PhD Students

Undergraduate Researchers

Prospective Students

If you are a current UVa undergraduate student, visit our research group blog to learn about what is going on in our group, and send me an email to arrange a meeting. All students are also welcome (and encouraged) to attend our Security Research Lunches. Visit http://groups.google.com/group/uva-cs-sec to sign up for the mailing list. I generally prefer to find first or second year students so you have sufficient time to do something interesting before you graduate, but I have also been known to accept exceptional third or fourth year students.

If you are a current UVa graduate student looking for a research advisor, look at my research websites and some of our papers. If the kind of work we do seems interesting to you, contact me to arrange a meeting, preferably to discuss some of your own original research ideas.

If you are interested in coming to UVa to do a graduate degree, please feel free to contact me (but it would be a good idea to read my advice for prospective students first). I will be on sabbatical for the 2008-2009 academic year, but looking for new students who are planning to start PhD programs in fall 2009.

Graduated PhD Students

Graduated Masters Students

Undergraduate Research Alumni

Currently in PhD Programs

Other Alumni

Completed Senior Theses

2006:

• Samuel Baumgardner — Combining Software Components using Artificial Intelligence, May 2006.
• Salvatore Guarnieri — Automatically Hardening Web Applications Using Precise Tainting, May 2006. (Finalist in University Undergraduate Research Symposium, April 15, 2005; co-author and presenter of paper at Twentieth IFIP International Information Security Conference, Chiba, Japan, May 2005; USENIX Security Symposium short talk, August 2005.)
• Jacob McPadden, Solving Intractable Problems Using a Learning Agent: Can an Agent Learn to Deal with the Unknown Variables in Poker?, May 2006.
• Matthew Spear, BianFu: Anonymity Guarantees in a Token Network, May 2006.
• Qi Wang, Securing Hotel Video Distribution Networks, May 2006.

• Andrew Paul Connors (Applied Mathematics), Finding an Optimal Collusive Strategy for a Simplified Game of Poker, March 2005.
• Doug Anthony Greene (Computer Engineering), A Taxonomy for PHP Security Vulnerabilities, March 2005.
• John Franchak (Cognitive Science Distinguished Major Thesis, second reader), March 2005.
• Aaron Michael Karp, Using Execution Side Effects to Create Trusted Distributed Environments, March 2005.
• Evong Nham, Improving Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks with Geographically Targeted Messaging, March 2005.
• Dan Vinh Nguyen, Analyzing Password Recovery, March 2005.

• Yuan-Yao (Jeffrey) Chang — 802.11 Person-In-Middle (PiM) Attacks: Implementation and Practical Solutions, 23 March 2004. [PDF] May 2004.
• Christopher Frost — Amorphous Shape Mapping, 7 May 2004. [PDF, Web Page]
• Jackson Kwok — A Wireless Protocol to Prevent Wormhole Attacks, 23 March 2004. [PDF]
• Ben Maskell — Preventing Software Piracy, May 2004.
• Michael Peck — Improving the Usability of the ESC/Java Static Analysis Tool, 25 March 2004. [PDF]

• Anthony Aiello, Planners that Learn
• Jonathan McCarrell McCune — Adaptability in Sensor Networks, 8 April 2003. [PDF]
• Ankush Seth, Scalability and Communication within Swarm Computing, March 2003. [PDF]
• Matthew Suhocki, How Biology forms Abstractions
• Shobana Thyagarajan, Differentiating between Humans and Computers Remotely and Automatically

• Nadim Barsoum — WIL: A Tool fo Web-data Extraction, March 2002.
• Dev Batta - Finding a Give-And-Go In a Simulated Soccer Environment, April 2002.
• John Calandrino — Applying Computer Network Flow Efficiency Techniques to Vehicular Traffic Systems, April 2002.
        Graduate student at NC State University, Computer Science
• Giles Cotter - Generation of Pseudorandom Numbers From Microphone Input in Computing Devices, April 2002.
• Mike Cuvelier - Behavior of Composed Swarm Primitives, March 2002.
• Nicholas Dunnuck — An Ethical Analysis of the Goals and Methods of Developing Artificial Intelligence Systems, March 2002.
• David Friedman — Using Splint to Detect Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities in Sendmail , April 2002.
        Graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, Computer Science
• William Haubert — An Interactive Approach to Secure and Memorable Passwords , April 2002.
• Mike Hogye — Achieving Trade-Offs in Swarm Systems
• Errol McEachron - A System for Synthesizing Swarm Applications, April 2002.
• Lap Fan ("Jack") Lam - Detecting Email Viruses By Analyzing Network Traffic Patterns
• Michael Lanouette - Static Checking of Coding Standards
• Bill Oliver - Analyzing Group Behavior: Developing a Tool to Evaluate Swarm Programs, March 2002.
• Hien Phan - Developing a Web Interface for the LCLint Static Checker
• Kenneth Pickering - Evaluating the Viability of Intrusion Detection System Benchmarking, March 2002.
• Douglas Ross - Cyberfridge.com - Magnetic Poetry for the World Wide Web, March 2002.
• Adam Sowers - Analysis of the Selected Key Pairing Encryption for Client-Server Systems, March 2002.
• Lim Vu - Securing Web Communications, April 2002.

• Chris Barker - Static Error Checking of C Applications Ported from UNIX to WIN32 Systems Using LCLint, March 2001.
• Felipe Huice - A Database-backed Personal Information System for Automatic Creation of Home and Summary Web Pages, March 2001.
• Jennifer Kahng - Evaluating Web Browser Security Interfaces for a More Meaningful Design, March 2001.
• John David Loizeaux - Describing and Predicting MEMS Capabilities, March 2001.
• Ryan Persaud - Investigating the Fundamentals of Swarm Computing, March 2001
        Graduate student at University of California San Diego, Computer Science
• Rick Rossano - Monitoring Suspect Internet Packets on the Network at the Department of Computer Science, March 2001.
• Dan Rubin - The Security of Remote On-Line Voting, March 2001.
• Adam Trost - Extendable Swarm Programming Architecture, July 2001.
• Phil Varner - Vote Early, Vote Often, and VoteHere: A Security Analysis of VoteHere, March 2001.
• Julie Vogelman - Determining Web Usability Through an Analysis of Server Logs, March 2001.
• Shannon Waddy - Case Studies in Security: Open Source vs. Closed Source Software, December 2001.

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David Evans University of Virginia Department of Computer Science

David Evans evans@cs.virginia.edu