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I am interested in low-dimensional geometric topology, with a focus on knot theory, quantum invariants of 3-manifolds, and knot homologies --especially in relation to concordances and 4-dimensional smooth topology. I recently got interested in the deep connections, usually provided by combinatorial algebraic topology, between discrete structures --such as matchings and discrete Morse functions-- and their smooth counterparts. As a side interest, I try to apply techniques from topological data analysis to knot theory.

Prospective Students

Please visit the link (https://sites.google.com/view/dsteam/pros-students).

Short Biography

Dr. Dan Dongseong Kim is Deputy Director of UQ Cybersecurity and an Associate Professor (in the commonwealth system, is broadly equivalent to a North American full professor) (continuing appointment) in Cyber Security at The University of Queensland (UQ), Brisbane, Australia. Before UQ, he was a faculty member (permanent academic staff; Senior Lecturer 2015-2018, Lecturer 2011-2014) in Cyber Security in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at The University of Canterbury (UC), Christchurch, New Zealand from 2011 to 2018. From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoc at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina in the US. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland in the US in 2007. His research interests are in Cyber Security and Dependability for various systems and networks. Please visit his research team webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/dsteam/

Publications

• Google Scholars (6000+ citations, h-index: 40, i10-index: 111): https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=dIIYVQkAAAAJ&hl=en
• DBLP (170+ publications): https://dblp.org/pid/k/DongSeongKim.html

Research Focus: Cyber G.A.M.E

• Graphical Models for Cyber Security: Model-based Cyber Security Risk Analysis
• AI for Cybersecurity & Cyber Security for AI: Securing AI systems and Cybersecurity using AI techniques
• Moving Target Defense (MTD): Resilient and Proactive Defence
• Evolving Attacks and Defense Automation: Red team and Blue team Automation and evaluation using AI

Professional Activities (selected)

• Associate Editor, IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (impact factor: 33.84 (2022-2023), #1 impact factor among all the IEEE journals), 2021 - present.
• Editorial Board Member, Elsevier Computers and Security (impact factor: 5.6 (2023)), 2019 - present.
• Editorial Board Member, Elsevier Computer Networks (impact factor: 5.6 (2023)), April 2022 - present.
• An Elected Member of the IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance (2021 onwards).
  • The IFIP WG 10.4 consists of over 60 experts in the field of fault-tolerance, dependable and secure computing.
• Steering committee member of IFIP/IEEE DSN, 2021-2025.
• Steering committee chair of IEEE PRDC, 2022-present.
• Steering committee member of IEEE PRDC, 2019-present.
• TPC member of international conferences including IFIP/IEEE DSN, SRDS, ISSRE, ICDCS, etc.

Selected publications

• Adversarial Machine Learning for Network Intrusion Detection Systems: A Comprehensive Survey, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials (Impact factor in 2021: 33.84)
• Toward Proactive, Adaptive Defense: A Survey on Moving Target Defense, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 2020 [Impact Factor 2018-19: 22.973]
• A Survey on Threat Situation Awareness Systems: Framework, Techniques, and Insights, ACM Computing Surveys, 2022 [Impact Factor 2021-22: 10.282, ranked 4/137 in Computer Science Theory & Methods]
• Evaluating the effectiveness of shuffle and redundancy MTD techniques in the cloud. Computers & Security (2021) [Impact factor: 4.438]
• Threat-Specific Security Risk Evaluation in the Cloud. IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput. 9(2): 793-806 (2021) [Impact factor: 4.714]
• Dynamic Security Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of Moving Target Defense Techniques, Computers & Security, Elsevier, 2018 [Impact factor: 4.438]
• Assessing the Effectiveness of Moving Target Defenses using Security Models. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE TDSC), 2016. [CORE Rank A, Impact factor: 6.404]
• Recovery from software failures caused by Mandelbugs. IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 2016. [CORE Rank A, Impact factor: 2.79]
• Sensitivity Analysis of Server Virtualized System Availability. IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 61(4): 994-1006, 2012. [CORE Rank A, Impact factor: 2.293]
• Scalable Optimal Countermeasure Selection using Implicit Enumeration on Attack Countermeasure Trees, IEEE/IFIP DSN 2012 [CORE Rank A*]

Research Sponsors (past and current)

• NSF (US), IBM T.J. Watson (US), US Army Research Lab. (US), NEC (Japan), Tait Comm. (NZ), MBIE (NZ), NPRP (Qatar), ADD (Republic of Korea), NRF (Republic of Korea), etc.

Recent Ph.D. graduates (selected)

1. Kok Onn Chee (Ph.D., University of Queensland, 2024: Principal Advisor): Security Modelling and Analysis of Internet of Things against Evolving Attacks.

2. Minjune Kim (Ph.D., , University of Queensland, 2023: Principal Advisor): Security and performance evaluation of software defined networking adopting moving target defenses (Research Engineer at CSRIO's Data61, Australia).

3. Dilli P. Sharma (Ph.D., University of Canterbury, 2020; senior supervisor at UC, -> co-supervisor at UQ): Software-defined networking based moving target defenses. (Postdoc at U. of New Brunswick, Canada -> Postdoc at the University of Toronto, Canada).

4. Taehoon Eom (Ph.D., 2020, KAU, Korea, co-supervisor): Security modeling and analysis for performance enhancement in software defined network (Researcher at KAU-> Research Professor at KAU -> Artificial Intelligence Industry Cluster Agency (AICA), South Korea).

5. Hooman Alavizadeh (Ph.D., Massey University, NZ, 2019, co-supervisor): Effective Security Analysis for Combinations of MTD Techniques on Cloud Computing (a Postdoc, Massey University -> Postdoc at UNSW Canberra->Lecturer at U of Sydney-> Lecturer (continuing academic staff), La Trobe University, Australia).

6. Kieran Morris (Ph.D., ECE, University of Canterbury, NZ, 2019, co-supervisor): Reliability and resilience evaluation of distribution automation (first employment: Tait communications, NZ-> Noted Ltd ).

7. Simon (Enochson) Yusuf (Ph.D., Computer Science, NZ, University of Canterbury, Dec 2018, senior supervisor): Dynamic Cyber Security Modeling and Analysis (Postdoc at UQ-> Lecturer (continuing academic staff) at Federal University Kashere (FUK), Gombe, Nigeria -> Lecturer at Whitecliffe College, New Zealand. )

8. Mengmeng Ge (Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Canterbury, 2018; senior supervisor): Graphical security modeling and assessment for the Internet of things (Lecturer (continuing academic) in Cybersecurity at Deakin University -> RMIT University, Australia -> Deloitte New Zealand-> Senior Lecturer, University of Canterbury, New Zealand).

9. Iman Elmir (Ph.D., Hassan 1st Univ. Morocco, 2017, co-supervisor): Security Modeling and Analysis of Intrusion Tolerant Data Centers

10. Jin B. Hong (Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Canterbury, April 2015, senior supervisor): Scalable and Adaptable Security Modeling and Analysis. (First employment: Postdoc, UC, NZ -> Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in Cybersecurity at U of Western Australia)

11. Nguyen Tuan Anh (Ph.D., August 2015, KAU, co-supervisor): Availability Modeling and Analysis of Data Center Systems using Stochastic Reward Nets. (Postdoc, Kunkuk University, South Korea -> an Academic Research Professor, Kunkuk University, South Korea)

Cyber Security Research Experience

Dan Dongseong Kim has been working on various topics in computer and network security since 2001. Dan started his research with crypto algorithms design, implementation, and testing for hardware devices such as FPGA/ASICs. Then, he worked on machine learning/data mining approaches for (host-based, network-based) intrusion detection from 2001 onward. His master's thesis was a machine learning (ML)-based network intrusion detection. He worked on various computer and network security topics such as an intelligent SIEM (it was called enterprise security management at that time), authentication protocols for RFID systems, security and privacy for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), etc. His Ph.D. topics were security and privacy for WSNs. He spent one year as a visiting scholar at The University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, Maryland in the US in 2007 under the supervision of Prof. Virgil D. Gligor.

He started working on dependability more seriously in addition to Cyber Security in 2008 when he started his postdoc research at Duke University under the supervision of the Hudson Chaired Professor Kishor S. Trivedi. He worked on research projects funded by the US NSF, NEC Japan, and IBM T.J. Watson in the area of dependability (availability/performance) of data centers/cloud computing and cybersecurity modeling & analysis.

Since he became a faculty member at The University of Canterbury, New Zealand in August 2011, he explored deeply the area of graphical models for cybersecurity, metrics, measurement, and efficient evaluation methods for automated cybersecurity modeling and analysis and applied those key ideas to Cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Moving Target Defenses (MTD), cyber deception, and automated cyber-attacks generation. He worked with diverse groups of people from various countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Mongolia, Morocco, Malaysia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, USA, UK, and Vietnam.

Academic Genealogy

As for his academic genealogy, his Ph.D. thesis advisor was

• Jong-Sou Park (Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D., 1994); his one was
• Paul Thomas Hulina (Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D., 1969); then it runs back through
• Jon Gustav Bredeson (Northwestern University, Ph.D., 1967),
• Seifollah Louis Hakimi (The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Ph.D., 1959),
• Mac Van Valkenburg (Stanford University, Ph.D., 1952),
• Oswald Garrison Villard, Jr. (Stanford University, Ph.D., 1949),
• Frederick Emmons Terman (widely credited as being the father of Silicon Valley) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 1924, Sc.D.) and
• Vannevar Bush (Jointly Harvard/MIT, D. Eng., 1916) to
• Arthur Edwin Kennelly (Professor at Harvard/MIT) (who was working in Thomas Edison's West Orange Laboratory from December 1887 to March 1894) and Dugald C. Jackson.

His postdoc advisor is Professor Kishor S. Trivedi (UIUC, Ph.D., 1974) who is a Life Fellow of IEEE and the Hudson Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University, USA. Please visit the academic tree from Duglad C. Jackson up to the ancestors at the academic tree (link).

Professor Ryan Ko is Chair and Director of UQ Cyber and a member of the Academic Board at the University of Queensland, Australia. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Engineering)(Hons.) (2005), and PhD (2011) from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Ko has held senior scientific leadership, executive, and directorship roles across industry and academia, and has more than a decade of board, governance and advisory experience across government, industry and NGOs across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and USA.

He currently serves on the Audit and Risk Committee for the board of the global not-for-profit ORCID, and has served on boards and advisory groups for AustCyber, Queensland Government, Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), and the NZX-listed (NZE:LIC) Livestock Improvement Cooperation (LIC).

He has also served as expert advisor to INTERPOL, the government of Tonga, NZDF, NZ Minister for Communications' Cyber Security Skills Taskforce, and one of four nationally-appointed Technical Adviser for the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, Ministry of Justice. He has also served as independent technical expert for court cases.

He is also Adjunct Professor at the Singapore Institute of Technology, and Affiliate Faculty Member at NIATEC at the Idaho State University, USA.

He is co-founder of Cyber Security Certification Australia (CSCAU), CyberCert, and First Watch Ltd (NZ) – an industrial cybersecurity spin-off based on his patented OT security and provenance research at the University of Waikato.

Since joining UQ in 2019, he has served as:

• Deputy Head of School (External Engagement) (2021-2022)
• Founding Discipline Leader of the Cyber Security and Software Engineering discipline (2020-2021)
• Group Leader - Cyber Security (2019)

Ko has successfully established several university-wide, multi-disciplinary academic research and education programmes, including establishing and leading:

• UQ Cyber - interdisciplinary cyber scurity research centre involving 60+ academics and their respective teams from the 6 Schools (EECS, Business, Economics, Law, Social Science, Mathematics & Physics), the Centre for Policy Futures, and 4 Faculties since 2019.
• UQ's interdisciplinary postgraduate programme (MCyber, PGDipCyber, GCertCyber) involving four UQ faculties in 2019,
• NZ's first cyber security graduate research programme and lab (Cybersecurity Researchers of Waikato (CROW)) in 2012,
• NZ's first Master of Cyber Security (encompassing technical and law courses), the NZ Cyber Security Challenge since 2014, and
• NZ Institute for Security and Crime Science – Te Puna Haumaru as its founding director, the Evidence Based Policing Centre (at Wellington with NZ Police and ESR), and Master of Security and Crime Science in 2017 with the University of Waikato, NZ.

Over his academic career, Ko has been awarded A$20+million in competitive grants as lead Chief Investigator, and ~A$40+million as co-investigator. Prior to UQ, he was the highest funded computer scientist in New Zealand, as Principal Investigator and Science Leader of the largest MBIE-awarded cloud security research funding for STRATUS (NZ$12.2 million; 2014-2018). STRATUS' research was awarded 'Gold' by MBIE (i.e. top performing project, 2017), adopted by INTERPOL and featured in NZ's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's NZ Cyber Security Strategy 2016 annual report.

Ko has a track record developing international and national cyber security curricula, including:

• Co-creation of the gold-standard (ISC)2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) curriculum (2014-2015)
• Authoring the draft of the NZQA's Level 6 Cybersecurity Diploma qualification as part of the NZ Cyber Security Skills Taskforce on behalf of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Ko has also experience developing competitions and coaching competitive cyber security teams, including:

• Co-founding the NZ Cyber Security Challenge in 2014, and leading the NZCSC from 2014 to 2018. NZCSC is now the premier national cyber security competition in NZ.
• Co-founding the Oceania Cybersecurity Challenge (OCC) in 2020, and leading the competition from 2022 to present. OCC is now the regional qualifiers for the International Cybersecurity Challenge
• Co-founding the International Cybersecurity Challenge (ICC) as part of the Steering Committee in 2022. ICC has been held in Athens (2022) and San Diego (2023). It is aiming to be the world cup of cyber competitions.
• Head Coach of Team Oceania for the ICC. 2022 Results: Overall 4th; 2023 Results: Overall 2nd in the world.

He contributed to the establishment of the Government of Tonga CERT and CERT NZ, and has spoken regularly on cyber and cloud security research across the globe, including the OECD, Republic of Korea National Assembly (2018), INTERPOL (2017), TEDx Ruakura (2017), and the NZ Members of Parliament (2016).

Within the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27, Prof Ko was Head of Delegation for the Singapore national body, served as Editor, ISO/IEC 21878 “Security guidelines for design and implementation of virtualized servers”, and hosted the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 meetings at Hamilton, NZ, in 2017. He is currently one of the editors of the ISO/IEC PWI 5181 Data Provenance Reference Model. In 2022, Ko co-chaired the development of the Singapore standard TR 106:2022 Tiered cybersecurity standards for enterprises in collaboration with the SPSTC and Singapore Cyber Security Agency.

Ko serves as an assessor for the Australian Research Council (ARC), Irish Research Council, Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), and NZ MBIE College of Assessors (since 2015).

He is also an external expert for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).

Ko has externally examined 11 PhD and 3 Masters theses for universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore.

For his contributions to the field, he was elected Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) (2016). He was awarded the Singapore Government (Enterprise Singapore)’s Young Professional Award (2018) for his leadership at ISO, and awarded the inaugural CSA Ron Knode Service Award 2012 for the establishment of Cloud Data Governance and Cloud Vulnerabilities Research Working Groups. He is also recipient of the 2015 (ISC)2 Information Security Leadership Award.

For his research and teaching excellence, he was awarded the University of Queensland Awards for Excellence - Leadership (Commendation) (2023), EAIT Nominations for Most Effective Teacher (both semesters of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), University of Waikato's Early Career Excellence Award (2014), Faculty Teaching Excellence Awards (2014, 2015, 2018), and the Nola Campbell eLearning Excellence Award (2014). During his PhD, he was also awarded A*STAR SIMTech's Best Student Award (2009), and clinched the 1st Prize of the IEEE Services Cup 2009 at IEEE ICWS (CORE A*) in Los Angeles, CA.

Earlier in his career, Ko was a systems engineer, and subsequently founded two start-ups (one was a social enterprise which became an events/conventions management contractor with IMG at mega-events in Singapore, including the inaugural Youth Olympics in 2010).

He is an active science communicator and is regularly interviewed and featured by Australian (ABC News, SBS News, 7 News, 9 News, Courier Mail, Network 10, AFR), Singaporean (Channel NewsAsia, CNA Radio938), NZ (NZ Herald, Dominion Post, Stuff.co.nz, Waikato Times, TVNZ, Central TV) and international media on topics of cyber security, cybercrime and data privacy.

Veronika Kuchta received her Diploma degree in Mathematics at the Heidelberg University in Germany in 2010. She reseived her PhD in applied cryptography at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom in 2016. She worked as a postdoc at the Universite libre de Bruxelles in Belgium from 2016-2018. From 2018 till 2020 she has been a Research Fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. FromDecember 2020 to July 2022 she was employed by The University of Queensland, School of Mathematics and Physics as a lecturer in mathematical cryptography. From November 2022 she is Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton, USA), department of mathematical sciences. Her research interst focus on the different areas of mathematical cryptography, post-quantum cryptography and its applications to the real-world.