Research
Hi, I am part of the Computer Security group at UCDavis .
In research, I “used to” be interested in security issues related to both networking and networked (if you can tell the difference) systems. Previously, I worked on subjects like unknown vulnerability analysis (BTW, the most vulnerable is inside of a human being), IPSec/VPN Policy Management (the most difficult issue here has been the “intention/requirement” specification, which involves a human society), Routing protocol security (if we route too well, we deliver “humanly unwanted” traffic very well too), Internet architecture (the current Internet architecture is something that human cannot control but being controlled by services like Google or Facebook), Mobility (can someone give me a definition of “social mobility”?), Secure computer architecture (if anybody has a solution to identify an unknown virus without signatures, please raise your hand. Also, if anybody believes that you have a brilliant definition of virus, I would love to discuss with you — I like to apply that to all the mobile applications.) Email Antispam (again, definition of spam, please), Information Visualization for Security (what do we want to accomplish here, yes, any possible measurable usefulness based on that pretty cool/creative visual presentation?), Anomaly Analysis and Explanation (this is the only area in the list that still excites me).
At some point (maybe in Taiwan, when the session chair read this list of topics), I realized that I was probably interested in too many things though. Therefore, my latest focus has been on the Davis Social Links project.
What I am really interested these days has to do with the topic of relationship, especially the relationships between human, and how those will interact with the contents being accessible via Internet. I honestly don’t know how I should call it. Therefore, roughly, this might be something like social informatics, social computing, social-aware content, social-based cloud computing, big social data, or social intelligence (and privacy). Anyway, I am tired of working on the kind of security research WITHOUT thoroughly considering the factor of human relationships (and, yes, I am merely pretending that I know a bit of humanity sciences before I retire). An article titled Networking: Four ways to reinvent the Internet published in Nature 463 (February 3rd, 2010, by Katharine Gammon) provided a brief but very nice cover about my primary thought on a Social-network-based future Internet architecture (much more comprehensible than if I were to write it, and NSF panelists who have reviewed my proposal would say Amen without a single bit of doubt).
Click here for my official academic CV and selected publication list (I need to update this but please visit my Google scholar page to retrieve the most recent papers.). Most of my publications can be found online, but if you fail to find some of the papers, you are always welcome to send me emails.
