News

Oct 02, 2023
Started my new position as a Senior Staff Researcher at Palo Alto Networks!

Sep 21, 2023
Successfully defended my thesis titled "Investigating the VPN Ecosystem Through the Lens of Security, Privacy, and Usability" and officially, #PhDone!

Aug 09, 2023
Attending and presenting my paper on VPN users and co-presenting our paper on network changes in Russia after their invasion of Ukraine in 2022 at the 32nd USENIX Security Symposium 2023, in Anaheim, CA.

Jul 10, 2023
Attending FOCI'23 and the PET Symposium 2023 in Lausanne, Switzerland, facilitated by their travel stipend.

Mar 27, 2023
πŸ† I was awarded the Barbour Scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year by the University of Michigan, as part of the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship. It supports students working on dissertations that are "unusually creative, ambitious, and impactful".

Mar 19, 2023
I was awarded the Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement πŸ† by the College of Engineering at UMich. This award is presented to an outstanding graduate student in each degree program at the College; the criteria considered include the student’s active participation in research, leadership, and academic performance.

Feb 02, 2023
I completed my thesis proposal!

Feb 02, 2023
Guest panelist at UMich EECS 588 for a class on usable security, in Ann Arbor, MI.

Jan 23, 2023
Attending the Open Tech Fund summit in Austin, TX.

Dec 6, 2022
Attending ACM CoNEXT'22 in Rome, Italy.

Nov 12, 2022
Our NDSS'22 VPNalyzer paper won First Place at the CSAW '22 Applied Research Competition. πŸ†

Oct 24, 2022
Got an honorable mention for our work in the 2022 M-Lab Hackathon in Nice, France.

Oct 24, 2022
Attending ACM IMC 2022 in Nice, France, facilitated by their student travel grant.

Sep 22, 2022
Gave an invited talk about my research paper, "All of them claim to be the best": A multi-perspective study of VPN users and VPN providers at the September'22 VPN Community Gathering organized by IFF.

Aug 10, 2022
Our paper won the First Prize in the 2022 Internet Defense Prize competition πŸ†

Aug 10, 2022
Our paper on OpenVPN Fingerprinting won the USENIX'22 Distinguished Paper Award πŸ†

Aug 9, 2022
Attending USENIX Security Symposium 2022 in Boston, MA

Jun 1, 2022
Starting my research internship at Brave Research

May 26, 2022
Attending and presenting a talk The IEEE SPW 6th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '22), colocated with IEEE S&P'22

Apr 28, 2022
Presenting a 45-minute talk about the experimentation and system design of VPNalyzer at the LASER Workshop, colocated with NDSS'22

Apr 24, 2022
Attending and presenting my paper on VPNalyzer at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2022, in San Diego, CA. First in-person talk in over 2 years!

Apr 7, 2022
Giving a talk about my research at EECS 183, at a session (supported by the Renew CS grant) aimed at encouraging women and non-binary students to major in CS

Dec 7, 2021
Insights I gained through my work with VPNalyzer was quoted in two articles by Consumer Reports, written by Yael Grauer. Read them here: Should You Use a VPN?, and VPN Testing Reveals Poor Privacy and Security Practices, Hyperbolic Claims.

Dec 7, 2021
My research, VPNalyzer, which has been over two years in the making, was featured in two Consumer Reports articles and a white paper released today! πŸŽ‰

Nov 3, 2021
Our paper Throttling Twitter: An Emerging Censorship Technique in Russia was recognized as the Highest Scoring Short Paper at IMC'21. πŸ†

Nov 2, 2021
Attending ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021 online.

Oct 28, 2021
Gave an invited talk at Brave Research about my work.

Oct 23, 2021
Our work on Russia’s emerging censorship technique of throttling was highlighted in the front page of New York Times. πŸŽ‰

Aug 11, 2021
Attending USENIX Security '21 online.

Apr 23, 2021
Selected to participate in the CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women 2021 organized by the Computing Research Association.

Apr 20, 2021
Serving as panelist on an Explore Computer Science Research program organized by Girls Encoded at the University of Michigan.

Apr 10, 2021
Served two weekend sessions as an activity leader for the FEMMES Explore Event organized by CSEG in collaboration with FEMMES at the University of Michigan. This involved (virtually) interacting with and teaching middle-school students about CS, and helping them design an algorithm for a computer game.

Apr 6, 2021
Read our report about our recent work on the throttling of Twitter in Russia

Apr 1, 2021
Serving on the Program Committee for the ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '21) co-located with SIGCOMM 2021.

Mar 18, 2021
Served as a panelist alongside my advisor at the Consumer Reports Virtual Workshop: Exploring VPNs with almost 1500 users in attendance.

Mar 1, 2021
πŸ“£ Calling all VPN Users: Please participate in our VPN user survey now!!πŸ“£ Proud to release my first user study in collaboration with Consumer Reports Digital Lab

Nov 6, 2020
My paper Decentralized Control: A Case Study of Russia was selected as a finalist and was among the Top 10 papers for the US-Canada region at the CSAW '20 Applied Research Competition.

Oct 27, 2020
Attending ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) '20 online, special shout out to them for having a registration fee waiver.

Aug 12, 2020
Gave an invited talk about my work on decentralized control and its broader implications at the Next Generation Democracy Cafe online.

Aug 12, 2020
Attending USENIX Security '20 online, facilitated by their student grant.

Aug 11, 2020
Serving as the student organizer for the 10th USENIX Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI '20)

Aug 10, 2020
Read our report about my recent work on the geoblocking of Hong Kong and Chinese IPs by US government and military sites

Jun 24, 2020
I'm now a PhD Candidate! πŸŽ‰

Feb 24, 2020
Attending and presenting my paper at Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) 2020 facilitated by their travel grant, in San Diego, CA

Nov 6, 2019
Read our report about my recent work on decentralized control

Sep 3, 2019
Starting my position as treasurer of the student group ECSEL+

Jul 31, 2019
Attending Citizen Lab Summer Institute 2019 facilitated by their travel grant, in Toronto, Canada

May 24, 2019
Attending and giving a PhD Lightning talk at Mozilla Security Research Summit in San Francisco, CA

May 20, 2019
Attending IEEE S&P facilitated by their student travel grant, in San Francisco, CA

May 18, 2019
Attending IEEE GREPSEC Workshop facilitated by their travel grant, in San Francisco, CA

Apr 13, 2019
Attending the Midwest Security Workshop 7 at UChicago, in Chicago, IL

Nov 5, 2018
Presented at the Research Process Workshop about the research done in our Ensafi Lab, and served as a panelist for reasearch done in the software lab for an event organized by Girls Encoded.

Aug 30, 2018
Gave a 30-minute presentation at the CS Kickstart event about research that my colleagues and I do at the Ensafi Lab. My first presentation as a PhD student! πŸŽ‰

Aug 12, 2018
Attending USENIX FOCI 2018, in Baltimore, MD

Jun 28, 2018
Joined Ensafi Lab!