Z. Berkay Celik

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science Purdue University

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University and co-director of Purdue Security Laboratory (PurSec Lab). I am also affiliated with the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), aiming to broaden interdisciplinary collaboration for security and privacy. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Penn State University, where I was advised by Professor Patrick McDaniel and was the lead graduate student of the Systems and Internet Infrastructure Security Laboratory (SIIS).

My research investigates the design and evaluation of security for software and systems, specifically on emerging computing platforms and the complex environments in which they operate. Through systems design, program analysis, and formal methods, my research seeks to improve security and privacy guarantees in commodity computer systems. My research approach is best illustrated by my extensive work in Internet of Things (IoT)/Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), including robotic vehicles, automobiles, self-driving cars, industrial control systems, and mobile systems, such as smartphones, wearables (e.g., smartwatches, AR/VR headsets).

My research group actively publishes at top security conferences (USENIX Security, Oakland, CCS, and NDSS). My group’s work has been sponsored by NSF, ONR, DARPA, USDOT, DOE, United States Military Academy, Google, Apple, Cisco, Rolls Royce, Denso North America Foundation, and Sandia National Laboratories. I am part of the NSF AI Institute ACTION, DARPA FIREFLY, and USDOT National Center TraCR.

I’m recipient of multiple awards, including NSF CAREER Award (2022), Google Aspire Award (2021, 2022, and 2023), Amazon Research Award (2024), ACM CCS Distinguished Paper Award (2024), USENIX Security Honorable Mention Paper Award (2025) the Most Influential Professor Award by Purdue CS Graduate Student Board (2020 and 2024), and College of Science Faculty Leadership Award (2024).

Current Students:

Chandrika Mukherjee (PhD)
Hongyu Cai (PhD)
Mohammad Areeb (PhD)
PhD co-advising:
- Ruoyu Song (PhD) (co-advised with Antonio Bianchi)
- Doguhan Yeke (PhD) (co-advised with Antonio Bianchi)
- Ananth Shreekumar (PhD) (co-advised with Dongyan Xu)
- Brandon Lee (co-advised with Antonio Bianchi)
MSc Students: Dung (Ryan) Doan
Undergraduate Student Researchers: Gaurish Lakhanpal

Past PhD Students:

5- Raymond Muller (2025) - Signal and Image Processing Engineer for Security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
4- Arjun Arunasalam (2025) - Assistant Professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University
3- Reham Aburas (2024) - Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the American University of Sharjah
2- Muslum Ozgur Ozmen (2024) - Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University
1- Habiba Farrukh (2023) - Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine

Past Co-advised PhD Students

3- Hyungsub Kim (2024) - Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Indiana University (co-advised with Dongyan Xu and Antonio Bianchi)
2- Khaled Serag (2023) - Research Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) (co-advised with Dongyan Xu)
1- Abdulellah Alsaheel (2023) - private Security Consultant (co-advised with Dongyan Xu)

Prospective Students:

[Fall 25, Spring 26] I’m actively looking for motivated PhD students and research interns. If you are a motivated student with an interest in security, I would be interested in speaking with you. If you are not a student at Purdue, please fill the following form for more information. If you are a student at Purdue, there are research opportunities for undergraduate/graduate students interested in security/privacy of Cyber-Physical Systems and Machine Learning Systems, please email me for details.

Recent News

I am proud to congratulate two of my Ph.D. students who just graduated and are starting their new jobs in Fall 2025: Arjun Arunasalam) is starting as a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Knight Foundation School of Computing & Information Sciences (FIU KFSCIS), and Raymond Muller) is beginning his new role as a Signal and Image Processing Engineer for Security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
Congratulations to Chandrika Mukherjee and all authors on receiving the Honorable Mention award for the paper Shadowed Realities: An Investigation of UI Attacks in WebXR paper at USENIX Security Symposium 2025.
I promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at Purdue Computer Science, August 2025. Thank you to my mentors, colleagues, and the whole Purdue community for their support. A special thank you goes to my students, past and present; your hard work and curiosity make this career rewarding.
Congratulations to my PhD students, Muslum Ozgur Ozmen and Reham Aburas, on their graduation and new faculty positions! Ozgur is heading to Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor; Reham will join American University of Sharjah as an Assistant Professor.
My research group has received an Amazon Research Award.
Distinguished Paper award at ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024
I gave a talk on Secure Autonomy for Qualcomm AI Lectures. Thank you Jonathan Petit for hosting me!
I gave a talk at Lund University (Sweden) for the ELLIIT focus period Symposium on Security and Fault Tolerance of Cyber-Physical Systems. Thank you Martina Maggio and Mikael Asplund for hosting me!
I gave a virtual talk at University of California Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering, Cyber-Physical Systems Research Center (CPSRC). Thank you Ricardo Sanfelice, Alvaro Cardenas, and Daniel Fremont for hosting me!
Congratulations to M. Ozgur Ozmen on receiving the 2024 CERIAS Diamond Award for his outstanding academic achievement.

Older news

Teaching

CS 426: Computer Security (Undergraduate) [Spring 23] [Syllabus]

This introductory undergraduate course focuses on the principles and foundations of building secure computer systems, security best practices, and security failures in existing and emerging computer networks and systems. The course covers four key topic areas: basics of cryptography and crypto protocols, network security, systems security, and privacy. Students successfully completing this class will be able to understand and assess security threats, become familiar with security engineering best practices, write better software, protocols, and systems, and have rudimentary skills in security research.

CS 590: IoT/CPS Security (Graduate) [Spring 20, Spring 22] [Syllabus]

In this course, we will study the latest research in the design of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and methods for securing them. The course will provide foundations of safety and security of IoT/CPS and covers the topics of policy verification, approaches for designing safe and secure systems, techniques for detecting problems in conventional IoT/CPS design and repairing such problems. Example topics include the security of voice-controlled devices, IoT applications, edge computing, industrial control systems, and autonomous vehicles.

CS 529: Security Analytics (Graduate) [Fall 24, Fall 22, Fall 21, Fall 20, Fall 19] [Syllabus]

This graduate-level course will provide students with materials to discuss the intersection of two ubiquitous concepts: Security and Machine Learning. The course is structured in two parts: (1) Machine Learning for Security and (2) Security of Machine Learning Systems. The focus of the first part will be on building a principled understanding of key learning algorithms and techniques, and their applications within the security domain, as well as general questions related to analyzing and handling datasets. The first part will provide students with the necessary background to understand the second half of the course. The second part covers recently discovered security implications of deploying machine learning algorithms in the physical realm. Students will learn about attacks against computer systems leveraging machine learning algorithms, as well as defense techniques to mitigate such attacks during learning and inference.

Full list of courses

Selected Publications

2011-2021

Investigating Physical Latency Attacks against Camera-based Perception
Raymond Muller, Ruoyu Song, Chenyi Wang, Yuxia Zhan, Jean-Philippe Monteuuis, Yanmao Man, Ming Li, Ryan Gerdes, Jonathan Petit, and Z. Berkay Celik
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P), 2025
Acceptance Rate: 14.7%

Automated Discovery of Semantic Attacks in Multi-Robot Navigation Systems
Doguhan Yeke, Kartik Anand Pant, Muslum Ozgur Ozmen, Hyungsub Kim, James Goppert, Inseok Hwang, Antonio Bianchi, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2025/ Acceptance Rate: 17.1%

From Threat to Trust: Exploiting Attention Mechanisms for Attacks and Defenses in Cooperative Perception
Chenyi Wang, Ming Li, Raymond Muller, Ruoyu Song, Jean-Philippe Monteuuis, Yanmao Man, Jonathan Petit, Ryan Gerdes, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2025
Acceptance Rate: 17.1%

Shadowed Realities: An Investigation of UI Attacks in WebXR
Chandrika Mukherjee, Reham Mohamed, Arjun Arunasalam, Habiba Farrukh, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2025
Acceptance Rate: 17.1%

Speak Up, I’m Listening: Extracting Speech from Zero-Permission VR Sensors
Derin Cayir, Reham Mohamed Aburas, Riccardo Lazzeretti, Marco Angelini, Abbas Acar, Mauro Conti, Z. Berkay Celik, and Selcuk Uluagac
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium, 2025
Acceptance Rate: 16.1%

ScopeVerif: Analyzing the Security of Android’s Scoped Storage via Differential Analysis
Zeyu Lei, Guliz Seray Tuncay, Beatrice Carissa Williem, Z. Berkay Celik, and Antonio Bianchi
Network and Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium, 2025
Acceptance Rate:16.1%

Frontline Responders: Rethinking Indicators of Compromise for Industrial Control System Security
Mohammed Asiri, Arjun Arunasalam, Neetesh Saxena, and Z. Berkay Celik
Computers & Security, 2025

ERACAN: Defending Against an Emerging CAN Threat Model
Zhaozhou Tang, Khaled Serag, Saman Zonouz, Z. Berkay Celik, Dongyan Xu, and Raheem Beyah
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2024
Acceptance Rate: 16.9%

VOGUES: Validation of Object Guise using Estimated Components
Raymond Muller, Yanmao Man, Ming Li, Ryan Gerdes, Jonathan Petit, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2024
Acceptance Rate: 18.32%

SAIN: Improving ICS Attack Detection Sensitivity via State-Aware Invariants)
Syed Ghazanfar Abbas, Muslum Ozgur Ozmen, Abdulellah Alsaheel, Arslan Khan, Z. Berkay Celik, and Dongyan Xu
USENIX Security Symposium, 2024
Acceptance Rate: 18.3%

A Systematic Study of Physical Sensor Attack Hardness
Hyungsub Kim, Rwitam Bandyopadhyay, Muslum Ozgur Ozmen, Z. Berkay Celik, Antonio Bianchi, Yongdae Kim, and Dongyan Xu
IEEE Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P), 2024
Acceptance Rate: 17.8%

Wear’s my Data? Understanding the Cross-Device Runtime Permission Model in Wearables
Doguhan Yeke, Muhammad Ibrahim, Guliz Seray Tuncay, Habiba Farrukh, Abdullah Imran, Antonio Bianchi, and Z. Berkay Celik
IEEE Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P), 2024
Acceptance Rate: 17.8%

ATTention Please! An Investigation of the App Tracking Transparency Permission
Reham Mohamed, Arjun Arunasalam, Habiba Farrukh, Jason Tong, Antonio Bianchi, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2024
Acceptance Rate: 18.3%

Can Large Language Models Provide Security & Privacy Advice? Measuring the Ability of LLMs to Refute Misconceptions.
Yufan Chen, Arjun Arunasalam, and Z. Berkay Celik.
In Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), 2023
Acceptance Rate: 24%

Discovering Adversarial Driving Maneuvers against Autonomous Vehicles
Ruoyu Song, M. Ozgur Ozmen, Hyungsub Kim, Raymond Muller, Z. Berkay Celik, and Antonio Bianchi
USENIX Security Symposium, 2023
Acceptance Rate: 29.2%

LocIn: Inferring Semantic Location from Spatial Maps in Mixed Reality
Habiba Farrukh, Reham Mohamed, Aniket Nare, Antonio Bianchi, and Z. Berkay Celik
USENIX Security Symposium, 2023
Acceptance Rate: 29.2%

That Person Moves Like A Car: Misclassification Attack Detection for Autonomous Systems Using Spatiotemporal Consistency
Yanmao Man, Raymond Muller, Ming Li, Z. Berkay Celik, and Ryan Gerdes
USENIX Security Symposium, 2023
Acceptance Rate: 29.2%

One Key to Rule Them All: Secure Group Pairing for Heterogeneous IoT Devices
Habiba Farrukh, M. Ozgur Ozmen, F. Kerem Ors, and Z. Berkay Celik
IEEE Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P), 2023
Acceptance Rate: 17%

Evasion Attacks and Defenses on Smart Home Physical Event Verification
M. Ozgur Ozmen, Ruoyu Song, Habiba Farrukh, and Z. Berkay Celik
Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), 2023
Acceptance Rate: 16.2%

Discovering IoT Physical Channel Vulnerabilities
M. Ozgur Ozmen, Xuansong Li, Andrew Chun-An Chu, Z. Berkay Celik, Bardh Hoxha, and Xiangyu Zhang
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2022
Acceptance Rate: 22%

Physical Hijacking Attacks against Object Trackers
Raymond Muller, Yanmao Man, Z. Berkay Celik, Ryan Gerdes, and Ming Li
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), 2022
Acceptance Rate: 22%

Full list of Publications