Yuan Tian
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Yuan Tian is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of the Institute of Law, Technology, and Public Policy at University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining UCLA, She was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Virginia, and she obtained her Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University in 2017, and interned at Microsoft Research, Facebook, and Samsung Research. Her research interests involve security and privacy and its interactions with computer systems, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Her current research focuses on developing new technologies for protecting user privacy, particularly in the areas of the Internet of Things and machine learning. Her work has generated real-world impact as countermeasures and design changes have been integrated into popular platforms, and also impacted the security recommendations of standard organizations. She is a recipient of Okawa Foundation Award 2022, Google Research Scholar Award 2021, Facebook Faculty Award 2021, NSF CAREER Award 2020, NSF CRII award 2019, Amazon AI Faculty Fellowship 2019. Her research has appeared in top-tier venues in Security, and System. Her projects have been covered by media outlets such as IEEE Spectrum, Forbes, Fortune, Wired, and Telegraph.
RESEARCH AND INTERESTS
- Security and Privacy
- Machine Learning
- Human-Computer Interactions
NOTABLE PUBLICATIONS
- F. Shezan, Z. Su, M. Kang, N. Phair, P. Thomas, M. Dam, Y. Cao, and Y. Tian, “CHKPLUG: Checking GDPR Compliance of WordPress Plugins via Cross-language Code Property Graph”, in the proceedings of Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2023.
- T. Rahat, Y. Feng, and Y. Tian, "Cerberus: Query-driven Scalable Security Checking for OAuth Service Provider Implementations", in the 29th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2022).
- Y. Meng, J. Li, M. Pillari, A. Deopujari, L. Brennan, H. Shamsie, H. Zhu, Y. Tian, “Your Microphone Array Retains Your Identity: A Robust Voice Liveness Detection System for Smart Speakers”, in the 31st USENIX Security Symposium (Usenix Security 2022).
- T. Le, D. Huang, N. Apthorpe, Y. Tian, "SkillBot: Identifying Risky Content for Children in Alexa Skills", in the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (ACM TOIT), 2022.
- S. Tan, B. Knott, Y. Tian, D. Wu, “CryptGPU: Fast Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning on the GPU”, in the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), 2021.
- F. Suya, S. Mahloujifar, A. Suri, D. Evans, Y. Tian, "Model-Targeted Poisoning Attacks with Provable Convergence", in the Thirty-eighth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021).
- F. Shezan, K. Cheng, Z. Zhang, Y. Cao, Y. Tian, “TKPERM: Cross-platform Permission Knowledge Transfer to Detect Overprivileged Third-party Applications”, in the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), February 2020.
- N. Zhang, X. Mi, X. Feng, X. Wang, Y. Tian, F. Qian, "Dangerous Skills: Understanding and Mitigating Security Risks of Voice-Controlled Third-Party Functions on Virtual Personal Assistant Systems”, in the 40th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland), May 2019.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University 2017
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
- 2022 Okawa Foundation Award
- 2022 Best Paper Award at IEEE TPS 2022
- 2021 Google Research Scholar Award
- 2021 Facebook Research Award
- 2020 NSF CAREER Award
- 2019 Amazon Research Award
- 2019 NSF CRII Award