Keynotes

 

Keynote #1 (Feb. 25, 2025)

IoT-Mediator - Detecting and Handling IoT Interaction Threats in Multi-Platform

Multi-Control-Channel Smart Homes

 

Dr. James Xiaojiang Du

James Xiaojiang Du

IEEE Fellow

ACM Distinguished Member

Anson Wood Burchard Endowed-Chair Professor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Stevens Institute of Technology

Hoboken, NJ, 07030

Abstract

A smart home involves a variety of entities, such as IoT devices, automation applications, humans, voice assistants, and companion apps. These entities interact in the same physical environment, which can yield undesirable and even hazardous results, called IoT interaction threats. Existing work on interaction threats is limited to considering automation apps, ignoring other IoT control channels, such as voice commands, companion apps, and physical operations. Second, it becomes increasingly common that a smart home utilizes multiple IoT platforms, each of which has a partial view of device states and may issue conflicting commands. Third, compared to detecting interaction threats, their handling is much less studied. Prior work uses generic handling policies, which are unlikely to fit all homes. We present IoT-Mediator, which provides accurate threat detection and threat-tailored handling in multiplatform multi-control-channel homes. Our evaluation in two real-world homes demonstrates that IoT-Mediator significantly outperforms prior state-of-the-artwork. This work has been published at one of the top four security conferences - USENIX Security 2023.

Reference

H. Chi, Q. Zeng, X. Du, "Detecting and Handling IoT Interaction Threats in Multi-Platform Multi-Control-Channel Smart Homes”, USENIX Security 2023, August. 2023, Anaheim, CA.

Bio

Dr. James Xiaojiang Du is the Anson Wood Burchard Endowed-Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, USA. He was a tenured professor at Temple University between August 2009 and August 2021. Dr. Du received his B.E. and M.E., from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1996, and 1998 respectively. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2002 and 2003, respectively. His research interests are security, wireless networks, and systems. He has authored over 500 journal and conference papers in these areas, including the top security conferences such as IEEE Security & Privacy (S&P / Oakland), USENIX Security, and NDSS. 

Dr. Du has been awarded more than 8 million US dollars research grants from the United States National Science Foundation (NSF), US National Security Agency (NSA), US Army Research Office, US Air Force Research Lab, the State of Pennsylvania, and Amazon. He won the best paper award at IEEE ICC 2020, IEEE GLOBECOM 2014 and the best poster runner-up award at the ACM MobiHoc 2014. He serves on the editorial boards of three IEEE journals. He was the chair of multiple IEEE/ACM conferences, including General Co-Chair of IEEE/ACM IWQoS 2023, General Co-Chair of EAI SecureComm 2023, TPC Chair of IEEE CloudNet 2023, and Lead Chair of the  Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium of IEEE Globecom 2023. 

Dr. Du is an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer 2023-2024. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member, and an ACM Life Member.

According to Google Scholar, Dr. Du’s total number of citations is over 27,000, and his h-index is 81 (as of April 2024).

 

 

Keynote #2 (Feb. 26, 2025)

Topic /TBD

Title /TBD

Pr. Merouane Debbah

Prof. Merouane Debbah 

Director of the 6GRC 

Computer & Communication Engineering 

Bio

Mérouane Debbah is Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. He was with Motorola Labs, Saclay, France, from 1999 to 2002, and then with the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor with the Mobile Communications Department, Institut Eurecom, Sophia Antipolis, France. Since 2007, he is Full Professor at CentraleSupelec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. From 2007 to 2014, he was the Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. From 2014 to 2021, he was Vice-President of the Huawei France Research Center. He was jointly the director of the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab as well as the director of the Lagrange Mathematical and Computing Research Center. From 2021 to 2023,  he was Chief Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute  and  leading the AI & Digital Science Research centers at the Technology Innovation Institute.  He was also Adjunct Professor with the Department of Machine Learning at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.  Since 2023, he is a  Professor at  Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi and founding director of the 6G center. He has managed 8 EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects. His research interests lie in fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information, and communication sciences research. He holds more than 50 patents. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institut Louis Bachelier Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. He was a recipient of the ERC Grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering) from 2012 to 2017. He was a recipient of the Mario Boella Award in 2005, the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award in 2011, the Qualcomm Innovation Prize Award in 2012, the 2019 IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award and the 2020 SEE Blondel Medal. He received more than 30 best paper awards, among which the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, the Wi-Opt 2009 Best Paper Award, the 2010 Newcom++ Best Paper Award, the WUN CogCom Best Paper 2012 and 2013 Award, the 2014 WCNC Best Paper Award, the 2015 ICC Best Paper Award, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the 2016 European Wireless Best Paper Award, the 2017 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, the 2021 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2022 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award, the 2022  ICC Best paper Award, the 2022 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, 2022 IEEE TAOS TC Best GCSN Paper Award, the  2022 IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2023 ICC best paper award, the 2023 Best ICEAA-IEEE APWC Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE ICCT Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, CrownCom 2009, Valuetools 2012, SAM 2014, and 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter best student paper awards. He is an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal Random Matrix: Theory and Applications. He was an Associate Area Editor and Senior Area Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING from 2011 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2014, respectively. From 2021 to 2022, he served as an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Industry Speaker. He is a member of the Marconi Prize Selection Advisory Committee.