
Register for CPI's inaugural Graduate Student Conference March 27, 2025
The University of Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI) in partnership with Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) is delighted to announce the first CPI Graduate Student Conference, a platform dedicated to showcasing innovative research and ideas from graduate students across the country conducting interdisciplinary research that intersect cybersecurity and privacy topics. This full-day conference aims to foster a vibrant academic environment where students can share their findings, gain valuable feedback, and network with peers, faculty, and industry professionals.
When: Thursday, March 27, 2025 | Where: 7th floor of Engineering 7 building (E7), 200 University Avenue, Room 7303/7363 | Breakfast and registration: 8 a.m.
Program Co-chairs: Diogo Barradas, Vasisht Duddu, Bing Hu, Abdelkarim Kati, Shubhankar Mohapatra, and Hao Wu
Program Committee: Samer Al-Kiswany, Vahid R. Asadi, Mehdi Bolourian, Anudeep Das, Hossam ElAtali, Mohammad Hajiabadi, Xi He, David Jao, Sina Kamali, Sujaya Maiyya, Clemens Possnig, Douglas Stebila, Camryn Steckel, Kami Vaniea, Vecna, Parjanya Vyas, Michael Maximilian Wrana, Meng Xu and Shufan Zhang
***Note: We are no longer accepting paper submissions for this conference. Thank you to those who have already uploaded an entry. View all deadlines or browse topics of interest here.***
Thank you to our generous sponsors!
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Complete the form below to register for CPI's Graduate Student Conference
Agenda (Full Program)
8 a.m. Registration & breakfast
9 a.m. Welcome address: Clarence Woudsma (GSPA) + Diogo Barradas (CPI)
9:15 a.m. Industry keynote: Sachio Iwamoto (Kyndryl)
10 a.m. Session 1: Security and Privacy in Data Science - Shubhankar Mohapatra (PC chair)
- Evaluating Linguistic Bias and Fairness in LLM Recommendation Systems - John Lacalamita (York University)
- SynPrivacy: An Open Framework and Fair Metric for Evaluating Synthetic Data Privacy Risks - Bing Hu, Helen Chen, Yixin Li (University of Waterloo); Asma Bahamyirou (Public Health Agency of Canada)
- Exploiting Demonstration Vulnerabilities: Malicious Agents in Inverse Reinforcement Learning -Arezoo Alipanah, Yash Vardhan Pant (University of Waterloo)
- Activation Approximations Can Incur Safety Vulnerabilities Even in Aligned LLMs: Comprehensive Analysis and Defence - Lipeng He (University of Waterloo); Jiawen Zhang (Zhejiang University)
- Adaptive Privacy Budgeting for Context-Aware Synthetic Data Generation in Healthcare - Kateryna Padalko (University of Waterloo)
11 a.m. Networking break
11:15 a.m. Session 2: Human & Societal Aspects of Security and Privacy - Bing Hu (PC chair)
- Exploring Digital Literacy Education at Home - Christina Mazza, Sana Maqsood (York University)
- Algorithmic Collective Action Directed at Fair and Private Learning Algorithms - Rushabh Solanki (University of Waterloo); Meghana Bhange, Ulrich Aïvodji (ÉTS Montréal); Elliot Creager (University of Waterloo)
- An Exploration of Interaction Models in Popular Games for VR Authentication - Bella Chen, Indrani Ray, Hilda Hadan (University of Waterloo); Leah Zhang-Kennedy (University of Waterloo, Stratford Campus)
- Tweens’ perceptions of deceptive design in video games - Muhammad Zaid Arif, Sonia Chiasson (Carleton University); Sana Maqsood (York University)
- Toward Stronger Digital Privacy and Security: Culturally-Informed Solutions to Shared Device Use by Immigrant Families in Canada - Shanza Shanza, Urs Hengartner, Leah Zhang-Kennedy (University of Waterloo)
12:15 p.m. Poster session & lunch
2 p.m. Session 3: Cryptography and Quantum-Safe Communication - Hao Wu (PC chair)
- Implementation of the Zupply Framework - Mohammadtaghi Badakhshan, Guang Gong (University of Waterloo)
- DiSK: A Deniable Split KEM from The MLWE Problem - Extended Abstract - Brian Goncalves, Atefeh Mashatan (Toronto Metropolitan University)
- Split-key PRFs and a new notion for hybrid KEM security - Lise Millerjord (NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway); Douglas Stebila, Camryn Steckel (University of Waterloo)
- Semz: Anonymous and Secretive Messaging During Internet Censorship - Sina Kamali, Diogo Barradas (University of Waterloo)
- Acceleration of the FRI Protocol on the GPU for zkSNARKs - Tanmayi Jandhyala, Guang Gong (University of Waterloo)
3 p.m. Session 4: Network Security - Abdelkarim Kati (PC chair)
- Augmenting NVD Vulnerability Information for Classifying Attacker Privileges - Parsa Kootzari (Carleton University); Taous Madi (Ericsson Security Research, Canada); Lianying Zhao (Carleton University)
- Abstract of Tor User De-Anonymization: Client-Side Originating Watermark with LSTM Autoencoder Detection - Daniel Brown, Natalija Vlajic (York University)
- Is Crowdsourcing a Puppet Show? Detecting a New Type of Fraud in Online Platforms - Shengqian Wang, Israt Jahan Jui, Julie Thorpe (Ontario Tech University)
- Webpage Access in a Blackout - Ross Evans, Diogo Barradas (University of Waterloo)
- Real-Time Flow Correlation Attacks with P4: A Distributed Approach for Tracking Malicious Users - Gurjot Singh, Diogo Barradas (University of Waterloo)
4 p.m. Networking break
4:15 p.m. Session 5: Software, Hardware, and Systems Security - Vasisht Duddu (PC chair)
- An Online Learning Approach to Hardware-Assisted Malware Detection - Eli Propp, Seyed Majid Zahedi (University of Waterloo)
- Composition of Access Control Schemes from Practice to Theory - Indrani Ray, Mahesh V. Tripunitara (University of Waterloo)"
- Risk-Based & Honeypot-Informed Moving Target Defence (RB&HI MTD) - Ronny Blostein, Natalija Vlajic (York University)
- Minimizing the number of edges in Bottom-up Role-Mining - Puneet Gill, Mahesh V. Tripunitara (University of Waterloo)
- Lock & Lift: Mixed Method Circuit Security - Mark S. Dittmer (University of Waterloo)
5:15 p.m. Awards ceremony
5:30 p.m. Closing remarks