Shahriar Nick Rahimi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor School of Computing Sciences & EngineeringUniversity of Southern Mississippi118 College DriveHattiesburg, MS 39402 Office: TEC 330Phone: (601)266-4949 (main office)nick.rahimi@usm.edu
Nick Rahimi, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cybersecurity Program Coordinator
Director of Cyber Innovations Lab
CAE-CD Point of Contact (PoC)
I am an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing Sciences & Engineering of the Southern Mississippi University I have earned two Bachelor of Science in Computer Software Engineering and Information Systems Technologies ( Cybersecurity concentration) and obtained my Master and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Southern Illinois University.
Research Interest: Computer and Network Security, Machine Learning in cybersecurity, Peer-to-Peer Networks, Blockchain Technology , Applied Cryptography, Internet Anti-Censorship , Distributed Systems and Computer Networks .
I am looking for hardworking, creative, and self-motivated graduate and undergraduate (PhD , Master & Bachelor) students with interests in cybersecurity, decentralized networks, machine learning and blockchain. If you are a student interested in joining my lab, please send me an email with your CV, research interests and contact information.
Recent News:
I am appointed as the Cybersecurity Program coordinator at USM
https://www.usm.edu/computing-sciences-computer-engineering/cybersecurity.php
In a significant milestone, University of Southern Mississippi has been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense through the academic year 2028.
$75,716 has been awarded for a year by NSF for Post- Baccalaureate Research Program for LSMAMP students.
Congratulations to Akbar Murad, the first author, and the entire team for their publication in Elsevier's "Future Generation Computer Systems," a prestigious journal with an impressive impact factor of 7.5 and a Cite Score of 21.1. The article, titled "SG-PBFS: Shortest Gap-Priority Based Fair Scheduling technique for job scheduling in the cloud environment," is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2023.09.005.
Additionally, Akbar was recently awarded $500 in travel funds by the Graduate Committee in the School of BEES. Well done!
I will be serving as the faculty advisor for the Google Developer Club at USM.
I will be serving as the Program Chair at the 32nd Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2023) international conference. The 32nd SEDE 2023 is being held in conjunction with the 36th CAINE conference and will take place remotely, with online presentations. The event is scheduled for October 16-18, 2023.
If the first author is a student, the paper will be eligible for the member registration fee of $350.
Spring 2023- Last Class selfie with CSC428/591 Machine Leaning in Cybersecurity Had an amazing time with my incredible class! It was a successful semester filled with growth, learning, and lots of fun! Here's a snapshot of our memorable moments together. Here are a few comments that truly made my day:
"Dr. Rahimi is a breath of fresh air in the department, and I hope all of the students in this department have the pleasure of taking a course with him."
"Prof. Rahimi creates lectures and in-class assignments that supplement learning and are beneficial to completing assignments. He also is very interactive in class, and also responds to emails incredibly quick."
"Our instructor is very engaging, encourages students to participates in class, and is available for help."
"Checked on students daily and weekly. Made sure every student understood the assignments and lectures. Gave great stories and discussions that delt with the lectures."
Lab News:
November 2023:
1. Rabeea Fatima and Sajim Ahmed represented USM and the CIL lab very well at the GC3 Conference. Their research poster, titled 'A Machine Learning Approach for Ransomware Detection,' was awarded first place at the conference. The 10th annual Gulf Coast Chapters Conference (GC3) was held in Biloxi, MS, where researchers from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi showcased their research findings.
2. New Journal Acceptance
Title: Priority Based Job Scheduling Technique that Utilizes Gaps to Increase the Efficiency of Job Distribution in Cloud Computing
Journal: Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, Elsevier.
October 2023:
1. During an invited talk at Oklahoma State University, Dr. Rahimi presented a novel research titled 'CryptoLoc: Secure Decentralized Location-based Cryptography without GPS'.
2. Saydul Akbar Murad represented USM and CIL Lab at "IEEE- 10th International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS 2023), San Antonio, and presented: Secure and Scalable Permissioned Blockchain using LDE-P2P Networks
3. Rabeea Fatima and Sajim Ahmed, undergraduate researchers at the CIL lab, recently submitted a poster titled 'A Machine Learning Approach for Ransomware Detection' to the Gulf Coast Annual Regional Conference (GC3). Excitingly, the poster has been accepted.
September 2023:
1. New Conference Paper Publication Acceptance:
Title: Secure and Scalable Permissioned Blockchain using LDE-P2P Networks
Authors: Saydul Akbar Murad, Nick Rahimi
Conference: 10th International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS 2023), San Antonio, Texas , USA. October 23-25, 2023
Co-Sponsored by IEEE and IEEE Systems Council
2. Saydul Akbar Murad awarded another $300 for travel funds from the Graduate School.
August 2023:
New Journal Publication
Title: SG-PBFS: Shortest Gap-Priority Based Fair Scheduling technique for job scheduling in cloud environment
Authors: Saydul Akbar Murad, Zafril Rizal M. Azmi, Abu Jafar Md Muzahid, MD. Khairul Bashar Bhuiyan, Md Saib, Nick Rahimi, Nusrat Jahan Prottasha, Anupam Kumar Bairagi
Journal: Future Generation Computer Systems, Elsevier. Impact Factor: 7.5
Saydul Akbar Murad awarded $500 for travel funds from the Graduate Committee in the School of BEES
July 2023:
Saydul Akbar Murad presented PhishGuard: Machine Learning-Powered Phishing URL Detection at IEEE CPS International Conference. The presentation can be viewed via the link provided above
New Book Chapter Publication Acceptance:
Title: Security Challenges in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
Authors: Seydul Akbar Murad, Nick Rahimi, Indranil Roy, Bidyut Gupta
Journal: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group -Date: 26 Jun 2023
June 2023: New Journal Publication Acceptance:
Title: The Advantages of Optimizing Reaction Conditions Using Machine Learning to Improve and Predict Yield for the Polyol Millifluidic Synthesis of Silver Nanowires
Authors: Destiny Williams, Nick Rahimi, James Smay, Shohreh Hemmati
Journal: Springer, Applied Nanoscience
Date: 22 Jun 2023
May 2023: New Journal Publication Acceptance:
Title: Secured Communication in Generalized Non DHT-based Pyramid Tree
Authors: Nick Rahimi, Indranil Roy, Ziping Liu, Bidyut Gupta, Narayan Debnath
Journal: International Journal of Computers and Their Applications (IJCA)
Date: 28 May 2023
April 2023: A research paper entitled: "PhishGuard: Machine Learning-Powered Phishing URL Detection" accepted in Las Vegas, Nevada: IEEE CPS /The 2023 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence.
April 2023: Seydul Akbar Murad, an PhD student in Cyber Innovations Lab presented his paper on the "Design of a New Secured Hierarchical Peer-to-Peer Fog Architecture Based on Linear Diophantine Equation" at the 38th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA-2023).
March 2023: Heather Broome and Yaju Shrestha , undergraduate researchers at Cyber Innovations Lab awarded 2nd place in computing Undergraduate Symposium for Research and Creative Activity at Southern Miss. Their reserach entitled : "Darknet Traffic Classification and Adversarial Attacks." Aayush Gautam and NyZaireyus Harrison are collaborating in this research as well.
April 2023: Aayush Gautam awarded Drapeau Summer Research Grant for $4000. Aayush will be working on "Deep Learning Approaches for Detecting Advanced Persistent Threats in Enterprise Networks" under supervisor of Dr. Rahimi. Congratulations Aayush!
March 2023- Aayush Gautam, an undergrad researcher presented his first-ever research paper on the "Viability of Machine Learning in Android Scareware Detection" at the 38th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA-2023)