Investigating the socio-technical drivers of bias in AI algorithms to develop fairness-aware machine learning models.

Transitioning to Quantum-Resilient Architectures (PQC & SQML)

Leading research into Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and the development of Secure Quantum Machine Learning (SQML) to defend against emerging cryptographic threats.

Decentralized Security via Blockchain Integration

Exploring the application of blockchain for distributed ledger security and data provenance in large-scale networks.

Mentorship, Students, & Alumni

Nurturing high-caliber researchers and practitioners across security, AI, and systems engineering.

Maryam Saleki

PhD Candidate
2026 - Present

Thesis: Toward Trustworthy AI: Uncertainty-Routed Human–LLM Curation for Reliable Calibration in Adversarial NLI

Naseem Machlovi

PhD Candidate
2025 - Present

Thesis: Risk-Aware Alignment of Autonomous Healthcare Agentic AI through Benchmarking and Reinforcement Learning–Driven Red Teaming

Ali AL-Fatemi

PhD Candidate
2022 - Present

Thesis Topic: Emerging AI Threats in Healthcare IoT

Wang Yan

PhD Candidate Co-supervised
2022 - Present

Thesis Topic: New Generation of Wi-Fi Biometric System

Haowen Tan

PhD Candidate Co-supervised
2021 - Present

Thesis Topic: Authentication and Key Agreement in IIoTs

Maria Clara Quintela Nunes

MS Student STEM Honors
2026 - Present

Project: From Cheating to Ecosystem Compromise: A Survey of AI-Driven Threats, Content Supply Chains, and Trust Architectures in Modern Gaming

Joe Oura

MS Student
2026 - Present

Project: Toward a Trustworthy ML Classifier for Network Security: Predicting Data Trustworthiness from Header and Initial Packet Metrics

Nenad Stojchevski

Undergrad Student
2025 - Present

Project Topic: Risks and Accountabilities of Agentic AI

Yaejin Kang

Undergrad Student
2025 - Present

Project Topic: Trustworthiness and Accountabilities of Agentic AI

Juhyun Shin

Undergrad Student
2025 - Present

Project Topic: Trustworthy Data Networking with AI for IoT

Morgan Jones

Undergrad Student
2024 - Present

Project Topic: Racial Bias in AI: The Impact of Discriminative Algorithms on Minority Communities

John Ramos & Danyal

Undergrad Team
2024 - Present

Project Topic: AI-based Cybersecurity

Auden Dyke

Undergrad Student
2025 - Present

Project Topic: Privacy in Financial Business data

Showing 29 alumni
Sheng Yun
2023–2025

Privacy Trustworthiness with Federated Learning

Mohammed Ehsan
2023–2025

Wi Fi Signal Analysis for Infrastructure Security

Kawsar Ahmed
2022–2024

AI (Ensemble Learning, DRL) Based Data Mining for Cyberattack Detection

Jayanta Saha
2020–2024

Wi Fi Signal Security Analysis

Abdullah Al Omar
2020–2023

Trustworthy Data Sharing Using Blockchain

Md Monirul Islam
2019–2023

Application-Specific Wi-Fi Signal data mining and Security

Faiza Khan
2020–2024

Wi-Fi Signal Collection and Security Analysis

Eileen Quinn
2020–2023

Investigation on Cybersecurity Threats to Individual Users in Industry Data Collection

Hafizur Rahman, PhD
2017–2023

Trustworthy Data Collection

Maliha Shaheed
2020–2022

Data Privacy and Transparency with AI/ML Approaches

Faizan Khan, PhD
2016–2022

Wi Fi Radio as Sensor: Rescue and Recovery Applications

Weifang Yan
2019–2022

Wi Fi Signal Application for Physical Security

Kawsar Hossain
2019–2022

Trustworthiness in Self Driving

Laura Glynn
2019–2022

Lightweight Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol

Peng Hao, PhD
2017–2022

Deep Learning Algorithm Design for Reliable Traffic Flow Forecasting

Yanmei Jiang, PhD
2017–2021

Reliable Deep Learning Based Algorithm Design for IoT Applications

Anand
2018–2021

Security Performance in Embedded IoT Devices

Simran Sidhu
2018–2021

Wi Fi Signal Collection and Security

Harun Ahmed, PhD
2016–2020

Resource Efficient AI Utilization in IoT

Kazi Arif
2016–2020

AI in Cybersecurity

Abdullah Al Hayajneh, PhD
2017–2020

Security Protocol for Reliable IoT with Cooperative Communication

Mohaib Siddiqui
2017–2020

Data Privacy in Financial Organizations

Movses Musaelian
2018–2020

Data Science and Security in Digital Governance Aspects

Revathi Bhuvaneswari
2018–2020

Data Protection and Privacy through Secure Data Collection

Michael Furman
2018–2020

Multimedia Data Security Analytics

Saqib Ali, Postdoc
2017–2019

Data Privacy through Blockchain

Aliuz Zaman
2016–2018

Anomaly and Attack Detection

Athina Rosales
2016–2018

Driving Anomaly Detection

Muhammed Tanim Khan
2016–2018

Click Fraud and Attack Detection

Honors, Awards, & Recognitions

Distinguished accolades, highly cited research milestones, and elite global standings.

2024

IEEE TCSC Mid-Career Award

IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence (Middle Career Researcher) and IEEE TCSC MCR Award 2024. Awarded by the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing for Excellence in Scalable Computing.

Global Elite

ScholarGPS Highly Ranked Scholar

Recognized in the top 0.05% of scholars worldwide by ScholarGPS based on the outstanding quality and citation depth of scholarly research contributions.

Top 0.1%

Highly Cited Researcher (WoS)

Named one of the world's most influential computer science researchers by Web of Science (WoS) — top 0.1% globally; one of only 162 in CS worldwide in 2021.

Stanford List

Stanford's Top 1% & 2% Scientists

Recognized globally on Stanford University’s official list of the Top 1% and 2% Scientists Worldwide for high citation index and academic standing (2020–2022).

Professional Recognitions

IEEE TCSC Middle Career Researcher IEEE Senior Member (since 2017) ACM Senior Member (since 2019) IEEE TCSC Early Career Researchers Career Awardee Outstanding CSC Alumnus, China (2016) Young Scientist, China (2014-2016) Outstanding Postdoctoral Researcher (2015) Top-notch Innovative PhD Student Researcher (2011) Outstanding Oversee Student Researcher (2009)

Honors & Awards Timeline

2022–2025
Rising Star of Science — Research.com

Ranked 164th in the United States in Computer Science (2022).

2022
Vehicular Communications (VehCom) Best Paper Award

Awarded to the Best Survey Paper: "A Survey on Security Attacks in VANETs: Communication, Applications, and Challenges" (Impact Factor: 6.91).

2022
Computers (MDPI) Best Paper Award

Paper: "Improving Internet of Things (IoT) Security with Software-Defined Networking (SDN)". Authors: Abdullah Al Hayajneh, Md Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan, and Ian McAndrew.

2020
Faculty Fellowship & President’s Distinguished Teaching Award

Faculty Fellowship (top 2% among all university-wide awardees in 2019-2020) and President's Distinguished Teaching Award (top ~0.5% of faculty university-wide).

2020
IEEE Outstanding Leadership Award

Recognizing exceptional leadership in organizing IEEE technical committees, conferences, and program areas.

2020
ESI Highly Cited & Hot Papers Recognition (WoS)

18 Highly Cited Papers in Computer Science (top 1% globally as of 2021) and 5 HOT Research Papers in Computer Science (top 0.01% globally as of May 2020).

2019
Best Paper Award — Springer DependSys 2019

Paper: "Secrecy Outage Probability of Secondary System for Wireless-Powered Cognitive Radio Networks" (DependSys 2019 conference, Nov. 12–15).

2016–2022
IEEE & Springer Service Awards

IEEE Outstanding Service Award (2016–2019), Appreciation for Outstanding Service to IEEE (2016–2021), IEEE Outstanding Leadership Award (2016–2020), and Springer Outstanding Service Award (2017, 2018, 2022).

2016–2017
IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence (Early Career Researcher)

Prestigious global award granted annually to only 3–4 recipients worldwide for excellence in scalable computing.

2016
Best Paper Award — IEEE MASS 2016

Paper: "Event Detection through Differential Pattern Mining in the Internet of Things" presented at the 13th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems, Brasília, Brazil.

2016
Outstanding CSC Alumnus & Hunan Provincial Thesis Award

Honored by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) on its 20th anniversary and awarded the Provincial & National-Level Excellent PhD Thesis Award (top-ranked thesis in Hunan Province, China).

2014–2015
Young Scientist Award & Provincial Best Thesis Award

Young Scientist Award under the Youth Scientific Program (National Science Foundation of China) and Provincial Excellent PhD Thesis Award (Ranked 1st among provincial awardees, nominated for National-level award).

2013
Best Paper Award — IEEE ISPA 2013

Paper: "Local Monitoring and Maintenance for Operational Wireless Sensor Networks" (11th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications, Melbourne, Australia).

2012–2013
Hunan Province PhD Research and Innovation Grant

Top-Notch Innovative PhD Student Fellowship and Hunan Province PhD Research and Innovation Grant (Hunan Provincial Department of Education).

2009–2013
Distinguished Student & Full Research Scholarships

Chinese Government Full PhD Scholarship (CSC) and Distinguished International Student Award (2009).

2002–2009
Academic Scholarships, Internships, & Programming Recognitions

Full Master's Degree Scholarship under the Asia Foreign Scholarship Program (2006-2009), Grameen Phone VB.NET/C# Advanced Programming Scholarship (2003), and 2nd Place in the Software Development Competition (IIUC Bangladesh, 2003).