Bio

Aanjhan is an associate professor (with tenure) in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. He is also an affiliate faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His current research revolves around the security and privacy of wireless networks with a strong focus on autonomous cyber-physical systems and smart ecosystems. He has worked on a wide variety of topics including physical-layer security of wireless systems, secure localization and proximity verification, trusted computing architectures, and side-channels. He is a recipient of several awards including the outstanding dissertation award from ETH Zurich, regional winner of European Space Agency’s Satellite Navigation competition and the Cyber Award from Armasuisse (Switzerland’s Department of Defense). Prior to joining Northeastern, he was a senior researcher in the System Security group at ETH Zurich and has over 3 years of industry research experience as a senior engineer at Robert Bosch GmbH’s Car Multimedia Division “Blaupunkt” where he was involved in the development of embedded modules for top automotive manufacturers including Audi and Volkswagen. He holds an M.Sc with specialization in Electronics and Microelectronics from EPFL, Switzerland and a Ph.D in Computer Science from ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

Team

I am very fortunate to work with some talented and motivated students.

• Jason Veara, PhD student (Sep 2024 - )
• Evangelos (Vaggelis) Bitsikas, PhD student (Sep 2022 - )
• Maryam Motallebighomi, PhD student (Sep 2020 - )
• Ismael Sanchez, UG co-op (July 2024 - )
• Kyle Moy, UG co-op (July 2024 - )
• Bhavesh Matapathi, UG student researcher (Jan 2024 - )
• Harry Rosenstein, UG student researcher (Jan 2024 - )
• Adam Belfki, UG student researcher (Jan 2023 - )
• Manav Jain, MS student researcher (Jan 2024 - )

Alumni

• Dr. Narmeen Shafqat, PhD student (Sep 2019 - Aug 2024) -> NUST Pakistan (Assistant Professor)
• Ayyappan Rajesh, UG student Researcher (May 2023 - Dec 2023)
• Dr. Harshad Sathaye, PhD student (Jan 2019 - Apr 2023) -> ETH Zurich (post doc)
• Dr. Domien Schepers, PhD student (Sep 2018 - Jan 2023) -> Qualcomm
• Cathleen Zhang, BS (Jul 2020 - Jul 2021)
• Nakul Ramesh, MS (Sep 2019 - Dec 2019)

Sponsors

Thanks to all the following organization for generously funding my research:

• U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)
• armasuisse S+T (Dept of Defense in Switzerland)
• U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR)
• U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (ARL/DEVCOM)
• U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL)

News

• Jun 2024: Tenured and promoted to Associate Professor.
• Mar 2024: Paper on “ASTRA-5G: Automated Over-the-Air Security Testing and Research Architecture for 5G SA Devices” accepted at ACM WiSec 2024. Congrats to all collaborators and group member Vaggelis!
• Mar 2024: Paper on “Seamlessly Insecure: Uncovering Outsider Access Risks in AiDot-Controlled Matter Devices” accepted at IEEE/ACM Safethings 2024 (co-located with IEEE S&P 2024). Congrats Narmeen!
• Mar 2024: Panelist for mentoring Khoury PhD students on “Navigating Troubles during one’s PhD” alongside Profs. Lawson Wong, Daniel Wichs, Amal Ahmed, and Alexandra To (moderator).
• Jan 2024: Narmeen presented her paper on “ssessing the Feasibility of Virtual Smartphone Paradigm in Countering Zero-Click Attacks” at HICSS 2024 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
• Sep 2023: Presented two papers from the group at ION GNSS+ 2023, Denver, Colorado, USA.
• Sep 2023: Invited on a panel “Algorithms and Methods for GNSS Cyber Physical Security” at ION GNSS+ 2023, Denver, Colorado, USA.
• Aug 2023: Gave an invited lecture on “From Skyjacking to Carjacking: Challenges and Opportunities in Securing Modern Navigation Technologies” at the summer school on system security 2023 at CISPA, Saarbrucken, Germany.