S3 Lab is currently seeking qualified Ph.D. students for paid research work related to the security and reliability of the following software systems:

• Robotic Vehicle Control Systems (Drones) – RetroV
• Autonomous Driving Systems – AutoInsight
• Machine Learning Systems (Cloud and Edge Platforms for Machine Learning) – AI Vault
• IoT Devices and Industrial Control Systems – PeriShield, RetroFirm, Trusted Things
• Modern Operating Systems (Linux/Windows Systems, Virtual Machines, Hypervisors) – CLUE, CAFE, Shear

We build practical tools to analyze these systems and make them secure and dependable using the following research skills:

• Static Program Analysis: LLVM, GCC, Assembly/Machine Code (Intel x84/64, ARM)
• Dynamic Program Analysis and Testing: QEMU, Pin, Valgrind, Fuzzing (AFL, LibFuzzer), Symbolic Execution (KLEE, S2E)
• Binary Reverse Engineering and Instrumentation: IDA, OllyDbg, ImmDbg, Detours, DynamoRIO, Dyninst
• Operating System Tracing: Linux Audit, Windows ETW, SystemTap, DTrace, eBPF, kprobes
• Hardware Assistance for Security: Trusted Execution Environments (Intel SGX, AMD SEV, ARM TrustZone), Memory Protection (MMU, MPU, Intel MPX), Execution Tracing and Debugging (Intel PT, ARM ETM, JTAG)
• Hardware Architecture and Security: Verilog, FPGA, Device IO (MMIO, DMA, GPIO), Hardware Vulnerabilities (Rowhammer, Spectre, Meltdown)
• Control Systems: PID Controller, Drone Control Systems (ArduPilot, PX4), Autonomous Driving Systems (Autoware, Baidu Apollo), ROS, PLC Programming
• Excellent Technical Writing Skills in English

Our group publishes research papers at top security conferences (e.g., USENIX Security, CCS and NDSS). All projects will be open source.

Qualified students will be funded for their tuition and competitive salaries, sufficient for living in the area without external support.

If you have expertise in one or more of the research skills and are willing to commit to a research and development project in our group, please fill out this form.

S3 Lab is part of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas). The department has around 53 strong research faculty engaged in cutting-edge research. In the past ten years, UT Dallas CS has achieved top-notch research contributions in multiple areas (#33 in Security by CSRankings.org in 2021).

UT Dallas is one of the fastest-growing public universities in the United States, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metropolitan area. The university has an outstanding research environment and it is at a convenient location for students for a living:

• #1 best value public university in Texas and #2 fastest growing public doctoral university in the US.
• Most Ph.D. students are fully funded through TA/RA-ships including tuition, stipend, and travel support.
• International students: Dallas has diverse communities from many different countries (e.g., Koreatown) and a large international airport (DFW Airport) with direct flights to most major cities in the world.
• Students with a family: DFW area offers a low cost of living and excellent public schools.

UT Dallas CS Admissions:: https://cs.utdallas.edu/admissions