Hat’s Off to Our Ph.D. Graduates!

So far this year, five students have completed the requirements for their Ph.D. in Computer Science and are eligible for graduation. They have cumulatively published or contributed to 34 research papers during their time at Georgia Tech. When they weren’t in their labs scrutinizing lines of code or solving complex cryptographic equations on a white board, they were hacking TV’s growing avocados, and driving across the country.

Their faculty advisors hold them in high regard, and for good reason. They are graduating a nationally ranked university with the highest academic achievement in the field of computer science and cybersecurity.

Congratulations to the Class of 2025!

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A Little Bit About Ammar
Ammar Askar‘s research represents a significant advancement in software security, particularly within multi-language systems. His thesis introduces groundbreaking methodologies, including synthesized fuzzing harnesses and concolic execution, which effectively identify and resolve security vulnerabilities arising from interactions between different programming languages.

By utilizing simple debugging primitives and integrating LLMs, his work significantly improves the detection of complex bugs and streamlines their resolution across diverse programming environments. Ammar’s contributions are set to have substantial influence, especially through his development of an LLM-based concolic execution engine for the upcoming DARPA AIxCC competition in August!”
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Taesoo Kim

SCP Professor and Faculty Advisor
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A Little Bit About Zhengxian
A sunset view from a high vantage point. The sky is a mix of light blues, orange, pink, and purple. The land below is dark and dotted with the lights of homes and businesses.
Zhengxian He showed a lot of resilience during his time at Georgia Tech. He had to navigate the full workload of a demanding research project during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. His research included a major experimental component and it was coordinated with an industry collaborator.  

He was able to produce strong results in a field that was moving rapidly. His experience at Georgia Tech should prepare him well for the future and we wish him success in his new role at Amazon. “
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Mustaque Ahamad

USG Regents Entrepreneur Professor and Faculty Advisor
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A Little Bit About Stan
Stan Peceny is a versatile applied cryptographer, meticulous about each component of secure multiparty computation (MPC), especially focused on the symphony of their interplay.  He designed several core MPC algorithms and integrated them into fast tool chains, improving state of the art up to 1000x.

With a broader vision for an optimized MPC tool chain, he designed several application-specific MPC protocols that address commonly needed tasks and tools, such as secure logistic regression, fast secure merge of sorted arrays, differential privacy and oblivious memory.  Motivated by speeding up lowest-level primitives known to MPC researchers, Stan proposed a new cryptographic assumption that implies a much faster Oblivious Transfer, a basic and heavily used MPC building block.

Vladimir Kolesnikov

Profesor and Faculty Advisor
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A Little Bit About Qinge
“I’ve been very fortunate to work with Qinge Xie as her PhD advisor.

She has been productive, driven, and independent, and I’ve been very impressed by how well she has pivoted across diverse research topics. She’s done great here, and I’m excited to see her career develop moving forward.”

Frank Li

SCP & ECE
Assistant Professor and Faculty Advisor
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A Little Bit About Yibin
Yibin Yang stands out as a builder of highly efficient and usable toolchains for MPC and ZKP. He is an insightful and technically strong cryptographer and a very competent systems builder, who built several complete compiler toolchains for high-level languages, such as Assembly and C. Yibin improved state of the art in this area by 3-4 orders of magnitude.

Yibin is extremely driven, and has indeed a rare combination of algorithmic, theoretical and systems expertise, which uniquely places him for leading the task of designing and developing fast usable crypto toolchains.  Yibin earned a number of accolades in his career, including being named RSAC Security Scholar, RSA Conference, 2022, and winning a number of China national and international programming contests.

More recently, he led the paper that received ACM CCS 2023 distinguished paper award.

Vladimir Kolesnikov

Profesor and Faculty Advisor
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Understanding our student’s achievements take’s more than words, it takes visualization! We made a breakdown of their research on Tableau to get the full picture of their accomplishments.

Papers listed as Pending* are still undergoing review for the publication process.


Security research conferences are measured by various metrics in the research community.

Among those variables considered is acceptance rates. Top tier conferences are very selective with the papers they accept each year. For our purposes, we looked at the Top 20 research conferences and found that among the research completed by our five graduating Ph.D. students, nearly 80% were accepted and presented in a Tier 1, 2, or 3 conference.

*Ranks were sourced from http://jianying.space/conference-ranking.html

Our five graduates partnered with researchers from across the globe and touched multiple disciplines with their work. From black holes to browser extensions, they pushed the boundaries of cybersecurity and privacy in areas beyond computing.

International Research Partners

Amazon Web Services • Arizona State University • Bar-Ilan University • Cisco Research • Citrix Systems • Google • IMDEA • KAIST • Ligero Inc. • Lund University • Massachusetts Institute of Technology • Northwestern University • Palo Alto • Polish Academy of Sciences • QI-ANXIN Technology Research Institute • Sungshin Women’s University • Tsinghua University • University of California Santa Barbara • University of Heidelberg • University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • University of Padova • University of Tennessee • University of Virginia • Visa Research

Meet the faculty advisors that mentored our five graduates!


USG Regents Entrepreneur Professor Mustaque Ahamad has been at Georgia Tech since 1985. He has led every cybersecurity and privacy education initiative at Georgia Tech, from helping found the master’s program to helping establish the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. He has developed many of the cybersecurity research thrusts at Georgia Tech.

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Professor Taesoo Kim leads the SSLab where his students research practical systems with focuses on security, performance, and robustness. He also organized Team Atlanta, a next-generation security research group and finalist in DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge.

Professor Vladimir Kolesnikov has dedicated the past 25-years to researching cryptography. On any given day he and his Ph.D. students work on zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), blockchain, database security and privacy, key exchange, and channel security.

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Assistant Professor Frank Li leads the BEES Lab in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy as well as the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He and his Ph.D. students research computer security and privacy with a focus on Internet, network, and web security and privacy.

What is a Computer Science Ph.D. at Georgia Tech?

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A research-oriented degree, the Ph.D. in Computer Science prepares exceptional students for careers at the cutting edge of academia, industry and government. Students are expected to demonstrate excellence in both defining and executing a substantial research project that forms a novel contribution to the state of the art in computing.

With a highly individualized program of study, the degree provides students with depth in their chosen research area coupled with a rigorous breadth of knowledge across the discipline.

Cybersecurity research helps protect sensitive information and systems from attacks, ensuring safety and privacy for individuals and organizations. Meet the Georgia Tech experts who are charting a path forward.

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Computer

Development: College of Computing
Data Graphics: Joshua Preston
Project Lead: John “JP” Popham

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