SCI - People

Core Faculty

William Enck, co-Director

William Enck William Enck is the Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Security Sciences in the Department of Computer Science at the North Carolina State University where he is director of the Wolfpack Security and Privacy Research (WSPR) laboratory. Prof. Enck's research interests span the broad area of systems security, with efforts addressing security challenges in mobile applications, operating systems, cloud services, and networking. In particular, his work in mobile application security has led to significant consumer awareness and changes to platforms. Prof. Enck was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and regularly serves on program committees for top conferences in security such as USENIX Security, IEEE Security and Privacy, ACM CCS, and NDSS. He was program co-chair of IEEE S&P 2025, 2024, USENIX Security 2018 and ACM WiSec 2016. Prior to joining NC State, Prof. Enck earned his Ph.D., M.S., and B.S in Computer Science and Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2011, 2006, and 2004, respectively. Prof. Enck is a member of the ACM, IEEE, ISSA, and USENIX.

Laurie Williams, co-Director

Laurie Williams Laurie Williams is a Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Laurie is a co-director of the NCSU Secure Computing Institute (SCI) and the NCSU Science of Security Lablet. Laurie's research focuses on software security and secure software supply chain. She is an associate editor-in-chief of the IEEE Security and Privacy magazine. Laurie is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow. Laurie has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University, an MBA from Duke University, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

Aydin Aysu

Aydin Aysu Aydin Aysu is an Associate professor and Bennett Faculty Fellow at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of North Carolina State University, where he leads the HECTOR: Hardware Cybersecurity Research Lab. Dr. Aysu conducts research on cybersecurity with an emphasis on hardware-based security. The focus of his research is the development of secure systems that prevent advanced cyber attacks targeting hardware vulnerabilities. To that end, his research interests cover applied cryptography, computer architecture, and digital hardware design. He also works on cybersecurity education and the societal impacts of cybersecurity. Prior to joining NC State, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia and his M.S from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is an IEEE senior member and has an Erdös number of 3.

Anupam Das

Anupam Das Anupam Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. His research broadly spans security and privacy, with a focus on designing secure and privacy-preserving technologies. His work aims to understand and mitigate emerging risks in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) and generative AI. More recently, he has been developing techniques and systems that not only assess security, privacy, and safety challenges but also improve transparency and user control over how personal data is collected and used by emerging technologies. Prior to joining NC State, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2016 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was a recipient of Fulbright Science and Technology fellowship. He previously served as an Assistant Professor in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Alexandros Kapravelos

Alexandros Kapravelos Alexandros Kapravelos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NC State University. He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2015. His research interests span the areas of web security & privacy, software supply chain security, and AI security. He is particularly interested in the security and privacy problems that arise from the evolution of the web, the software supply chain and the latest advancements in AI. He is also interested in Internet privacy and browser fingerprinting specifically, where he is working on making Internet users less distinctive while they browse the web. He is the lead developer of Wepawet, a publicly available system that detects drive-by downloads with the use of an emulated browser, Revolver, a system that detects evasive drive-by download attempts, and Hulk, a browser extension analysis system.

Samira Mirbagher Ajorpaz

Samira Mirbagher Ajorpaz Dr. Mirbagher, an assistant professor at North Carolina State University's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, also serves in the computer science faculty. With a BS from the University of Isfahan and a PhD from Texas A&M University, she later became a 2020 Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California San Diego. Her research melds computer architecture, systems security, and machine learning, emphasizing efficient and secure microarchitectural designs and refining machine learning models for hardware. Notably, her work has influenced the security, performance and power efficiency of newer CPU designs, and she has shared her expertise in prominent venues like ISCA and MICRO while also contributing to program committees in industry track and academic of renowned conferences such as HPCA, ASPLOS, MICRO and ISCA.

Brad Reaves

Brad Reaves Brad Reaves is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. His research seeks to identify, characterize, and confront the root causes of the most prominent and visible problems in computer security. He is best known for his work on cellular and telephone network security, but he also has produced key results on the security of software ecosystems, local networks, and communicating security information to humans. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, the 2020 Internet Defense Prize, seven distinguished paper awards, and three patents.

Alessandra Scafuro

Alessandra Scafuro Alessandra Scafuro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NCSU. She received her PhD from University of Salerno, Italy, in 2013. Prior to joining the NC State faculty, she was a post-doc at UCLA, and held a joint post-doc position at Boston University and Northeastern University. Her research interests are in the theoretical foundations as well as practical applications of Cryptography. Presently she studies the problem of designing protocols for secure computation. The goal of secure computation is to allow several parties to compute a function of their joint inputs, in such a way that all participants learn the output of the function but yet, they do not learn the inputs of the other parties. This problem is relevant in scenarios where multiple parties are interested in evaluating functions on sensitive data that must remain private, for example, running tests on medical records. While from a theoretical point of view this problem has been extensively studied, the challenge today is to design protocols that are efficient and usable in real world applications.

Dominik Wermke

Dominik Wermke Dominik Wermke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. His research interests center around empowering software experts to design, develop, and deploy secure, privacy-respecting, and trust-worthy software. His general areas of research are in usable security & privacy, software supply chain security & transparency, the open source ecosystem, and supporting software experts in designing secure and user-friendly systems. Prior to joining NC State, Dominik was a researcher at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and part of the TeamUSEC research group for human-centered security. He received his Dr. rer. nat. (PhD equivalent) in computer science from Leibniz University Hannover in 2023 and both a M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Saarland University in 2016 and 2015 respectively.

Chau-Wai Wong

Chau-Wai Wong Chau-Wai Wong is an Associate Professor with the ECE Department and the Forensic Sciences Cluster, North Carolina State University. Before joining NC State, he was a Data Scientist with Origin Wireless, Inc., Maryland. Dr. Wong works on forensics and privacy problems through the lens of signal processing and statistics. His research interests include machine learning, multimedia forensics, signal and image processing, data analytics, and video coding, with a recent focus on federated learning and generative models. Dr. Wong received his B.Eng. and M.Phil. from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and his PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Affiliated Faculty

Florence Martin

Florence Martin Dr. Florence Martin is a Professor in Learning Design and Technology at North Carolina State University. Dr. Martin engages in research to create transformative learning experiences through effective design and integration of digital teaching and learning innovations. In recent years, she has researched on the design of online learning environments and cybersecurity education with a focus on digital safety. Dr. Martin served as the President of the Multimedia Production Division and Division of Distance Learning for Association for Educational Communications and Technology. She currently serves as a Senior Associate Editor for Online Learning Journal, AERA Division C Section Chair for Engineering and Computer Science, and on the advisory council for North Carolina Virtual Public Schools.

Additional Personnel

Laura Rodgers, Director of Cybersecurity Practice

Laura Rodgers Laura Rodgers is the SCI Director of Cybersecurity Practice and the Director of NC-PaCE where she serves as the technical liaison between industry, government agencies, the Secure Computing Institute, and NC-PaCE. As Director of NC-PaCE, Rodgers works with the member education institutions and industry to develop programs that support cybersecurity in North Carolina. Prior to joining NC State, Rodgers was the Sr. Cyber Compliance Manager for the North Carolina Military Business Center, where she helped defense contractors develop cybersecurity compliance programs. She has held a variety of positions in the defense industry, including with Lockheed Martin’s MX and Titan Missile Programs and General Dynamics Information Technology’s urban training programs. Ms. Rodgers holds a B.S in Accounting and an MBA from Oklahoma State University. She is a certified Data Privacy and Protection Specialist and is working toward a CMMC Certified Professional certification.