Prospective PhD Students

I am looking for highly motivated PhD students to pursue original research in cybersecurity and privacy.

Before reaching out:

• Explore my homepage and read at least one recent research paper.
• If doing this doesn't give you any interesting ideas, it might be best to seek guidance elsewhere. If this does, email a brief introduction with your CV, transcript, and a short statement of research interest.
• For insights into my mentoring experience, you can find a list of MS students I supervised at CSUS here. This page offers a glimpse into the diverse range of topics my students and I have delved into over the past several years.

Co-supervised PhD Students

Name	Main Supervisor	Intake
Hanyi Wu	Dr. Huan Jin	Autumn 2025
Liang Deng	Dr. Pushpendu Kar	Spring 2026
Shu Zhang	Dr. Chin Poo Lee	Spring 2026

Undergraduate and Master's Students at UNNC

If you are an undergraduate or master’s student in the School of Computer Science at UNNC and would like to work with me on your FYP or MYP project:

• Please review the project catalogues and let me know which topics align with your interests.
• You are welcome to bring your own project ideas for discussion. I’m happy to explore the possibility of supervising projects you are passionate about.

MSc Projects at UNNC

Name	Project	Complete
Yujie Chen	Revisiting Web-Based Password Managers After a Decade	Spring 2026
Yujia Dong	Privacy Labels Across App Ecosystems: Accuracy, Transparency, and Legal Compliance	Spring 2026
Zhiyu He	Understanding Two-Factor Authentication Usability: A Mixed-Methods Study of Perceived Workload, Authentication Behavior, and Post-Failure Recovery	Spring 2026
Chongwen Ma	Multi-Layer Browser-Side Measurement of Consent-State Differences	Spring 2026
Xinrui Ma	Evaluation of Large Language Models in Providing Security & Privacy Advice	Spring 2026
Zixuan Ni	A Datalog-Based Framework for Generating and Translating Relationship-Based Access Control Policies	Spring 2026
Muchun Wan	Explainable AI for Malicious PDF Detection: Comparing SHAP and LIME Under Non-Adversarial and Adversarial Conditions	Spring 2026
Sihan Wang	SFS-42: A Unified Feature set for Cross-Dataset Generalization in IoT Intrusion Detection	Spring 2026

Final Year Projects at UNNC

Name	Project	Complete
Yuzhan Hong	MingLi (名理): Intelligent Cross‑Cultural Name Generator Powered by Large Language Models	Spring 2026
Ziyu Jia	Not So Private After All? Forensic Investigations of Private Browsing Modes across Browsers and Platforms	Spring 2026