Muhammad Awais Jafar

I am a PhD student in the department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I am advised by Dr. Chris Kanich. My research is focused on the intersection of Privacy, Cyber Security and Applied deep learning. Previously, I worked in Systems and Security lab in LUMS under the supervision of Dr. Fareed Zaffar. I also have a 3 years work experience as a Research and Development Engineer at SlashNext

Email: mjafar6@uic.edu

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Timeline of the cool stuff

  • August 2018: Joined the University of Illinois at Chicago for PhD in Computer Science.
  • July 2018: Left Systems and Security Lab in LUMS.
  • June 2018: Graduated at the top of my Masters Batch
  • March 2018: Admitted to PhD programs of University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Iowa
  • September 2017: Received the Masters Academic Merit Scholarship at Lahore University of Management Science
  • June 2017: Joined Systems and Security Lab in LUMS under the supervision of Dr. Fareed Zaffar.

Publications

It takes time to come up with the best first publication :)


Research

My research area of interest mainly comprise of using deep learning to answer security questions, text analytics, computer vision and generating adversarial samples to test robustness of the machine learning models. I also have research collaborations with professors in University of IOWA and Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Job Experience

I have worked as a Research and Devcelopment engineer at a California based Network Security Comapny called Slashnext for 3 years. My main responsibilities were,
  • Working with Tensorflow and keras for deep learning models implementation
  • Development of Classifier to identify Malicious PDF documents
  • Phishing Detection using Adversial Networks
  • Strata Cluster Analysis for Malicious and benign network communication
  • Performing ETL using tools like RapidMiner and using native python numpy stack
  • Experience with Numpy stack including Numpy, Scikit-learn, Scipy, Pandas and Matplotlib
  • Cron and Automation Scripting using Python/Bash
  • Hands on experience with Databases, Local and Remote network administration
  • Collaborative Version Control System (Git, SVN)