Dr. Kan YANG (CV)

Associate Professor in Department of Computer Science
Founder and Director of UofM CyberCorps SFS Program
Associate Director of Center for Information Assurance
Director of CryptoSec Lab
University of Memphis

portrait

I am a tenured associate professor and director of the CryptoSec Lab in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Memphis. I am also the founder and director of the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program at the University of Memphis, supported by a $3.8M NSF grant as the leading PI. Additionally, I hold the position of associate director at the Center for Information Assurance (CAE-CD, CAE-R) and serve as the program coordinator for the cybersecurity program at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

I received my B.Eng. degree in information security from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2008, and Ph.D. degree in computer science with outstanding research thesis award from City University of Hong Kong in 2013 supervised by Prof. Xiaohua Jia. From 2014 to 2016, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Broadband Communications Research (BBCR) group in the Dept. of ECE at the University of Waterloo, supervised by Prof. Xuemin (Sherman) Shen.

Research Interests

  • Data Security (Cloud, Fog, IoT)
  • AI Security (Security in AI, AI for Security)
  • Blockchain and its Applications
  • Network Security and Trust
  • Applied Cryptography

Honors and Awards

Grants

External Grants:

  • [PI] CyberCorps Scholarship for Service: Developing the Cybersecurity Workforce in West Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas, NSF DGE 2146427, $3,806,815, 2/1/2022 - 1/31/2027.
  • [PI] Designing Machine Learning-based Solutions for APT Detection, FedEx Corporate Services Inc., $397,084, 8/1/2022 - 7/31/2025.
  • [Co-PI] GenCyber 2022, National Security Agency (NSA), $99,764, 5/25/2022 – 3/31/2023.

Internal Grants:

  • [PI] Design Machine Learning Model for RDP Anomaly Detection, FedEx Institute of Technology Frontiers Program, $10,000, 6/1/2022 – 8/31/2022.
  • [PI] Towards Secure and Robust Block Validation for Blockchain, ASPIRED Integrate Grant Program, UofM, $5,000, 7/1/2021 – 6/30/2022.
  • [PI] PKChain: Decentralized Public-Key Management System based on Blockchain Technology, FedEx Institute of Technology Development Grant - CAST, $15,000, 7/1/2018 – 12/31/2019.

News

  • 2024.10 Congratulations to Jamal on the successful defense of his PhD dissertation "Decentralized Trust Infrastructure with Verifiable Computation based on Blockchain"!
  • 2024.10 Our paper "PKChain: Compromise-Tolerant and Verifiable Public Key Management System" has been accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2024.10 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in ICC'25.
  • 2024.10 Our paper "A Game Theory Reward Model for Federated Learning with Probabilistic Verification" has been accepted by DAI'24.
  • 2024.10 Our paper "Building Efficient and Flexible Voting Protocols: An Approach to Fairness and Anonymity" has been accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2024.08 Our paper "EpiOracle: Privacy-Preserving Cross-Facility EarlyWarning for Unknown Epidemics" has been accepted by PETS'25.
  • 2024.07 Our paper "Towards Fair, Robust and Efficient Client Contribution Evaluation in Federated Learning" has been accepted by GLOBECOM'24.
  • 2024.07 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in AsiaCCS 2025.
  • 2024.07 Our paper "SilentProof: Anonymous Authentication with Blockchain-backed Offloading" received the Best Paper Award at AsiaCCS 2024. Congratulations to Jamal!
  • 2024.04 Our paper "Ensuring Fairness in Federated Learning Services: Innovative Approaches to Client Selection, Scheduling, and Rewards" has been accepted by ICDCS'24.
  • 2024.04 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in ICCCN 2024.
  • 2024.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in Globecom24 and Blockchain24.
  • 2024.01 Two papers have been accepted by ICC 2024.
  • 2024.01 Our paper "Blockchain-Based Portable Authenticated Data Transmission for Mobile Edge Computing: A Universally Composable Secure Solution" was accepted by Transactions on Computers
  • 2024.01 Our IoTJ Special Issue was successfully published. Here is the editorial note.
  • 2024.01 Our paper "EIV-BT-ABE: Efficient Attribute-Based Encryption With Black-Box Traceability Based On Encrypted Identity Vector" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal
  • 2023.12 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in AsiaCCS 2024 (second round).
  • 2023.11 Our paper "SilentProof: Anonymous Authentication with Blockchain-backed Offloading" was accepted by AsiaCCS'24.
  • 2023.09 Our paper "PBFL: Privacy-preserving and Byzantine-robust Federated Learning Empowered Industry 4.0" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2023.07 Kan served as the Travel Grant Chair for the 43rd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'23)
  • 2023.07 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 6th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2023).
  • 2023.07 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Communications: Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium (IEEE ICC'24 - CISS).
  • 2023.05 Our paper "A Novel Blockchain-Assisted Aggregation Scheme for Federated Learning in IoT Networks" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2023.03 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2023 IEEE Global Communications Conference: Communication and Information Systems Security (IEEE Globecom'23 - CISS).
  • 2023.02 Our US patent on “Blockchain-based Decentralized Public Key Management System" was granted (US11582024).
  • 2023.01 Kan organized a Special Issue on “Recent Advances of Security, Privacy, and Trust in Mobile Crowdsourcing” on IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Impact Factor: 11.043). Call for papers Welcome to submit your work to this special issue.
  • 2022.12 Our paper "Clustered Federated Multi-Task Learning on Non-IID Data with Enhanced Privacy" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2022.12 Kan was invited to attend the Greater Memphis IT Council Cybersecurity Roundtable as a guest speaker
  • 2022.11 Kan organized the 12th Annual Mid-South Cybersecurity Summit. Check here for the report.
  • 2022.10 Kan was listed as one of the World's Top 2% Scientists in networking and telecommunication area according to the recently published database by Stanford University .
  • 2022.10 Our paper "Efficient and Provably Secure Data Selective Sharing and Acquisition in Cloud-based Systems" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
  • 2022.07 Kan received an external funding as a leading PI from FedEx Corporate Services Inc. to develop machine learning models for APT detection.
  • 2022.07 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications: Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium (IEEE ICC'23 - CISS).
  • 2022.06 Kan received a Frontier Program from FedEx Instititue for Technology as a leading PI.
  • 2022.02 Kan was a co-PI of NSA GenCyber 2022 Capacity Building grant (PI: Dr. Won).
  • 2022.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 5th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2022).
  • 2022.01 Kan received a $3.8 million NSF CyberCorps grant as a leading PI.
  • 2021.11 Kan was interviewed by ABC24 on "security and privacy issues of digital driver's license in Mississippi". News Link
  • 2021.10 Our paper "Blockchain-Based Decentralized Trust Management in Vehicular Networks" won the 2021 IEEE Internet of Things Journal Best Paper Award Runner-Up.
  • 2021.10 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2022 IEEE Global Communications Conference: Communication and Information Systems Security (IEEE Globecom'22 - CISS).
  • 2021.09 Our paper "Reputation-based Truth Discovery with Long-term Quality of Source in Internet of Things" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2021.08 Our paper "A Trust-aware Fog Offloading Game with Long-term Trustworthiness of Users" was accepted by Proc. of 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom'21), Madrid, Spain, 7-11 December 2021.
  • 2021.08 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2021).
  • 2021.07 Kan was elected as an IEEE senior member.
  • 2021.07 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2022 IEEE International Conference on Communications: Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium (IEEE ICC'22 - CISS).
  • 2021.05 Kan was the founding member of IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society (TEMS)’s Technical Committee (TC) on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT).
  • 2021.04 Kan was invited to serve on an NSF Panel.
  • 2021.04 Our paper "Secure and Efficient Task Matching with Multi-keyword in Multi-requester and Multi-worker Crowdsourcing" was accepted by Proc. of IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS'21), 25-28 June 2021, Virtual Conference.
  • 2021.03 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in IEEE 18th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS'21).
  • 2021.03 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in IEEE International Performance Computing and Communications Conference (IPCCC'21).
  • 2021.01 Our paper "Anonymous and Privacy-preserving Federated Learning with Industrial Big Data" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.
  • 2020.09 Kan was interviewed by Local 24 News on the security and privacy issues on iOS/Android newly released features on COVID-19 contact tracing
  • 2020.08 Our paper "Secure and Verifiable Inference in Deep Neural Networks" was accepted by Proc. of 36th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC'20), Austin, TX, 7-11 December 2020.
  • 2020.08 Our paper "Delegating Authentication to Edge: A Decentralized Authentication Architecture for Vehicular Networks" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
  • 2020.07 Congratulations to Senjuti Dutta for successfully defending her M.S. thesis on privacy-preserving crowdsourcing task matching.
  • 2020.05 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2020 IEEE Global Communications Conference: Communication and Information Systems Security (IEEE Globecom'20 - CISS).
  • 2020.05 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 17th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Smart Systems (IEEE MASS'20).
  • 2020.03 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2020).
  • 2020.02 Our Paper "PROTECT: Efficient Password-based Threshold Single-sign-on Authentication for Mobile Users against Perpetual Leakage" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
  • 2020.01 Our Paper "A Weight-based k-prototypes Algorithm for Anomaly Detection in Smart Grid" was accepted by IEEE ICC'20 - CISS Symposium.
  • 2019.11 Our Paper "Data Security Issues in Deep Learning: Attacks, Countermeasures, and Opportunities" was published on IEEE Communication Magazine.
  • 2019.08 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Communications: Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium (IEEE ICC'20 - CISS).
  • 2019.07 Our paper "VerifyNet: Secure and Verifiable Federated Learning" was accepted on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
  • 2019.04 Our paper "Enabling Efficient and Geometric Range Query with Access Control Over Encrypted Spatial Data" was accepted on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
  • 2019.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2019 IEEE Global Communications Conference: Communication and Information Systems Security (IEEE Globecom'19 - CISS).
  • 2019.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 16th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Smart Systems (IEEE MASS'19).
  • 2019.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 5th International Symposium on Privacy Computing (PriCom 2019).
  • 2018.10 Our paper "Proxy-Free Privacy-Preserving Task Matching with Efficient Revocation in Crowdsourcing" was accepted on IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
  • 2018.10 Kan organized the 11th Annual Mid-South Cybersecurity Summit at FIT building.
  • 2018.09 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2019 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2019).
  • 2018.09 Kan gave a talk on "Blockchain-based Decentralized Public Key Management for Named Data Networking" at Named Data Networking Community Meeting at NIST.
  • 2018.09 Our paper "Experience Blocking Ratio Based Game Theoretic Approach for Spectrum Sharing in Heterogeneous Networks" was accepted on IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.
  • 2018.09 Our paper "Blockchain-based Secure Time Protection Scheme in IoT" was accepted on IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2018.08 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 1st International Workshop on Distributed Ledger of Things (DLoT'18, CALL FOR PAPER, deadline: September 3, 2018)
  • 2018.07 Our paper "SybMatch: Sybil Detection for Privacy-Preserving Task Matching in Crowdsourcing" was accepted on IEEE GLOBECOM'18.
  • 2018.07 Our paper "TKSE: Trustworthy Keyword Search over Encrypted Data with Two-side Verifiability via Blockchain" was accepted on IEEE Access.
  • 2018.06 Kan received a FedEx Institute of Technology Development Grant - Cluster to Advance cyber-Security and Testing (CAST) "PKChain: Decentralized Public-Key Management System based on Blockchain Technology" PI, July 1,2018 – December 31, 2019
  • 2018.06 Our paper "Enabling Efficient and Geometric Range Query with Access Control over Encrypted Spatial Data" was accepted on IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.
  • 2018.05 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 10th International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP'18)
  • 2018.05 Our invited paper "Blockchain-based Decentralized Public Key Management for Named-Data Networks (Invited Paper)" was accepted on IEEE ICCCN'18.
  • 2018.05 Our paper "Blockchain-based Decentralized Trust Management in Vehicular Networks" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2018.05 Our paper "HealthDep: An Efficient and Secure Deduplication Scheme for Cloud-Assisted eHealth Systems" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.
  • 2018.04 Our paper "Anonymous Privacy-Preserving Task Matching in Crowdsourcing" was accepted by IEEE Internet of Things Journal.
  • 2018.04 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 15th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (IEEE MASS'18:Security and Privacy Track).
  • 2018.04 Our paper "HealthDep: An Efficient and Secure Deduplication Scheme for Cloud-Assisted eHealth Systems" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.
  • 2018.03 Congratulations to my first MS student, Jobin J. Sunny, for his new job - Associate Software Engineer at St. Jude Cloud
  • 2018.02 Kan was invited to serve as a TPC member in the 2018 IEEE Globecom'18 (Communication and Information Systems Security Symposium).
  • 2018.02 Our magazine paper "Querying in Internet of Things with Privacy Preserving: Challenges, Solutions and Opportunities" was accepted by IEEE Network Magazine.
  • 2018.01 Our paper "Privacy-Preserving Task Recommendation Services for Crowdsourcing" was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Services Computing.