Research

Cybersecurity room with monitoring equipment and displays.
 

Research

Research with real-world impact

Founded in 2020, the ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute at RIT is a world-class facility dedicated to cybersecurity. Our students and researchers are working to build secure systems, software, devices, and technologies of the future, while providing resources to commercialize methods, algorithms, software, devices, and designs in cybersecurity to launch scalable entrepreneurial ventures.

Highlights

graphic showing a hacker and vehicles

Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) Research at RIT's ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute

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RIT hosts collegiate penetration testing competition

illustration of an airplane with code on it.

Secure Software Engineering Research

Meet the Director

Ersin Uzun

Today, ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute researchers are making communication networks, information sources and software development more secure. We are utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to protect our infrastructure, and discovering new frontiers in cybersecurity every day.

Ersin Uzun
Katherine Johnson Endowed Executive Director
585-475-5142

Facilities

dark room with computers and a large screen displaying a map.
Cyber Range
 

Areas of Strength

Trusted Hardware

Cybersecurity Education

Network Security

Usable Security

Cyber Analytics

Our research initiatives bring together students and faculty from a variety of disciplines to drive real societal and economic impact. In addition, our commitment to undergraduate research means that these initiatives help to educate the next generation of cybersecurity professionals while they design and develop the technologies and systems needed to secure our future.

The Institute’s research agenda is powered by nearly two dozen faculty across multiple colleges at RIT informing perspectives from engineering, psychology, public policy, and more as they related to the field of cybersecurity.

Researchers by Area

Machine Learning, AI for Social Impact, Natural Language Processing, Computational Social Science

 

Daniel Krutz headshot
Daniel Krutz
Assistant Professor
Department of Software Engineering
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
dxkvse@rit.edu
585-475-2896
Self-adaptive systems, decision-support systems, and computing education

 

Andy Meneely headshot
Andy Meneely
Associate Professor
Department of Software Engineering
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Undergraduate Program Director
andy.meneely@rit.edu
585-475-7829
Empirical software engineering using machine learning and data mining, software security, collaborative software development, metrics and measurement

 

Mehdi Mirakhorli headshot
Mehdi Mirakhorli
Director of Cybersecurity Research in GCI
Department of Software Engineering
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Kodak Endowed Scholar
Director of Research, ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute
mxmvse@rit.edu
585-475-4663
Machine learning and data mining applied to software architecture analysis, software security, compliance and verification, and source code comprehension.

 

Yin Pan headshot
Yin Pan
Professor
Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
yin.pan@rit.edu
Adversarial machine learning in image recognition and in intelligent malware detection using memory forensics, solid-state drive forensics challenges

 

Security, Machine Learning, Knowledge Graphs, Explainability, Semantic Technology, Autonomous Vehicles, Large Scale Networks.

 

Leon Reznik headshot
Leon Reznik
Professor
Department of Computer Science
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
lrvcs@rit.edu
585-475-7210
Security and data quality evaluation; intelligent systems and sensor networks design, machine learning and neural networks techniques, Big Data analysis

 

Adversarial machine learning as applied to traffic analysis, deepfake detection and generation, and image manipulation.
Shanchieh Yang headshot
Shanchieh Yang
Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Kate Gleason College of Engineering
Director of Global Outreach, Global Cybersecurity Institute
jay.yang@rit.edu
585-475-6434
Machine learning, attack modeling, and simulation systems to provide predictive analysis of cyber attacks, enabling anticipatory or proactive cyber defense

 

 

Privacy, program analysis, software compliance, and machine learning
Routers, middleboxes such as firewalls, and SDN flow tables; Censorship on the Internet

 

Data integrity and privacy in Edge Computing Systems and 5G infrastructure

 

 

Yidan Hu headshot
Yidan Hu
Assistant Professor
Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
yidan.hu@rit.edu
Data privacy, and network and distributed system security

 

Minseok Kwon headshot
Minseok Kwon
Professor
Department of Computer Science
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
mxkvcs@rit.edu
585-475-4524
Packet forwarding, SDN, Container networking, Datacenter networks, Network security, Filter technologies, Distributed systems, and IoT

 

Critical infrastructure protection, including smart grid security and privacy, communications in the future electric grid, anonymity, and resilience metrics

 

Tae Oh headshot
Tae Oh
Professor
School of Information
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
thoics@rit.edu
585-475-7642
Vehicular Area Networks, data acquisition and analytics, mobile device security, Internet of Things (IoT) security, sensor networks and assistive technology (Smart Cane)

 

Wireless systems and communications (PHY-layer) security, connected vehicle and IoT trust management

 

Adversarial machine learning; anonymity on the Internet (mainly Tor) and traffic analysis; usable security and privacy (e.g. phishing, passwords)

 

Shanchieh Yang headshot
Shanchieh Yang
Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Kate Gleason College of Engineering
Director of Global Outreach, Global Cybersecurity Institute
jay.yang@rit.edu
585-475-6434
Machine learning, attack modeling, and simulation systems to provide predictive analysis of cyber attacks, enabling anticipatory or proactive cyber defense
Embedded Device Security; Network and System Security; Applied Cryptography; Privacy.

 

Hardware Trojans, Machine Learning and Nature-inspired solutions to hardware security and trust

 

 

Cryptographic engineering, secure communication technologies, reconfigurable computing, high performance computing, hardware-software systems

 

Critical Infrastructure Protection; smart grid security and privacy; anonymous communications; resilience metrics

 

Cryptography, Combinatorial Computing

 

Abstract algebra, network science, and machine learning with applications in information processing and cybersecurity

 

 

Hardware-oriented security
Security competitions for education, covert communications, IoT/SCADA security

 

Daniel Krutz headshot
Daniel Krutz
Assistant Professor
Department of Software Engineering
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
dxkvse@rit.edu
585-475-2896
Teaching secure software development, outreach to women/girls in cybersecurity

 

Gamification in cybersecurity education, critical infrastructure, graduate education

 

Yin Pan headshot
Yin Pan
Professor
Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
yin.pan@rit.edu
Gamification in cybersecurity education, Ph.D. training and education, information security audits

 

Security competitions for education, penetration testing

 

Leon Reznik headshot
Leon Reznik
Professor
Department of Computer Science
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
lrvcs@rit.edu
585-475-7210
Data quality and security, automated quiz generation

 

Carlos R. Rivero headshot
Carlos R. Rivero
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
crrvcs@rit.edu
585-475-2979
Computer-aided program comprehension, instructor analytics, K-12 outreach

 

Bo Yuan headshot
Bo Yuan
Professor
Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
bo.yuan@rit.edu
585-475-4468
CyberCorps Scholarships for Service (SFS); Department Chair of Computing Security; cyber analytics
Rob Olson headshot
Rob Olson
Senior Lecturer
Department of Computing Security
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
rboics@rit.edu
Penetration testing, web and mobile application security, and privacy

 

 

Human factors in complex and dynamic systems, mental workload, and human error and reliability

 

Phishing and clickbait in social media, deception, password alternatives

 

Shanchieh Yang headshot
Shanchieh Yang
Professor
Department of Computer Engineering
Kate Gleason College of Engineering
Director of Global Outreach, Global Cybersecurity Institute
jay.yang@rit.edu
585-475-6434
Modeling attackers to provide predictive analysis of cyber attacks, deployment of predictive analytics