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 by Prof. Varun Chandrasekaran, whose mentorship has been invaluable in shaping my early academic journey. I also had the privilege of working closely with Prof. Yupeng Zhang and Prof. David Heath, whose guidance introduced me to the fascinating world of cryptography.
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
- 2025 — Present Texas A&M University Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science
- 2023 — 2025 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Master of Science in Computer Engineering
- 2018 — 2023 Zhejiang University Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering
- 2018 — 2023 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 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 & 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