Shahriar Nick Rahimi, Ph.D.
Associate 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
Embedded Files
Hattiesburg, MS 39402 Office: TEC 330Phone: (601)266-4949 (main office)nick.rahimi@usm.edu
Nick Rahimi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Cybersecurity Program Coordinator
Director, Computing Research Hub and Cyber Innovations Lab (CIL)
CAE-CD Point of Contact (PoC)
Dr. Nick Rahimi is an associate professor at the School of Computing Sciences & Computer Engineering (CSCE) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), where he serves as the director of the Cyber Innovations Lab, Cybersecurity Program Coordinator, and Point of Contact (PoC) for the National Security Agency (NSA). His research focuses on cyber systems security and privacy, trustworthy AI in cybersecurity, decentralized systems and applications, brain-computer interface security, digital warfare and cybersecurity policy, and computing sciences education. Dr. Rahimi brings substantial teaching experience to his role, having developed courses in cybersecurity, computer science, and information technology. He is the author of numerous papers in the fields of computer science and cybersecurity. Currently, he advises and mentors more than twenty undergraduate and graduate students engaged in computer science and cybersecurity research. Dr. Rahimi earned his Ph.D. and master's degrees in computer science from Southern Illinois University, complemented by dual bachelor's degrees in computer software engineering and Information Systems Technologies with a concentration in Cybersecurity. . Additionally, he possesses over eight years of industry experience, having worked as a software engineer and project manager.
Research Interest: Cyber Systems Security & Privacy, Trustworthy AI in Cybersecurity, Decentralized and Distributed Systems & Applications, Brain-Computer Interface and Security, Digital Warfare & Cybersecurity Policy, Applied Cryptography, Computing Sciences Education
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:
Recent News:
November 2025- We are proud to share two significant achievements by Ph.D. student Saydul Akbar Murad:
2026 Graduate Student Hall of Fame Selection at The University of Southern Mississippi.
Dissertation Completion Grant Award from the Graduate School.
Saydul is a vital member of the Cyber Innovation Lab, contributing to research in AI, brain-computer interfaces, and decentralized computing.
His current dissertation work, focused on "Efficient Real-Time EEG-to-Text Decoding Using LDEPTH-Based P2P Fog Computing Architecture for Scalable Brain-Computer Interfaces," represents an innovative fusion of neuroscience and computing within the lab's portfolio.
Congratulations to Saydul on these well-deserved recognitions.
October 2025- We are awarded the NASA-EPSCoR RID Seed Grant 2025 for the project, "Tiny Vision Language Models (VLMs) for Real-Time Satellite Imagery Analysis."
This one-year grant, valued at $51,207, supports the development of compact AI models (TinyVLMs) designed to analyze NASA satellite data directly on resource-constrained hardware. This research capability benefits disaster response and climate monitoring applications.
September 2025-We were awarded $153,048 NIST RAMPS grant for Maritime Cyber4Work program! Excited to work with Dr. Sarah Lee and Dr. Aleise McGowan to develop cybersecurity professionals for critical Gulf Coast infrastructure. Read more:www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2025/09/nist-awards-more-3-million-support-cybersecurity-workforce-development
August 2025- $1.24M has been awarded by the state of Mississippi and Amazon to establish a Maritime AI Innovation Lab and an MS program in Robotics and Intelligent Systems to accelerate AI adoption in Mississippi’s Blue Economy. Read more:https://governorreeves.ms.gov/governor-reeves-announces-launch-of-mississippi-ai-talent-accelerator-program-9-1-million-in-grants/
June 2025- Excited to announce our $1.9M NSF STARSS program award! As senior personnel, I'm working with PI Dr. Broome and Co-PI Dr. Masterson to support 60 STEM scholarship recipients over the next 6 years https://www.usm.edu/arts-sciences/starss-program.php
The 34th International Conference on Software and Data Engineering (SEDE 2025), one of the longest-running conferences in the computer science field, took place in New Orleans this October.
Dr. Nick Rahimi, Director of the Cyber Innovation Lab, was serving as the Conference Chair for the international event.
The next conference, SEDE 2026, will be published by Springer and will be held in San Francisco, California.
Proceedings: The official conference proceedings are published by Springer Nature. https://www.isca-hq.org/SEDE/publications.html
President Paul invited me to join the University's Strategic Enrollment Planning Action Team.
NSF AI Showcase at Capitol Hill
NSF AI Showcase at Capitol Hill
I recently had the honor of participating in the National Science Foundation's AI showcase on Capitol Hill. This event provided an excellent opportunity to present my awarded project and meet with Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, the Director of NSF. Our discussion focused on the implications and potential impact of my research in the field of AI.
Representing The University of Southern Mississippi, USM School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering, and the state of Mississippi, I also had the privilege of meeting with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo. We engaged in valuable discussions about the future of AI education and its impact on our region and beyond.
This showcase highlighted the importance of AI research and education, demonstrating how institutions like USM are contributing to advancements in this rapidly evolving field. The opportunity to interact directly with NSF leadership and members of Congress underscores the significance of our work in AI.
Aug 2024- I have been awarded an NSF NAIRR Pilot allocation grant. This grant will enable my students to use the Vocareum AI Notebook cloud platform,.
Aug 2024- My proposal to establish a new Computing Research Center (CRC) at our School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering (CSCE) has been selected to receive a $32,000 award from the Jimmy A. Payne Foundation.
This innovative initiative aims to create a center that will transform research engagement at CSCE.
In a major milestone in our cybersecurity education efforts and in a collaboration with the National Guard, we were awarded $1.5 million from the Department of Labor to develop new cyber warfare curricula to address evolving threats. This initiative will train National Guard soldiers in cutting-edge cybersecurity practices while providing our students valuable opportunities to work alongside experts in the field.
$3300 has been awarded for Summer Grant for the Improvement of Instruction award for summer 2025.
$4500 has been awarded for Proposal Development funding "SecureBrainNet: A Privacy-Preserving Distributed Framework for Brain-Computer Interfaces”
University of Southern Mississippi has been designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense through the academic year 2028.
https://www.usm.edu/news/2023/release/center-of-academic-excellence-cyber-defense.php
$75,716 has been awarded for a year by NSF for Post- Baccalaureate Research Program for LSMAMP students.
Lab News:
Lab News:
Nov 2025-The Cyber Innovation Cluster
The Cyber Innovation Lab hosts its own Cyber Innovation Cluster: a four node GPU cluster to accelerate Deep Learning and Machine Learning tasks. The cluster consists of 4 Nvidia Blackwell Architecture GPU: RTX 5070 ti totalling 64 gigabytes of VRAM which is plenty to run inference of most modern LLMs via VLLM or ollama and to train and fine tune most consumer ready applications for modern deep learning research. The system boasts 80 CPU cores and 10 Gigabit internet connection for a fast and efficient model training communication. From our benchmarks, the 4-GPU node used to its full capacity is 30x faster than Kaggle and at times 60x faster than Google Colab. This helps our researchers to produce state of the art results and accelerate their research potential to the next level.
Nov 2025-The paper, "Multi-Lingual Cyber Threat Detection in Tweets/X Using ML, DL, and LLM: A Comparative Analysis," has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems (TCSS).
TCSS has a CiteScore of 9.2 and an Impact Factor of 4.9.
This research focuses on advancing multi-lingual Natural Language Processing (NLP) for cybersecurity by comparing different AI methodologies for detecting cyber threats on social media. The contributing research team includes: Saydul Akbar Murad (Ph.D. Researcher), Ashim Dahal (Undergraduate Researcher)and Dr. Nick Rahimi (Advisor)
OCT 2025- We are celebrating a phenomenal showing at the 34th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE 2025) and the 38th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering (CAINE) in New Orleans!
Our talented student researchers—including PhD and undergraduate students—successfully presented and published three cutting-edge papers in applications of AI in cybersecurity and cyberpolicy, demonstrating the depth of our lab's work!
Published Papers at SEDE/CAINE 2025
Our published works highlight diverse and significant contributions to the field:
1. Derek Taylor (PhD students) and Nick Rahimi. "Securing E-Commerce: A Framework for Risk Management and Compliance." (Presented at CAINE)
2. Mukesh Poudel (UG student), & Nick Rahimi "Machine Learning-Based AES Key Recovery via Side-Channel Analysis on the ASCAD Dataset."[LINK]
3. Pappu Jha (UG), Hanzla Hamid (UG), Oluseyi Olukola (PhD Student), Ashim Dahal (UG), and Nick Rahimi. "Adversarial Machine Learning for Robust Password Strength Estimation."[LINK]
A huge congratulations to all the students for their hard work and remarkable success!
July 2025- Lab Research Featured at CVPR 2025
The Cyber Innovation Lab presented research at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2025 MIV workshop, a significant venue for computer vision.
This achievement reflects the focused work of our team: Undergraduate Researcher Ashim Dahal, PhD Student Saydul Akbar Murad, and Dr. Nick Rahimi (Advisor). Their presentation at this international conference confirms the relevance of the lab's current projects.
Resources
Resources
Paper: https://shorturl.at/rjdHK
Code: https://lnkd.in/gJZttXiU
New publication in the top-tier IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (Impact Factor 5 and CiteScore 7.2)
Saydul Akbar Murad, PhD student under Dr. Nick Rahimi, publishesUnveiling Thoughts: A Review of Advancements in EEG Brain Signal Decoding into Text." This paper reviews recent advancements in decoding EEG brain signals into text, contributing to the field of brain-computer interfaces.
New publication in the top-tier IEEE Internet of Things Journal (impact factor 10.6):
Saydul Akbar Murad, PhD student under Dr. Nick Rahimi, publishes "Secure and Efficient Hierarchical P2P Fog Architecture: A Novel Approach for IoT." This paper explores novel approaches to ensuring data security and efficient resource management in IoT networks
Summer 2024:
It's our great pleasure to announce that our PhD Research Assistant Saydul Akbar Murad's paper "𝑼𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔: 𝑨 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 𝒐𝒇 𝑨𝒅𝒗𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝑬𝑬𝑮 𝑩𝒓𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝑺𝒊𝒈𝒏𝒂𝒍 𝑫𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝑻𝒆𝒙𝒕" has recently been accepted at IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 5 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞 7.2).
Summer 2024:
New Conference Paper Publication Acceptance:
Title: Navigating the Ethical Landscape of Big Data Collection and Analysis
Authors: Nick Rahimi, Sarah Lee
Conference: The 2024 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, & Applied Computing (CSCE'24)
Co-Sponsored by IEEE and IEEE Systems Council
2. New Book chapter Publication:
Title: Entrepreneurship Opportunities in Cybersecurity", to appear in Role of ICT in Transforming Business & Management Practices, Apple Academic Press/ CRC Press, USA, 2024.
Nick Rahimi, Saydul Akbar Murad, and Sarah Lee
April & May 2024:
Saydul Akbar Murad was being selected as one of the winners in The Proposal Project in CAS College. He has awarded $500.
New Book Chapter publication:
Title: Security Challenges in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
Authors: Akbar Murad, Nick Rahimi, Indranil Roy, Bidyut Gupta
Publisher: Taylr & Farncis Group
New Conference Paper Publication Acceptance:
Title: Analysis of Zero Day Attack Detection Using Mlp and Xai
Authors:Ashim Dahal, Orabin Bajgai, Nick Rahimi
Conference: the 23rd International Conference on Security & Management (SAM'24)
Co-Sponsored by IEEE and IEEE Systems Council
Feb & March 2024:
Sindhuja Penchala awarded $200 for travel funds from the college.
Sindhuja presented :Unveiling Text Mining Potential: A Comparative Analysis of Document Classification Algo at 39th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA 2024)- New Orleans
Our paper :On further improvement of data look-up latency in Residue Class (RC) based Peer-2-Peer networks, awarded the bet paper finalist at 39th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA 2024)- New Orleans
Jan 2024:
Two manuscripts accepted for presentation and publication at 39th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA 2024)
On further improvement of data look-up latency in Residue Class (RC) based Peer-2-Peer networks
Unveiling Text Mining Potential: A Comparative Analysis of Document Classification Algorithms
One manuscript submitted to The The 3rd IEEE International Conference on Computing and Machine Intelligence (ICMI 2024) 2024 Conference.
Analyzing Darknet Traffic: Classification and Mitigation of Adversarial Attacks
December 2023:
One manuscript submitted to The 62nd ACMSE 2024 Conference.
Enabling Seamless Healthcare Services with RC-Based Geographical Peer-to-Peer Fog Architecture in the Healthcare 4.0
Two manuscripts submitted to 39th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA 2024):
On further improvement of data look-up latency in Residue Class (RC) based Peer-2-Peer networks
Unveiling Text Mining Potential: A Comparative Analysis of Document Classification Algorithms
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
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)
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
Google Sites
Report abuse