Faysal, class of 2022, is a native of Dhaka, Bangladesh and when he's not working towards his PhD, enjoys spending time with loved ones, traveling, and gardening. At the Link Lab, Faysal works with affiliated staff Dr. Yuan Tian on projects related to safety and privacy issues in emerging systems.What brings the most joy in your life?
Being an international student, most of us stay far from our families and friends. Before coming abroad, I never stayed away from my parents for more than a week. Last time, when I went back to my country, seeing my parents' faces (in-person) after a long time, I was feeling on top of the world. Eating food, especially biryani (you should try it!), gossiping with friends, hanging out in different restaurants with my wife and seeing pigeons are some of the events that I will repeat every time while I pay a visit to my country. I am not sure when I will go back again. But I am hopeful that it will be another joyous moment to pay a visit to my country. Apart from that, getting mail which contains the “congratulations” keyword. Specially, during the author notification timeline for the conferences. I guess this feeling is mutual for the other PhD students as well.
What three words have described your life in the past year?
Traveling, Gardening, Research.
Why did you choose these three words to describe your life in the last year?
In our apartment, we have a small balcony that we use for gardening. We planted different types of vegetables, including - tomato, okra, hot chili, spinach, cilantro, mint, green pepper. Most of the time my wife takes care of them. It feels great to spend time chatting together over a cup of tea in our patio during the afternoon and enjoying the view of our garden. Sometimes we cook vegetables directly taken from the garden. Other places I already paid a visit to are the Maldives and eight different states in the USA. I hope the list will grow longer in upcoming days. Among those places, I will put Florida and California at the top of my list of favorite places I have visited. These places have environments similar to my home country and also, these places offer a great view of the sea and beaches which I like the most. These two reasons might be the main reasons for me to get attracted.
What kind of project have you worked on while at the Link Lab?
My research direction is focused on data-driven security for emerging systems. The ubiquitous usage of emerging platforms is raising the concern of security, safety, and privacy issues. Recently, we investigated the attack surface of Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) by measuring the sensitive voice commands using an active learning model and keyword-based approach. In another work, we analyzed the permission modules of different applications (from four different platforms) and used a transfer learning model to leverage the existing knowledge to a new platform. VPA is also showing a promising direction for delivering healthcare services. These raised privacy, safety, and information quality concerns, as well. Currently, we are investigating those applications which exploit user's privacy, pose a threat to their safety, and provide misleading information.
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