The Department of Informatics and Networked Systems congratulates Amir Masoumzadeh on winning the prestigious NSF Career Award. Amir, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Albany, was recognized for his work on "Black-Box Learning of Web Application Authorization Policies." This work will result in a novel paradigm for the automated learning of Web application authorization policies to ensure the security and privacy of Web applications. The project, by treating Web applications as "black boxes" in order to identify data authorization practices of applications and which policies are enforced on users as they access application data, will provide researchers and analysts with an automated approach to determine the specifications of authorization policies.
Amir earned his PhD in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests in information security, privacy, and trust include theoretical models and mechanisms for specification, verification, analysis and testing of access control policies; privacy in online social networks; privacy-preserving data sharing and mining of complex data such as graphs; privacy-enhancing technologies in domains such as web and location-based services; and detecting and countering social engineering attacks.