Yuan Cheng Assistant Professor


Short Bio

Yuan is an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Previously, he was an associate professor in the College of Computing at Grand Valley State University and a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at California State University, Sacramento, where he earned tenure and was promoted to associate professor in 2022. Before his tenure at Sac State, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Cyber Security (ICS) at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), San Antonio, Texas. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at UTSA, under the guidance of Dr. Ravi Sandhu and Dr. Jaehong Park. He also holds a B.Eng. degree in Information Security from the School of Computer Science & Technology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. Raised in Ningbo, Zhejiang, his native tongue is the Chinese dialect of Wu.

School of Computer Science
University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Room 442, Sir Peter Mansfield Building
199 Taikang East Road, Ningbo, China 315100
yuan DOT cheng AT nottingham DOT edu DOT cn
yuan AT ycheng DOT org

Ph.D., University of Texas at San Antonio, 2014

Office Hours

M 3 pm - 5 pm (PMB442) or by appointment

Research Interests

  • Access Control
  • Authentication
  • Internet of Things
  • Privacy
  • Social Computing

Teaching

Autumn 2025:
  • COMP3048 Compilers
Spring 2026:
  • COMP1039 Programming Paradigms

News

  • 4/1/2026: Our paper "How Enforcement Shapes 2FA Usability and Perceived Workload: A Comparative Study Across Populations" with Zhiyu and Francisco has been accepted to SecureComm 2026. Congratulations, Zhiyu and Francisco!
  • 2/27/2026: Our paper "A Comparative Analysis of Third-Party Script Behaviour in Consent-Based and Implicit Web Tracking" with Chongwen has been accepted to ACM CODASPY 2026. Congratulations, Chongwen!
  • 10/28/2025: I will serve on the TPC of ACM CODASPY 2026.
  • 4/20/2025: Our paper "A Zero Trust Module for Cybersecurity Education" with Xinli and Vijay has been published in 2025 Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education.
  • 4/14/2025: I will serve on the TPC of ESORICS 2025.

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