CICS Members

Photo: 
Photo of Andy Wu

Dr. Wu has research interests in information security, trust, and privacy in social networks.

Photo: 

Brooke Nodeland is a Lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of North Texas.  Prior to joining the faculty at UNT, she was a faculty University of Phoenix and an associate faculty member at Collin County College.  She received her B.S. and M.S. in Criminal Justice from the University of North Texas and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas.  She teaches Computer Crime, Senior Seminar, Crime and Justice in the United States, and Community Corrections both in the traditional and online classroom.

Photo: 

Dr. O'Connor has research interests in information forensics, security informatics, representing, and using photographs, 

Steve Guynes is a Regents Professor of Information Technology in the College of Business Administration at the University of North Texas. Dr. Guynes received his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University. He teaches courses in visual methodologies, database administration, web design, and legacy systems. He currently serves as a course coordinator for the ITDS department. He is very active in service activities for his department, such as chairing the department personnel affairs committee and the department promotion and tenure committee.

Dr. Tunc is an Assistant Professor with research interests in the domains of cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, intrusion detection/prevention systems, and social media analysis for cyber-threat detection.

Photo: 

Dr. Kim has research interests in Information Security / Trust, Security, and Information Assurance. 

In addition to addressing security-related concerns in courses on Computer Organization and Systems Programming, Mr. Keathly also coordinates the efforts of Computer Engineering students in the two semester Senior Project Design sequence. He also serves the CSE Department as the Undergraduate Advisor and is the Faculty Advisor for the IEEE Computer Society and ACM chapters at UNT, as well as the coach of the s highly successful programming teams.

Photo: 
Photo of Kirill Morozov

Dr. Morozov's area of research interests is cryptography based on coding and correlated randomness, including post-quantum cryptography and secret sharing, with applications to cloud computing.

Photo: 
Photo of Krishna Kavi

My research covers computer architecture, memory systems, high performance computing, embedded systems, hardware/software security, Cloud security.

Photo: 

Dr. Thompson's research interests are in Cyber Security, Telecommunications & Networks, Computer Forensics, Programming, and Data Mining.

Photo: 
Photo of Murali Varnasi

Varanasi received his B.S. degree in Physics from Andhra University and his B.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from Madras Institute of Technology, India in 1957 and 1962 respectively. After working for six years as a senior scientific officer at the Defense Research and Development Laboratory in Hyderabad, India, he pursued his graduate education at the University of Maryland, College Park, Md where he received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering.

Photo: 
Photo of Kamesh Namuduri

Dr. Namuduri has research interests in:

  • UAV Networks and Communications
  • Rate Distortion Analysis
  • Consensus Buidling in Distributed Systems
  • Video Surveillance
  • Secrecy Capacity

Richard G. Vedder is a Professor of Information Technology at the University of North Texas. He received his B.A. degree from the University of California, San Diego, and his M.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona. Dr. Vedder joined the ITDS Department in 1984, and since then has taught a wide variety of courses on topics such as application development for mobile devices, business assessment of emerging technologies, multimedia, and expert systems. He has also served his department administratively as Vice Chair and Interim Chair. Dr.

Dr. Winsor has research  interests in security of business information systems, and secured electronic commerce.  He received his Ph.D. in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University. He has published over six books and many articles in such journals as Data BaseIIE Transactions, and Computers & Security.

Photo: 
Photo of Oscar Garcia

Dr. Garcia's research interests were basically on physical layer security. He was the founding Dean of the new College of Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, during the period from July 2003 – 2008.

Photo: 
Photo of Parthasarathy Guturu

Dr. Parthasarathy (Partha) Guturu has Bachelor's Degree with Honors In Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering, Postgraduate Diploma in Computer Technology and Ph.D. (Engineering) in Pattern Recognition- all from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He has more than ten years of teaching and research experience in academia and over 7 years of research experience in design and development of complex real-time systems in industry. While in academia, he supervised 4 doctoral and a number of graduate and undergraduate dissertations.

Photo: 
Photo of Paul Tarau

Dr. Tarau has been the director of the Intelligent Distributes Software Systems Laboratory for the last 4 years. His research areas include agent infrastructures, P2P agent communication protocols, agent and mobile code security and knowledge based content scanning of natural language documents. As an instructor of graduate and undergraduate programming languages, compilers and operating system courses, Dr. Tarau has covered a variety of security aspects ranging from code encryption to secure distributed programming. Dr.

Photo: 

Dr. Ram Dantu is the director of the Center for Information and Cyber Security at UNT. He has 15 years of industrial experience in the networking industry, where he worked for Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Fujitsu and was responsible for advanced technology products from concept to delivery. He is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of North Texas (UNT). During 2011, he was a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the School of Engineering.

Photo: 

Dr. Akl has over 25 years of industry and academic experience. His research interests include Ad-hoc Networks, Bluetooth, Call Admission Control, Cellular Communication, Channel Coding, Compression, Computer Architecture, MIMO Systems, Multi-cell Network Optimization, Packet-networks, Telephony, VoIP, Wi-Fi, Wireless Communication, and Wireless Sensors.

Photo: 
Photo of Ryan Garlick

Dr. Garlick has over 16 years of industry and academic experience. He is currently a faculty member at the University of North Texas in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. With full-stack expertise in e-commerce from both an academic and industry perspective, he regularly consults with industry on shopping cart development, payment gateways, e-commerce security, and integration with manufacturing, fulfillment, and shipping. Dr. Garlick teaches the Database, Internet Programming, IT Project Management, and Secure e-Commerce courses at UNT.

Photo: 

Dr. Scott Belshaw holds a Ph.D in Juvenile Justice from Prairie View A&M University, a member of the Texas A&M University System. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Social Sciences and Psychology from the University of Houston. He also holds both a Master of Liberal Arts from Houston Baptist University and a Master of Arts in Criminology from the University of Houston - Clear Lake. Dr. Belshaw’s Ph.D dissertation examined sexually abused females in the juvenile justice system. His dissertation research has been cited and used by numerous advocacy groups and organizations.

Photo: 
Photo of Song Fu

As parallel and distributed computing systems become more and more large-scale and complex, new foundations are needed for understanding and controlling their integral properties. Dr. Fu’s research is dedicated to the investigation, establishment, and experimental evaluation of new theoretical foundations and system artifacts to significantly improve the system resilience, power & energy, and performance. His research interest is primarily in high-performance computing, distributed and cloud systems, including

Photo: 
Photo of Suliman Hawamdeh

Research Interests

  • Knowledge Management
  • Library Services and Digital Resource Management
  • Content, Document and Records Management
  • Learning Organization and Organizational Learning
Photo: 

Dr. Victor R. Prybutok is the Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School at the University of North Texas and a Regents Professor of Decision Sciences in the Information Technology and Decision Sciences Department in the College of Business.  Prior to becoming the Vice Provost he served from fall 2014 to summer 2016 as the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and Research in the College of Business at the University of North Texas.

Photo: 
Phot of Yan Huang

Her research interests include spatio-temporal databases and mining, geo-stream data processing, smart transportation, and location-based social networks. Her research is supported by Texas Advanced Research Program (ARP), Oak Ridge National Lab, NSF, Texas Department of Transportation, and DoD.

Photo: 

Syed is a doctoral student in computer science at the University of North Texas. A major focus of his dissertation is evaluating the performance of AI algorithms in combination with the blockchain framework and the requirement for AI-blockchain integration. Also, he collaborates with peers on consensus protocol mechanisms for blockchains and the development of legal contract Dapps. Moreover, he serves as a teaching assistant for the department and is active in the UNT Cybersecurity Club.

Photo: 
Photo of Julie Germain

Julie Germain is currently a PhD CSCE student, with a research focus in the area of Quantum Computing.  She has a background as a multidisciplinary engineer, including education and industry experience in the areas of Mechanical Engineering (Aircraft Structures), Civil Engineering (with education focused in construction engineering), Manufacturing Engineering, Producibility Engineering, Systems Engineering (with an educational focus in Software Engineering) and Technology sales and sales support.

Photo: 
Photo of Hans

Hans Nelson is an undergraduate student and research assistant in the Network Security Laboratory (NSL) at the University of North Texas (UNT). His current research area is quantum computing.

Photo: 
Photo of Tyler

Tyler Parks is a masters student and research assistant in the Network Security Lab (NSL) at the University of North Texas and plans to graduate in May 2023. Tyler's research is focused around different areas of Computer Science including: Natural Language Processing, Web Development, and Cybersecurity. Most of this research goes into developing tools that automatically extract keywords and technical skills from online job postings and performing post-processing analytics on that data.

Photo: 

Ishan Ranasinghe is a doctoral student and a research assistant in the Network Security Lab (NSL) at the University of North Texas (UNT). The key areas of his research are Human-Machine Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, and the Future Workforce. Ishan is studying how humans can intervene to make the autonomous system more efficient and reliable. He obtained his Master's degree in Computer Science from St. Cloud State University. He has over seven years of experience in the academic and research field.

Photo: 
Photo of Joshua

Joshua Thomas was an undergraduate student and research assistant in the Network Security Laboratory (NSL) at the University of North Texas (UNT) from 2021-2023. He served as Lab Manager for the Network Security Lab.

Photo: 
Photo of Burak

Burak received his BS degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey, in 2018, and his MS degree in Computer Science from Ozyegin University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 2020.

He worked as a Computer Hardware and Software Engineer at Baykar Defense Inc. between March 2021 and September 2021. Since September 2021, he has been pursuing a doctoral degree in the Computer Science and Engineering department at the University of North Texas.

Photo: 
Photo of Kritagya

Kritagya Upadhyay is a PhD Candidate whose research work and dissertation project, “Paradigm Shift from Ambiguous Legal Contracts to Blockchain-based Smart Contracts” explores and scrutinizes novel models and methodologies to consider deep-lying problems present in legal contracts with the use of Fuzzy Logic, providing solutions to this emerging area of computer science. As a result, his work has produced new insights into this promising area of research, resulting in several publications which are cited by peers.

Photo: 
Photo of Logan

Logan Widick is a doctoral student in the Network Security Laboratory (NSL) at the University of North Texas (UNT). His current research area is identity management. 

Prior to starting doctoral studies at UNT, Logan was an undergraduate research assistant at the NSL. As an undergraduate, Logan designed, developed, and tested vital sign monitoring applications for Android smartphones. He participated in a webcast at the National Science Foundation and presented the vital sign monitoring applications, and helped conduct field trials of said applications in Boston, MA.

Photo: 
Photo of Shakila

Shakila Zaman is a Ph.D. student in the Network Security Lab at the University of North Texas. She works on Metaverse Interoperability where the Blockchain network is chosen as the underlying technology. Moreover, she works as a Teaching Assistant in the Computer Science and Engineering department