V.N. (Venkat) Venkatakrishnan

Greetings!!

I am an Associate 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

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 complete publication list available here. Some recent highlights:

• Automated Detection of Parameter Tampering Vulnerabilities: CCS'10, CCS'11.
• Securing Web Advertisements: USENIX Security 2010.
• Prevention Web Application Scripting Attacks: Oakland'09, W2SP'08, DIMVA'08, CCS'07.
• Runtime approaches for information flow policies : Shadowed Executions (ACSAC08)

My CV is available here.

Research Support

Recent and Ongoing Professional Activities

Program Committees

• 2012: Oakland'12,W2SP'12,PST'12
• 2011: ICISS'11, ACSAC'11, Oakland'11, W2SP'11, ESSoS'11
• 2010: ICISS'10, ACSAC'10, RAID'10, NSS'10, Oakland'10,
• 2009: YESS'09 (Program Co-Chair), CCS'09, ACSAC'09, ICDCS'09, WWW'09 .
• 2008: ACSAC'08, ICISS'08, MSW'08 (Program Chair).

Conference Organization

• Local Arrangements. 17th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2010). Chicago, IL.
• 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.

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 (M.S.)
  • Karthik Thotta Ganesh (M.S.)
  • Nazari Skrupsky (B.S. with senior project)
  • Radoslaw Bobrowicz (B.S.with senior project)
  • and Gary Wang (high school student).

• 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. First employment: CPA Global Inc.
  • Jimish Jobanputra (M.S. with project). July 2008. First employment: Morningstar Inc.
  • Megha Chauhan (M.S. with project). Dec 2008. First employment: Gorilla Polymedia Inc.
  • Balasubramanian Ramachandran (M.S. with project). Dec 2009. First employment: Microsoft Inc.
  • Rohini Krishnamurti (M.S. with project). May 2010.
  • Chris Eriksson (B.S. with senior project)
  • Chris Pable (B.S. with senior project)

Fun stuff

• Gene Siskel Film Center
• Museum of Science and Industry