August 2025 Newsletter
| Image credit: ECE website |
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| FICS Associate Director Dr. Farimah Farahmandi has been named the recipient of the 2024–2025 Pramod P. Khargonekar Award. Presented by the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, this award honors exceptional achievement in scholarship, teaching, mentorship, and significant contributions to the recipient’s research field. (Read More) |
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DARPA Young Faculty Award
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| image credit: FICS website |
| We are proud to announce that ECE Associate Professor Dr. Tuba Yavuz has received the prestigious DARPA Young Faculty Award for her project, “Constraint-Guided Local Fuzzing of Binaries.” The award includes $1 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Dr. Yavuz and her research team will focus on advancing cybersecurity techniques by developing constraint-guided fuzzing methods. Their innovative approach will infer and apply mutation strategies from small code segments to larger systems. The ultimate goal is to transform malware reverse engineering by enabling precise reachability analysis using formal semantics and fine-grained binary code fuzzing. (Read More) |
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Cellular Security Research Featured at 2025 NDSS Symposium
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| Image credit: Fox 35 Orlando |
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| Tyler Tucker, Ph.D., a graduate from the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Research (FICS), recently presented his cutting-edge research at the 32nd Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) in San Diego.
His presentation, titled “Detecting IMSI-Catchers by Characterizing Identity Exposing Messages in Cellular Traffic,” explores critical techniques for detecting and preventing unauthorized access to personal cellular data.
Alongside the team from the University of Florida — including Nathaniel Bennett, Dr. Kevin Butler, and Dr. Patrick Traynor- Tucker helped develop a device called “Marlin,” which detects nearby attempts to intercept cell phone communications, commonly known as IMSI-catchers.
Tucker and Dr. Patrick Traynor were also recently interviewed by Fox 35 Orlando about this research. (Read More) |
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| We’re thrilled to congratulate the team behind the Best Paper Award at the 2025 ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability!
The paper, titled “Reproducibility in Applied Security Conferences: An 11-Year Review on Artifacts and Evaluation Committees,” was authored by:
Daniel Olszewski, Allison Lu, Anna Crowder, Nathaniel Bennett, Seth Layton, Sri Hrushikesh Varma Bhupathiraju, Tyler Tucker, Carson Stillman, Dr. Kevin Butler, Dr. Sara Rampazzi, and Dr. Patrick Traynor.
Congratulations to all contributors on this outstanding recognition! |
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2025 Design Automation Conference
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| Congratulations to Ph.D. student Upoma Das on receiving the P.O. Pistilli DAC Ambassador Award in the 2025 DAC Wikipedia Challenge, held as part of the 62nd Design Automation Conference (DAC) Young Fellow Program.
This prestigious award recognizes her outstanding contributions to expanding knowledge and outreach in the field of electronic design automation.
Upoma extends her heartfelt thanks to her mentor, FICS Associate Director Dr. Farimah Farahmandi, for her unwavering support, guidance, and encouragement throughout the journey. |
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Congratulations to all FICS Graduates
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| Image credit: Seth Layton, Ph.D. |
| A big congratulations to all FICS graduates this summer! We’re incredibly proud of your hard work, dedication, and accomplishments.
Featured here are some of our graduates and their mentors. Image Above (L–R): Luke Bauer, Dr. Patrick Traynor, Seth Layton, Tyler Tucker, Kevin Warren, Wenxuan Bao, Sam Markleon, and Dr. Vincent Bindschaedler.
Image Below (L-R) Dr. Farimah Farahmandi, Rui Guo.
We wish each of you the very best as you begin this exciting new chapter. |
| Image credit: Rui Guo, Ph.D. |
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| We’re excited to welcome you to the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS) family!
At FICS, you’re not just joining a research group—you’re becoming part of a vibrant community at the forefront of hardware and systems security innovation. Whether you’re here to explore groundbreaking research, collaborate with brilliant minds, or make your mark in cybersecurity, we’re thrilled to have you on board. |
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