V.N. (Venkat) Venkatakrishnan

Greetings!!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at University of Illinois at Chicago. I am also the co-director for the Center for RITES (Research and Instruction in Technologies for Electronic Security) at UIC. In this page, you'll find out about my academic and personal interests.

Wondering how to spell my name? (Venkat is shorter and easier to pronounce - VEN-CAT). If you are adventerous, and would like to spell my full name, it is VEN-CAT-A-CREE-SH-NUN).

Research Interests

(New!) Reading Group on Security: My students and myself meet on Tuesdays (3.30 - 4.30) to discuss topics on security. If you are interested in attending, send me email.

My research areas broadly span topics in Computer Systems Security, with use of ideas from compilers, operating systems and formal methods for defending cyber attacks. My recent work has focused on the topics given below.

My CV is available here.

My complete publication list available here. Some recent samples:

• Preventing injection attacks on web based systems. SQL injection (ACM CCS 2007), Cross-site Scripting (DIMVA 2008, W2SP 2008, Oakland 2009).
• Browser Security : Security for Firefox Extensions (DIMVA 2007), Browser support for XSS Prevention (W2SP08).
• Runtime approaches for privacy and information flow policies : See the Shadowed Executions (ACSAC08), Data Sandboxing (ACSAC'06) and Runtime checking for information flow policy enforcement (ICICS'06) papers.
• CMV: Using static analysis and model checking techniques for ensuring complete mediation in authorization systems. (ASIACCS'08).
• Secure execution of untrusted programs : Safe-execution environments (NDSS 2005), Secure Software Installation (DIMVA 2008).
• Electronic Voting Machine Security. (Papers in preparation).

Research Support

Recent and Ongoing Professional Activities

Program Committees

• TPC member. 31st IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland 2010). Oakland, CA,.
• Program co-chair. U.S.-France Joint Young Engineering Scientists Symposium (YESS 2009), Washington DC.
• TPC member. 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2009). Chicago, IL.
• TPC member. 25th Annual Computer Applications Security Conference (ACSAC 2009). Honululu, Hawaii.
• TPC member. 29th Int'l Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2009). Quebec, Canada.
• TPC member. 18th World Wide Web Conference (WWW) . Madrid, Spain, April 2009.
• TPC member. 24th Annual Computer Applications Security Conference (ACSAC). Anaheim, California, December 2008.
• TPC member. Fourth International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS). Hyderabad, India, December 2008.
• Program Chair, Fifth Midwest Security Workshop (MSW), Indianapolis, Apr 2008.

Conference Organization

• Local Arrangements. 16th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2009). Chicago, IL.
• Tutorial chair. Fourth International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS). Hyderabad, India, December 2008.
• Workshop Chair. Fourth Midwest Security Workshop. Univ. of Illinois at Chicago. Oct 2007.

Other Professional Activities

• Member, Election Review Panel, Cook County, Illinois (advising the Clerk's office on E-voting security).

Education

Prior to that I was at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India.

Teaching

Fall 2009 Office hours: MW 1.00 -2.00 p.m. or by appointment.

Students

• Current

  • Michelle Zhou (Ph.D)
  • Mike Ter-Louw (Ph.D)
  • Prithvi Bisht (Ph.D)
  • Kalpana Gondi (Ph.D) (co-advise with Prof. Prasad Sistla)
  • Praveen Venkatachari (Ph.D)
  • Rohini Krishnamurti (M.S.)
  • Chris Eriksson (B.S. with senior project)
  • Chris Pable (B.S. with senior project)
  • Balasubramanian Ramachandran (M.S.)

• Past

  • Raj Swaminathan (M.S with project). Dec 2006. First employment: Motorola Research Labs.
  • Tejas Khatiwala (M.S with thesis). Dec 2006. First employment: VMWare Inc.
  • Michael Leonhard (B.S with senior project) Dec 2006. First employment: Amazon Inc.
  • Jin Soon Lim (M.S with project). Aug 2007. First employment: Microsoft Inc.
  • Doo San Sim (M.S. with project). Dec 2007. First employment: VMWare Inc.
  • Tanushree Varshney (M.S. with project). July 2008.
  • Jimish Jobanputra (M.S. with project). July 2008. First employment: Morningstar Inc.
  • Megha Chauhan (M.S. with project). Dec 2008.

Fun stuff

• Gene Siskel Film Center
• Museum of Science and Industry