May 2026 · Mia Fisher — Undergraduate research funding

Mia’s research on the reliability of LLM-based fire detection and data analysis was selected for NSF EPSCoR UROP funding. The project examines how indirect prompt injection through external information can distort wildfire risk assessments and response recommendations. UNR research feature

Apr 2026 · Jiahao Xu — Graduate research scholarship

Jiahao received the Outstanding Graduate Student Researcher Scholarship from the University of Nevada, Reno.

2025 · Jiahao Xu & Zikai Zhang — First-place poster recognition

Jiahao and Zikai received first-place recognition in the UNR Cybersecurity Conference poster competition. This marked the team’s third consecutive first-place finish, spanning 2023–2025.

Aug–Oct 2025 · Conference and publication support

Jiahao received MobiHoc 2025 student travel grant in October. Jiahao and Zikai each received NSF EPSCoR HDRFS support for student publications and conference travel in August.

Feb–Apr 2025 · Jiahao Xu — CVPR Highlight

Jiahao's paper AlignIns, on detecting backdoor attacks in federated learning, was selected as a Highlight at CVPR 2025. The method identifies suspicious model updates by examining their directional alignment. Jiahao also received CVPR 2025 travel support in April.

Jan 2025 · Jiahao Xu — Nevada WateReuse research grant

Jiahao received the 2024 Nevada WateReuse Research Grant as principal investigator. His project investigates robust water-leak detection using federated learning with sparsified local models. WateReuse award recipients

2023 · Zikai Zhang — IEEE CNS travel support

Zikai received an NSF-supported travel grant to attend the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS 2023).

Ph.D. opportunities · Fall 2027

I am recruiting motivated Ph.D. students with assistantship support. Our interests include AI security, data privacy, efficient distributed/federated learning, multimodal LLMs, agentic AI, and reinforcement learning.

Remote research internships

Prospective interns are welcome to contact me with their research interests and relevant experience. Please indicate that you are seeking a remote internship.

How to apply

Email me with your CV, transcripts, TOEFL and GRE scores, and a research statement. Indicate the opportunity you are seeking and how your interests connect with our work. Relevant papers, projects, or code are welcome.

Given the volume of inquiries, I may be unable to respond to every message. I will contact applicants whose interests and experience align with current opportunities.

For UNR students

Undergraduate and graduate students interested in LLM security, AI agents, or real-time scene analysis with vision-language models are welcome to email me or stop by my office. Students interested in AI security may also consider CS 791: CyberAI, offered in spring.

2025–2026 · Phalanx

Student Team: John Althoff, Aiden Coss, and Karam Alkherej

Developed a web platform for evaluating large language models against prompt injection, jailbreaks, and unsafe outputs. The platform connects to models through APIs, runs automated adversarial tests, and generates reports to support repeatable security assessment.

Code · UNR Innovation Day

2024–2025 · Neural Noir

Student Team: Christine Angela Barlaan, Evelynne (Evie) Nivera, and Matthew Osorio

Built a voice-driven detective interrogation game with AI-generated dialogue and adaptive story progression. Optional wearable-sensor feedback allows the virtual detectives to respond to the player’s physiological signals.

Project website · Code

2023–2024 · ASR Attack

Student Team: Zachary Strazi, Kristian Konstantinov, Cody Long, and Jacob Ayers

Investigated adversarial audio perturbations that cause speech recognition systems to misinterpret spoken commands. The team evaluated models including Whisper and Wav2Vec2 and built a Raspberry Pi demonstration to study attacks on voice-controlled devices.

Project website