About Me

I am currently a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at Texas A&M University, advised by Prof. Zhiyuan Yu. My research interests include Trustworthy ML, AI Safety and Applied Cryptography.

Previously, I earned my Master’s degree in Computer Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, advised with Prof. Varun Chandrasekaran. I feel fortunate to have met many kind and talented professors who have supported and inspired my journey. I am grateful to Prof. David Heath and Prof. Yupeng Zhang, whose guidance introduced me to the fascinating world of cryptography, and to Prof. Varun Chandrasekaran, whose mentorship has been invaluable in beginning my academic journey.

Before joining UIUC in 2023, I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering through a joint program between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Zhejiang University. During my undergraduate studies, I had the privilege of working with Prof. Wee-Liat Ong, Prof. Gaoang Wang, and Prof. Thomas Honold.

I’m open to collaborating on interesting research ideas. If you are interested in Trustworthy ML/AI Safety and seek collaboration, please feel free to contact me at taoranl2 [at] illinois [dot] edu.

“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
— Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

Education

Texas A&M University, 2025 - Present
Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2023 - 2025
Master of Science in Computer Engineering

Zhejiang University, 2018 - 2023
Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2018 - 2023
Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering

“纸上得来终觉浅，绝知此事要躬行。”
— 陆游《冬夜读书示子聿》

Research Interests

My research broadly covers computer security and privacy, focusing on robust, scalable, and practical solutions in the following domains:

• Trustworthy Machine Learning
  • Adversarial robustness and privacy-preserving AI
  • Machine unlearning
  • AI for secure code generation and vulnerability detection
  • LLM agent security
  • Integrating cryptographic protocols (MPC, ZKP) with ML
• Security and Privacy of IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems
  • Secure AI integration in robotics and autonomous systems
  • Resilience of interconnected smart infrastructures
• Cryptography
  • Secure multi-party computation (MPC)
  • Zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs)
  • Privacy-preserving data analytics