Contact: 931-372-3496
Office: Bruner Hall, Room: 236
Tennessee Tech University
Cookeville, TN 38501
Email:
mpritom[at]tntech.edu
Hello everyone! I am 'Mir' Mehedi Pritom, an assistant professor of Computer Science at Tennessee Tech University. I am also a faculty affiliate within the Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Outreach Center (CEROC) at Tennessee Tech. Prior to joining TTU, I was an assistant professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. My current research interests cover a variety of cross-disciplinary topics and approaches focusing to solve real-world challenging problems in Cybersecurity. Particularly, I am interested in applying Trustworthy and Interpretable ML/AI in security domains to enhance the trust, transparency, dependability, and usability of existing and future cybersecurity and defense systems. I am also interested in the areas of data-driven approaches for designing intelligent decision-support system, uncertainty quantification, and explainability in cybersecurity. Previously, I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas- San Antonio (UTSA) in Summer 2022, where I worked on tackling various website based cyberattacks and emerging event-themed threats.
At UTSA, I worked under the guidance of Dr. Shouhuai Xu and Dr. Ravi Sandhu within the Institute of Cyber Security (ICS). I also received my Master's of Science degree in Information Technology from UNC Charlotte in 2018, and a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh back in 2014. I worked as a Software Engineer at Samsung Research Institute Bangladesh prior starting my graduate studies.
Latest News
[May 15, 2024] Warm welcome to Seyed Mohammad Sanjari from Arkansas Tech University to join our very own CyTrust Research Group staring this fall 2024 to embark on his PhD journey at Tennessee Tech. He has recently completed his MS in IT from Arkansas Tech and walked into the spring graduation ceremony. Congratulations!
[May 13, 2024] Excited to share that our poster titled "Use of LLM-based Generative AI Chatbots for Smishing Attacks and Defenses" has been accepted in the IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2024 conference. If you are joining the conference in San Fransisco, I will be happy to connect and chat.
[May 9.-10 2024] Attending the NSF SaTC Aspiring PI workshop in UChicago campus. It has been a great enriching experience to meet and learn from so many aspiring peers, experienced PIs, and NSF progam managers.
[May 7, 2024] Congratulations to Ashfak Md Shibli on behalf of CyTrust Research Group at TTU for successfully defending his MS Thesis. He is the first student to graduate from our group at Tennessee Tech. He is graduating with a MS in Computer Science degree where he worked on "Smishing Attacks and Defense Mechanisms" research to push forward the state-of-the-art. Best wishes to him for his future endeavors.
[May 6, 2024] Just attended the ALAMOSE project Faculty Workshop at Auburn University that was led by Akond Rahman (AU), Hossain Shahriar (UWF), and Fan Wu (Tuskegee University). This educational project will certainly shape the Security education experience for DevOps to develop more secure software systems.
[March 30, 2024] I am excited to share that I am invited to attend the 2024 NSF SaTC Aspiring PI Workshop jointly organized by Blase Ur (UChicago), Christina Garman (Purdue), and Chris Kanich (UIC), which will take place in the University of Chicago campus on May 9-10, 2024. If you are attending the workshop in-person, try to connect and chat during the event. I am looking forward to connecting with this great community of researchers!
[Feb 10, 2024] Excited to share that our paper titled "AbuseGPT: Abuse of Generative AI ChatBots to Create Smishing Campaigns" has been accepted for publication at the IEEE 12th International Symposium for Digital Forensics and Security (ISDFS 2024) conference. Congratulations to all the co-authors.
[Jan 8, 2024] Excited to share that our research paper titled "MRL-PoS: A Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning based Proof of Stake Consensus Algorithm for Blockchain" has been published and received the BEST PAPER award in IEEE CCWC 2024. Congratulations to all the co-authors.
[Jan 7, 2024] Excited to share that our research poster titled "ConChain: A Scheme for Contention-free and Attack Resilient BlockChain" has been published in IEEE CCNC 2024. Congratulations to all the co-authors.
[Jan 1, 2024] I will be serving as the Co-chair for the ACM workshop on Secure and Trustworthy Cyber Physical Systems 2024 (co-located with ACM CODASPY). Please consider submitting your unpublished and high quality research papers in ACM SaT-CPS workshop.
[Oct 16, 2023] I will be serving as the Publicity Chair of the 6th International Conference on Science of Cyber Security (SciSec 2024), which is scheduled to happen on August 14-16, 2024 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Please consider submitting your high-quality original work in this esteemed Springer conference. Paper submission deadline is on April 7, 2024. For more information please visit the SciSec conference website.
[August 31, 2023] I have given a talk on my research direction during the CS Graduate Club session titled "Engaging Research Discussion with New CS Faculty".
[August 17, 2023] Fall 2023 semester has begun. Welcome to all the students whoever is taking my CSC4585/5585 class!
[August 7, 2023] I have attended the NFO (New Faculty Orientation) at TTU on August 7, 2023.
[August 1, 2023] I have officially joined Tennessee Technological University as a tenure-track assistant professor of Computer Science from August 1, 2023. I am looking forward to working with some great students.
[July 31, 2023] My first MS student (Jacob Villemagne) at Appalachian State University got his MS degree in Computer Science this summer and presented his MS project in the CS Thesis/Project presentation day. Congratulations to Jacob for the successful completion of his degree and setting a very high work ethics 👏👏👏. I wish him good luck for his future endeavors! He has got a job through Defense Contractor position in Huntsville, AL.
[July 8, 2023] I am looking for one(two) highly motivated PhD student to come work with me in solving exciting Cybersecurity problem. These are fully-funded PhD positions that cover tuition and competitive monthly stipends as graduate assistantship. You can review the details of the PhD program and admission requirements here. Please check out the application portal for deadlines and other information. If you are interested in my research (review my Research section first) as a prospective or current student in the TenTech's Engineering PhD program (CS Track), then let's chat more about it. Positions are open for as early as Spring 2024 semester now!!!
[July 1, 2023] I am joining Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN as a tenure-track assistant professor starting this Fall 2023 semester.
[June 30, 2023] I have resigned from my current full-time position at AppState. I will still continue to work on my summer appointments, which will end by July 31st. It has been a short but memorable journey for me at AppState. I am sad that I have to leave some awesome colleagues and friends around at AppState and Boone area! 😢😢😢
[April 22, 2023] I am attending the ACM SIGSAC CODASPY 2023 in-person conference in Charlotte, NC on April 24-26, 2023.
[Feb 28, 2023] I am attending the ICCWS (International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security) 2023 in Towson, Maryland on 9-10 March, 2023. If you are attending as well, I would love to connect and chat.
[Feb 9, 2023] Our US Patent application #US20230042816 titled "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR BLOCKCHAIN-BASED CYBER SECURITY MANAGEMENT " has been published recently and can be found here.
[January 15, 2023] I am forming a Cybersecurity and Trustworthiness (CyTrust) research group @AppState in the Computer Science Department from Spring 2023.
[December 6, 2022] I will be attending my Doctoral Hooding Ceremony at UT San Antonio, TX in December 2022.
[December 1, 2022] I will be serving as a program committee member at the ACM SaT-CPS 2023 workshop co-located with ACM CODASY '23.
[November 3, 2022] I am excited to share that my summer grant writing application for An Automated Decision-Support System Framework for Quantifying Malicious Websites with Explanations has been approved for the 2023 Summer Stipend for Writing A Grant (SWAG) Program (details here)
[Nov 1, 2022] I am looking for a motivated graduate/undergraduate student interested to work in exciting Cybersecurity research projects in one or more of the following directions from Spring 2023: Application of AI/ML in security, prediction & detection of malicious actors, automation in security, explaining malicious website detection/classification, and human factors in security (hired).
[Oct 13, 2022] I have given an invited talk on "Cybersecurity Research and Teaching at AppState" at the Computer Science ASCII club meeting.
[October 4, 2022] I have presented our recently accepted paper "Supporting Law-enforcement to cope with Blacklisted Website: Framework and Case Study" virtually at the IEEE CNS 2022 conference on October 4, 2022.
[September 1, 2022] I am excited to share that our recent paper "Supporting Law-enforcement to cope with Blacklisted Website: Framework and Case Study" has been accepted for publication at the IEEE CNS 2022 conference, which will take place in Austin, TX from October 3-5, 2022.
[July 5, 2022] I have defended my PhD Dissertation titled "Defending Against Malicious Websites: Themed Threats, Detection, and Law-enforcement" on July 5th, 2022.
[May 15, 2022] I am joining Appalachian State University (AppState) in Boone, North Carolina in Fall 2022.