Denis Ulybyshev, Ph.D.

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Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Tennessee Technological University and Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center (CEROC). Earned Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2019 and Master’s degree in Automatic Control Systems from Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 2004. Knowledgeable innovator in Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Systems, and Assistive Software for Visually Impaired Users with 24 academic peer-reviewed publications, 7 awards, and 10 years of research in the United States. As a PI/Co-PI, have been serving in 7 research and educational grants with the total funds of $4,779,408 in 2019 – 2022. As a PhD student, made significant contributions to writing five funded research grant proposals in 2015 – 2018, obtaining more than $1.2 million. Currently advise 2 PhD, 1 Master’s, and 7 Undergraduate students. Served as Academic Adviser for 6 Master’s students who successfully graduated and earned Master’s degrees in Computer Science at Tennessee Technological University. Have 8 years of industrial experience in developing software for mass market, including firmware for printers at Samsung Electronics, software for industrial control systems at Schneider Electric and software for healthcare industry.

Research Projects

  • “Mobile Navigation, Object Detection, Recommendation and Notification Software Assistant for Visually Impaired People in Campuses and Smart Cities” (funded by Tennessee Technological University, July 2021 – June 2022)
  • “Vulnerability Analysis and Cyber Risk Assessment for Computing Systems” (current, funded by Tennessee Technological University, in collaboration with Dr. Mike Rogers)
  • “Protecting data in transit and at rest in wireless sensor networks” (finished, was funded by NASA, July 2020 – Dec. 2022)
  • “Data Protection and Export for Transaction Ledgers in Permissioned Blockchain Platforms” (finished, was funded by Tennessee Technological University, 2020 – 2022)
  • “Secure Monitoring and Notification system for Cloud Infrastructures” (finished, was funded by Tennessee Technological University, 2021-2022)
  • SEMAFORE: Secure Mobile Field Diagnostics for Cyber-Physical Systems (finished, was funded by Tennessee Technological University, 2021-2022)
  • Secure Relational Database Management System with Flexible Access Control (finished, in collaboration with Dr. Mike Rogers, was funded by Tennessee Technological University, 2020-2021)
  • Secure Targeted Data Propagation (finished at Purdue University)
  • Cyber secure Vehicle-to-Everything Communication System (finished at Purdue University)
  • Information System for Early Surface Crack Detection (finished at Purdue University)

Research Interests

  1. Web/ Database/ OS/ Cloud/ Blockchain-based systems security.
  2. Cryptography.
  3. Assistive software for visually impaired people.
  4. Cyber risk assessment, Moving Target Defense (MTD), secure software development/ management.
  5. Cyber-Physical Systems: SCADA systems and Programmable Logical Controllers, industrial communication protocols, mobile diagnostics. 
  6. Distributed systems: blockchain-based technologies, transaction management systems.
  7. Language-based security: compiler-based and runtime-based memory protection techniques.
  8. Machine learning: recommendation systems, anomaly detection.
  9. Information retrieval: web search, Search Engine Optimization techniques.
  10. Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication systems.

Awards

  • Nov. 2019: 1-st Place Award in the Graduate Programs student presentations competition of the ACM Mid-Southeast Chapter Conference (#1 out of 7 presentations)
  • Apr. 2019: CERIAS 2019 Diamond Award (#1 out of ~95 students). Award Ceremony Video
  • Apr. 2019: 2nd Best Research Poster Award at 20th CERIAS Annual Information Security Symposium (#2 out of 44, selected by Corporate Partners and Symposium participants). Download Poster (pdf)
  • Aug. 2018: Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship : research is funded for Spring 2019
  • Apr. 2017: Purdue University Computer Science Department Corporate Partners Award (selected as #1 out of 23): research is funded for 2017-2018 Academic Year
  • Apr.2017: Purdue University Computer Science Department Harris Teaching Award for supporting women in Computer Science core classes
  • Mar.2015: 1-st place Research Poster award (#1 out of 43, selected by Corporate Partners and Symposium participants) at 16-th CERIAS symposium – see bottom of the page here . Download Poster (pdf)

Publications

  1. Ulybyshev, D., Rogers, M., Kholodilo, V., Northern, B. “End-to-End Database Software Security”, MDPI Software 2023, vol. 2, pp. 163-176. https://doi.org/10.3390/software2020007
  2. Northern, B. and D. Ulybyshev, “Building Secure Environments for Microservices”, International Workshop on Secure and Reliable Microservices and Containers (SRMC), co-located with 41st IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS), pp. 27 – 31, 2022.
  3. Seyler, T. and D. Ulybyshev, “SEMAFORE: Secure Mobile Field Diagnostics for Cyber-Physical Systems”, Intelligent Sustainable Systems, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol. 578, pp. 445 – 458, Springer, Singapore, 2023.
  4. Massengille, J., T. Burks, R. Mitchell, J. Tice, D. Ulybyshev, “Data Protection and Export for Transaction Ledgers in Permissioned Blockchain Platforms”, IEEE 19th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C), pp. 175 – 182, 2022.
  5. Ujiie, R., V. Kholodilo, B. Northern, D. Ulybyshev. “Secure Monitoring and Notification System for Cloud Infrastructures”, IEEE SoutheastCon Conference, pp. 787 – 792, 2022..
  6. Northern, B., Burks, T., Hatcher, M., Rogers, M., Ulybyshev, D. “VERCASM-CPS: Vulnerability Analysis and Cyber Risk Assessment for Cyber-Physical Systems.” MDPI Information 2021, vol. 12, p. 408.
  7. Burks, T., Cathey, G., Kholodilo, V., Ulybyshev, D., Pearce, M., Marcrum, T., Coultis, M., Van Neste, C., Northern, B., Gupta, M., Boyd, D. “Quasi-Wireless Capacitive Power Transfer with Secure Data Acquisition for Robotic Systems in Space Infrastructure”, 2021 IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE), pp. 78-83, 2021.
  8. Mithu, M. R. A., Rogers, M., Ulybyshev, D., Manicavasagam, R., & Asmar Awad, R. (2021). “Feature Classification for Control System Devices”, The International FLAIRS Conference Proceedings, 34.
  9. Ulybyshev, Denis, Ibrahim Yilmaz, Bradley Northern, Vadim Kholodilo, and Michael Rogers. “Trustworthy Data Analysis and Sensor Data Protection in Cyber-Physical Systems.” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems, in conjunction with ACM CODASPY 2021, pp. 13 – 22. ACM, 2021.
  10. Ulybyshev, Denis, Christian Bare, Kristen Bellisario, Vadim Kholodilo, Bradley Northern, Abhijeet Solanki, Timothy O’Donnell. “Protecting Electronic Health Records in Transit and at Rest“. IEEE 33-rd International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS), pp. 449-452, 2020. Presentation Video
  11. Mithu, M Rayhan Ahmed, Vadim Kholodilo, Rajesh Manicavasagam, Denis Ulybyshev and Michael Rogers, “Secure Industrial Control System with Intrusion Detection”. 33-rd International FLAIRS conference, AAAI, 2020.
  12. Ulybyshev, Denis, “Data Protection in Transit and at Rest with Leakage Detection”. Ph.D. Thesis, Purdue University, Department of Computer Science, May 2019.
  13. D. Ulybyshev, M. Villarreal-Vasquez, B. Bhargava, G. Mani, S. Seaberg, P. Conoval, R. Pike, J. Kobes, “Blockhub: Blockchain-based Software Development System for Untrusted Environments”, IEEE CLOUD conference, pp. 582-585, San-Francisco, 2018. (acceptance rate: 18.97%)
  14. D. Ulybyshev, A. Alsalem, B. Bhargava, S. Savvides, G. Mani, and L. Ben-Othmane, “Secure Data Communication in Autonomous V2X Systems”, IEEE ICIOT conference, pp. 156-163, San-Francisco, 2018. (acceptance rate: 18.57%)
  15. D. Ulybyshev, A. Alsalem, and B. Bhargava, “Secure Data Exchange and Data Leakage Detection in Untrusted Cloud“, Springer Journal on Applications of Computing and Communication Technologies, on 1-st Intl Conf. ICACCT 2018, vol. 899, pp. 99-113.
  16. Yilmaz, Ibrahim, Ambareen Siraj and Denis Ulybyshev, “Improving DGA-Based Malicious Domain Classifiers for Malware Defense with Adversarial Machine Learning.” 4-th Conf. on Information and Communication Technology, accepted, in-press, IEEE, 2020.
  17. D. Ulybyshev, B. Bhargava, M. Villarreal, D. Steiner, L. Li, J. Kobes, H. Halpin, R. Ranchal, A. Alsalem, “Privacy-preserving data dissemination in untrusted cloud”, IEEE CLOUD, pp.770-773, Honolulu, 2017. (acceptance rate: 18%)
  18. S. Sardesai, D. Ulybyshev, L. Ben Othmane, B. Bhargava, “Impact of Security Attacks on The Effectiveness of Collaborative Adaptive Cruise Control Mechanism“, Intl. Smart Cities (ISC-2) Conference, pp. 1-5, Kansas City, September 18-22, 2018.
  19. G. Mani, B. Bhargava, P. Angin, J. Kobes, M. Villarreal-Vasquez, D. Ulybyshev, “Machine Models to Enhance the Science of Cognitive Autonomy“, IEEE Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Conference (AIKE), pp. 46-53, Laguna Hills, Sept., 2018.
  20. G. Mani, D. Ulybyshev, B. Bhargava, J. Kobes, P. Goyal, “Autonomous Aggregate Data Analytics in Untrusted Cloud“, IEEE Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Conference (AIKE) , pp. 138-141, Laguna Hills, Sept., 2018.
  21. C. Qu, D. Ulybyshev, B. Bhargava, R. Rohit, and L. Lilien, “Secure Dissemination of Video Data in Vehicle-to-Vehicle Systems“, 6th Intl. Workshop on Dependable Network Computing and Mobile Systems (DNCMS2015), pp. 47-51, Sep. 2015.
  22. R. Ranchal, D. Ulybyshev, P. Angin and B. Bhargava, “PD3: Policy – based Distributed Data Dissemination”, 16-th CERIAS Security Symp., Mar. 2015. (Best poster award, 1 out of 43, selected by Corporate Partners )
  23. N. Myrent, D.E. Adams, G. Rodriguez-Rivera, D. Ulybyshev, J. Vitek, E. Blanton, T. Kalibera, “A Robust Algorithm to Detecting Wind Turbine Blade Health Using Vibro-Acoustic Modulation and Sideband Spectral Analysis” , 33rd ASME Wind Energy Symposium, 2014
  24. D. Ulybyshev, S. Palacios, G. Mani, A. Alsalem, B. Bhargava, P. Goyal, “On-the-fly Analytics over Encrypted Records in Untrusted V2X Environments”, 4-th Intl. Conf. ICACEEE, Zurich, 2018. [PDF]
  25. D. Ulybyshev, “Comparison of fuzzy and regular Least – Squares Methods in the random noise filtering problem”, Trans. of 5-th Intl. Symp. “Smart Control Systems 2002”. – Caluga (2002), ISBN 5 – 7038 – 2049 – 9, pp. 320 – 323
  26. D. Ulybyshev, “Fuzzy Least – Squares Method and its modifications for different kinds of fuzzy “AND” operation in the random noise filtering problem”, Trans. of Intl. Symp. “Reliability and Quality”. – Penza (2003), ISBN 5 – 94170 – 031 – 8, pp. 203 – 207

Hackathons & Competitions

1. Apr, 2019. Participated (6th place) in a two-day Cybersecurity Programming Challenge “TracerFIRE 2019”, organized by Sandia National Laboratories, CERIAS and Computer Science Department at Purdue University, 06-07 April 2019

News

  • March 2023: our research paper titled “End-to-End Database Software Security” has been published in MDPI Software journal, volume 2, issue 2, pages 163 – 176. Anyone interested in Relational Database Management Systems and their cybersecurity is welcome to read the publication and leave feedback https://lnkd.in/gQkt-sdc I thank the co-authors, Dr. Mike Rogers, Vadim Kholodilo, and Bradley Northern, for their valuable contributions. I also thank the Department of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Technological University for their support.
  • January 2023: our research paper titled “SEMAFORE: Secure Mobile Field Diagnostics for Cyber-Physical Systems” has been published in Springer Nature journal, Intelligent Sustainable Systems book, Volume 1 (Selected Papers of IEEE WorldS4 conference 2022). Anyone interested in cyber-physical systems and cyber security is welcome to read the publication and leave feedback https://lnkd.in/gBdqgXgK I thank Tate Seyler for his valuable contributions. I also thank the Department of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Technological University for their support.
  • December 2022: our research paper “Building Secure Environments for Microservices” is published at IEEE International Workshop on Secure and Reliable Microservices and Containers (SRMC) 2022. Those who are interested in microservices and cyber security are welcome to read the paper and leave feedback. I thank Bradley Northern for his valuable contributions. I also thank the Department of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Technological University for their support.
  • December 2022: glad to share a story about Creative Inquiry Summer Experience 2022 grant program from the Department of Computer Science, Tennessee Tech University. Our information system for visually impaired users was part of the program.
  • December 2022: four Master’s students for whom I served as an Academic Adviser at Tennessee Tech University, successfully graduated and earned Master’s degrees in Computer Science.
  • November 15 2022: attended “Accessing Higher Ground” conference in Denver, CO. Glad to network and learn about Assistive Software and Accessibility
  • August 2022: presented a peer-reviewed research paper “SEMAFORE: Secure Mobile Field Diagnostics for Cyber-Physical Systems” at IEEE 6th World Conference on Smart Trends in Systems Security and Sustainability (WorldS4), held in London, UK
  • July 2022: our research paper “Secure Monitoring and Notification System for Cloud Infrastructures” is published at IEEE SoutheastCon 2022 conference. Those who are interested in cloud security are welcome to read the paper and leave feedback. I thank co-authors for their valuable contributions. I also thank the Department of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Technological University for their support.
  • May 2022: our research paper “Data Protection and Export for Transaction Ledgers in Permissioned Blockchain Platforms” is published at 2022 IEEE 19th International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA), 3rd Workshop on Blockchain-based Architectures. Those who are interested in security of blockchain-based solutions are welcome to read the paper and leave feedback. I thank co-authors for their contributions and the Department of Computer Science and Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Technological University for their support.
  • May 2022: a Master’s student for whom I served as an Academic Adviser at Tennessee Tech University, successfully graduated and earned Master’s degrees in Computer Science.
  • April 2022: attended Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) 2022 conference. Impressed by the high research quality of students’ posters, congrats to poster award winners and all the participants! Inspired by a cyber workshop run by Dr. Kevin Du. Glad to meet in person the author of textbooks that I use in my cyber courses. Looking forward to attend WiCyS 2023!
  • April 2022: presented a peer-reviewed research paper “Secure Monitoring and Notification System for Cloud Infrastructures” at IEEE Southeastcon 2022 conference, held in Mobile, AL.
  • March 2022: presented a peer-reviewed research paper “Data Protection and Export for Transaction Ledgers in Permissioned Blockchain Platforms” at 3rd IEEE Workshop on Blockchain-based Architectures (BlockArch) 2022, in conjunction with 19th IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA).
  • October 2021: presented a peer-reviewed research paper “Quasi-Wireless Capacitive Power Transfer with Secure Data Acquisition for Robotic Systems in Space Infrastructure” at IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE) 2021
  • August 2021: grant proposal “CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (Renewal): An Enhanced and Integrated Scholar Experience in Cybersecurity” has been funded by NSF CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program. Lead PI: Dr. Ambareen Siraj, Co-PIs: Eric Brown, Drs. Maanak Gupta, Akond Rahman, Denis Ulybyshev. August 2021 – July 2026. Amount: $ 4,443,669.
  • July 2021: a research grant “Mobile Navigation, Object Detection, Recommendation and Notification Software Assistant for Visually Impaired People in Campuses and Smart Cities” has been activated. This Faculty Research Award is funded by Tennessee Technological University. Lead PI: Denis Ulybyshev. July 01, 2021 – June 30, 2022. Amount: $9,995.
  • December, 2020: A peer-reviewed research paper has been accepted and presented at IEEE 4-th Conference on Information and Communication Technology. Yilmaz, Ibrahim, Ambareen Siraj and Denis Ulybyshev, “Improving DGA-Based Malicious Domain Classifiers for Malware Defense with Adversarial Machine Learning.”
  • November, 2020: Selected for a participation support (Dakota State University) as a mini-grant: “Shift Left Early: Secure Software Engineering for Undergraduate Students”, funded by NSF Cyber Training Curriculum Development Mini Grant (NSF Award #1730105). PI: Dr. Akond Rahman. Co-PI: Dr. Denis Ulybyshev. November 19, 2020 – March 08, 2021. Amount: $5,000.
  • July, 2020: A peer-reviewed research paper has been published. Ulybyshev, Denis, Christian Bare, Kristen Bellisario, Vadim Kholodilo, Bradley Northern, Abhijeet Solanki, Timothy O’Donnell. ”Protecting Electronic Health Records in Transit and at Rest.” IEEE 33-rd International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS) , pp. 449-452, IEEE, 2020. Presentation Video
  • July, 2020: DENSO North American Foundation grant has been activated. “A Pilot Education Program for Connected and Automated Electric Vehicles (CAEVs)”. Lead PI: Dr. Pingen Chen, Co-PIs: Drs. Steven Anton, Stephen Canfield, Vahid Motevalli, Mohan Rao, Muhammad Ismail, Denis Ulybyshev, Syed Rafay Hasan. July 01, 2020 – April 30, 2022. Amount: $157,964.
  • July, 2020: NASA grant has been activated. “Quasi-Wireless Capacitive (QWiC) Surface Power for Adaptive and Reconfigurable Sensor Elements on Space Infrastructure”. Lead PI: Dr. Charles Van Neste, Co-PIs: Drs. Denis Ulybyshev, Satish Mahajan, Maanak Gupta. July 01, 2020 – June 30, 2021 (no cost extension to December 2022). Amount: $152,810.
  • June, 2020: Participated in a “ProgBlog” program (in Russian) of a Silicon Valley Hi-Tech blogger, Victoria Borodina. In this video, I answer questions about my industrial and academic careers and opportunities to get a PhD degree in Computer Science in the United States and, in particular, in Tennessee Technological University
  • May, 2020: A peer-reviewed research paper has been published. Mithu, M Rayhan Ahmed, Vadim Kholodilo, Rajesh Manicavasagam, Denis Ulybyshev and Michael Rogers, “Secure Industrial Control System with Intrusion Detection”. 33-rd Intl. FLAIRS conference, AAAI, 2020.
  • May, 2020: My first Master’s student has graduated. Appointment after the graduation: Master of Business Administration (MBA) program at Tennessee Technological University
  • February, 2020: Won the Tennessee Tech University Intramural Singles’ Table Tennis championship
  • November, 2019: My research group won a 1-st Place Award in the Graduate Programs student presentations competition of the ACM Mid-Southeast Chapter Conference (#1 out of 7 presentations)
  • August, 2019: Started work as an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Tennessee Technological University
  • May, 2019: Graduated with Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Purdue University
  • April, 2019: Won the CERIAS 2019 Diamond Award (#1 out of ~95 students). Award Ceremony Video
  • April, 2019: Won the 2nd Best Research Poster Award at 20th CERIAS Annual Information Security Symposium (#2 out of 44, selected by Corporate Partners and Symposium participants). Download Poster (pdf)
  • April, 2019: Participated (6th place) in a two-day Cybersecurity Programming Challenge “TracerFIRE 2019”, organized by Sandia National Laboratories, CERIAS and Computer Science Department at Purdue University, 06-07 April 2019
  • March, 2019: Successfully defended PhD dissertation
  • August, 2018. Awarded with Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship . Research will be funded in Spring, 2019 at Computer Science Department, Purdue University
  • August, 2018: Paper “Machine Learning Models to Enhance the Science of Cognitive Autonomy” has been accepted for IEEE AIKE 2018 conference (will be held in Laguna Hills, California, USA, Sep. 26-28 2018)
  • August, 2018: Paper “Autonomous Aggregate Data Analytics in Untrusted Cloud” has been accepted for IEEE AIKE 2018 conference (will be held in Laguna Hills, California, USA, Sep. 26-28 2018)
  • June, 2018: Paper “Impact of Security Attacks on The Effectiveness of Collaborative Adaptive Cruise Control Mechanism” has been accepted for IEEE ISC2 “International Smart Cities” 2018 conference (will be held in Kansas, Sep. 2018)
  • June, 2018: Started summer/fall internship at “Coze Health” company as a Cybersecurity Software Engineer
  • April, 2018: Paper “Blockhub: Blockchain-based Software Development System for Untrusted Environments” has been accepted for IEEE CLOUD 2018 conference (held in San-Francisco, 02-07 July 2018)
  • April, 2018: Paper “Secure data communication in autonomous V2X systems” has been accepted for IEEE ICIOT 2018 conference (held in San-Francisco, 02-07 July 2018)
  • April, 2018: Paper “On-the-fly Analytics over Encrypted Records in Untrusted V2X Environments” has been accepted for ICACEEE 2018 conference (held in Zurich, Switzerland, 09-11 May 2018)
  • March, 2018: Paper “Secure data exchange and data leakage detection in untrusted cloud” has been accepted for Springer journal
  • November, 2018. Took the 3-rd place in American National Intercollegiate Ballroom dancing competition “Ohio Star Ball” , Quickstep dance
  • September, 2017. Presented a poster “Blockhub: Blockchain-based Secure Cross-domain Software Development and Sharing System” at Lawson poster showcase in Computer Science Department, Purdue University
  • May, 2017. Started summer internship at “Flexware Innovation” as an Automation Team Intern (Trailblazer 2017 Intern)
  • May, 2017. Paper “Privacy-preserving data dissemination in untrusted cloud” is published in IEEE Cloud 2017 conference (Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America)
  • April, 2017. Won an award from Corporate Partners of Purdue University Computer Science Department (selected as #1 out of 23, research is funded for 2017-2018 Academic Year) .
  • April, 2017. Won Harris Teaching Award from Purdue University Computer Science Department for “Supporting Women in Core Courses”
  • March, 2017. Successfully passed PhD Prelimnary Examination with the presentation “Privacy-preserving data sharing and leakage detection”.
  • April, 2016. Participated in NGC Symposium. Selective dissemination of Electronic Health Records in untrusted cloud (video, download and play for better quality) 
  • 19-20 April 2016. Participated in 17-th CERIAS Symposium.  1) Authentication of User’s Device and Browser for Data Access in Untrusted Cloud (poster)  2) Secure Data Dissemination in Vehicle-to-Vehicle Systems (poster)
  • November, 2015. Passed PhD Oral Qualifying exam. Done with PhD Qualifying Examinations
  • September, 2015. Paper  “Secure Dissemination of Video Data in Vehicle-to-Vehicle Systems” is published. Download pdf
  • March 25, 2015. 1-st place Research Poster award at 16-th CERIAS symposium – see bottom of the page here
  • January, 2015. Paper “A robust algorithm for detecting Wind Turbine Blade Health Using Vibro-Acoustic Modulation and Sideband Spectral Analysis” is published. Download pdf
  • June, 2014. Passed PhD Qualifying examination, Part 1