• Short Bio

Dr. Fanxin Kong is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Notre Dame. Before that, he worked as a tenure-track assistant professor at Syracuse University and as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Insup Lee in the PRECISE Center at University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science at McGill University advised by Prof. Xue Liu. He is serving as the Information Director of ACM SIGBED.

New! I am looking for self-motivated PhD students. Interns, visiting students and scholars are all welcome. If you are interested in my research and working with me, please directly contact me with your CV.  

• Recent News (More)

[Apr. 2024], Award: I receive the award of AFRL VFRP 2024! Many thanks, AFRL!!!

[Mar. 2024], Competition: our poster "Catch You If Pay Attention: Temporal Sensor Attack Diagnosis Using Attention Mechanisms for Cyber-Physical Systems", has won the second place at 2024 ECS Research Day at Syracuse University. Congratulations to Zifan!

[Mar. 2024], Paper: our paper "LLM-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems: Survey, Research Opportunities, and Challenges", is accepted by International Workshop on Foundation Models for Cyber-Physical Systems & Internet of Things (FMSys), co-located with CPS-IoT Week 2024. Congratulations to all!

[Mar. 2024], Paper: our paper on assuring large-language models (LLMs), is accepted by the 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), Poster Track, 2024. Congratulations to all!

[Mar. 2024], Paper: our paper "Recovery from Adversarial Attacks in Cyber-physical Systems: Shallow, Deep and Exploratory Works", is accepted by ACM Computing Surveys. Congratulations to all!

[Mar. 2024], Paper: two papers are accepted by the 30th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Brief Presentations Track, 2024. Congratulations to all!

[Feb. 2024], Paper: our paper "Path Planning for UAVs under GPS Permanent Faults", is accepted by ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems. Congratulations to all!

[Feb. 2024], Service: I will serve as a TPC member in RTSS 2024. Please consider to submit your best work!

[Feb. 2024], Service: I will serve as the Social Media Chair in  Embedded Systems Week (ESWEEK) 2024. 

[Feb. 2024], Service: I will serve as a TPC member in RTCSA 2024. 

[Jan. 2024], Paper: our paper "Vulnerability Analysis for Safe Reinforcement Learning in Cyber-Physical Systems", is accepted by the 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), 2024. Congratulations to Shixiong and Mengyu! 

[Jan. 2024], Paper: our paper "Fast Attack Recovery for Stochastic Cyber-Physical Systems", is accepted by the 30th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2024. Congratulations to Lin, Luis, and all! 

[Dec. 2023], Talk: I gave a talk on Real-Time Attack-Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems in the Department of Computer Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Thank Dr. Luyi Xing for the invitation!

[Dec. 2023],  Service: I was invited to serve as a TPC member 36th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS) 2024. 

[Nov. 2023], Book chapter: our book chapter on AI-Enabled Attack Detection for Cyber-Physical Systems, in the book "AI Embedded Assurance for Cyber Systems", is online! [Link]

[Oct. 2023], Travel grant: Zifan has received the travel grant to RTSS 2023. Congratulations!

[Oct. 2023], Service: I will serve as an Editorial Board member in Discover Internet of  Things, Springer.

[Oct. 2023], Talk: I gave a talk on Attack Recovery for Cyber-Physical Systems, in EAI International Conference on Security and Privacy in Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart Vehicles (SmartSP 2023). Thank Dr. Yu Chen for the invitation!

[Spe. 2023], Competition: our Simulation and Security Toolbox for Cyber-Physical Systems was accepted and presented in the Embedded Systems Research Software Competition at ESWEEK. Congratulations to Mengyu!

[Aug 2023], Paper: our paper "Learn-to-Respond: Sequence-Predictive Recovery from Sensor Attacks in Cyber-Physical Systems", is accepted by the 44th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), 2023. Congratulations to Mengyu! 

[Aug 2023], Paper: our paper "Catch You If Pay Attention: Temporal Sensor Attack Diagnosis Using Attention Mechanisms for Cyber-Physical Systems", is accepted by the 44th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), 2023. Congratulations to Zifan! 

[July 2023], Job: I joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Notre Dame!

[May 2023], Tool: our Simulation and Security Toolbox for Cyber-Physical Systems is online. Visit CPSim!

[May 2023], Paper: our paper "Optimal Checkpointing Strategy for Real-time Systems with Both Logical and Timing Correctness", is accepted by ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS). Congratulations to Lin and Zifan!

[Apr. 2023], Service: I will serve as the session chair of "Session 8: Networks and Communication" at RTAS'23. See you at San Antonio!

[Apr. 2023], Defense: Lin passed his PhD dissertation defense. Big congratulations to Dr. Zhang! My second PhD graduate!

[Apr. 2023], Award: I receive the award of AFRL VFRP 2023! Many thanks, AFRL!!!

[Apr. 2023], Award: Mengyu received the summer pre-dissertation fellowship for Summer 2023. Big congratulations to Mengyu!

[Apr. 2023], Award: Lin received the Pramod K. and Anju Varshney Endowed Graduate Scholarship for the 2022-2023 academic year. Big congratulations to Lin!

• Recent Publications (Full Publications)

Secure & Safe Reinforcement Learning in CPS:

1. [ICCPS'24] Shixiong Jiang, Mengyu Liu, and Fanxin Kong, "Vulnerability Analysis for Safe Reinforcement Learning in Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, 2024.

LLM Assurance in CPS:

1. [ICCPS'24] Weizhe Xu, Mengyu Liu, Steven Drager, Matthew Anderson, and Fanxin Kong, "Assuring LLM-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 15th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, Poster/Demo Track, 2024.

CPS Attack Recovery:

1. [RTAS'24] Lin Zhang, Luis Burbano, Xin Chen, Alvaro A. Cardenas, Steve Drager, Matthew Adderson, and Fanxin Kong, "Fast Attack Recovery for Stochastic Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 30th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2024.

2. [RTSS'23] Mengyu Liu, Lin Zhang, Vir Phoha, and Fanxin Kong, "Learn-to-Respond: Sequence-Predictive Recovery from Sensor Attacks in Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 44th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2023.

3. [RTAS'23] Lin Zhang, Kaustubh Sridhar, Mengyu Liu, Pengyuan Lu, Xin Chen, Fanxin Kong, Oleg Sokolsky and Insup Lee, "Real-Time Data-Predictive Attack-Recovery for Complex Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 29th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2023.

4. [EMSOFT'21] Lin Zhang, Pengyuan Lu, Fanxin Kong, Xin Chen, Oleg Sokolsky and Insup Lee, "Real-Time Attack-Recovery for Cyber-Physical Systems using Linear-Quadratic Regulator", in the 21st ACM SIGBED International Conference on Embedded Software, 2021.

5. [RTSS'20] Lin Zhang, Xin Chen, Fanxin Kong, and Alvaro A. Cardenas, "Real-Time Recovery for Cyber-Physical Systems using Linear Approximations", in the 41st IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2020.

6. [ICCPS'18] Fanxin Kong, Meng Xu, James Weimer, Oleg Sokolsky and Insup Lee, "Cyber-Physical System Checkpointing and Recovery", in the 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, 2018.

CPS Attack Detection & Diagnosis: 

1. [RTSS'23] Zifan Wang, Lin Zhang, Qinru Qiu, and Fanxin Kong, "Catch You If Pay Attention: Temporal Sensor Attack Diagnosis Using Attention Mechanisms for Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 44th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, 2023.

2. [DAC'22] Lin Zhang, ZifanWang, Mengyu Liu, and Fanxin Kong, "Adaptive Window-Based Sensor Attack Detection for Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 59th Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2022.

3. [RTAS'21] Francis Akowuah and Fanxin Kong, "Real-Time Adaptive Sensor Attack Detection in Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems", in the 27th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, 2021.

4. [DAC'20] Tianjia He, Lin Zhang, Fanxin Kong, and Asif Salekin, "Exploring Inherent Sensor Redundancy for Automotive Anomaly Detection", in the 57th Design Automation Conference, 2020.