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Dr. Cong Pu is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science, Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, Oklahoma). He received Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science degrees from Texas Tech University, USA, and B.S. in Computer Science and Technology degree from Zhengzhou University, China. His primary research interests include network security, data privacy, applied cryptography, wireless networking, and mobile computing.

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Ph.D. Opportunity: Dr. Cong Pu is looking for self-motivated and hardworking Ph.D. students all year around in the research areas of network security, data privacy, applied cryptography, wireless networking, and mobile computing. Teaching / Research Assistantships ($1,929 per month, nine months, plus tuition remission) are avaiable for the qualified Ph.D. students. Dr. Cong Pu's research group looks for students with the following background (these are not all requirements, but the more prospective students satisfy the better):

• B.S. or M.S. in computer science or electrical engineering
• Coursework and understanding of computer network, network security, and algorithm design
• Strong programming skills and experience (e.g., C, C++, Java, and MATLAB)
• Solid math, probability and statistics background
• Experience with writing software or working with real-world testbeds/platforms
• Research publications in security and networking

Prospective Ph.D. students who have interests in the above research areas are suggested to look at Dr. Cong Pu's recent papers and departmental Ph.D. entrance requirements before sending the following required materials to Dr. Cong Pu via email.

• Curriculum Vitae (2 pages)
• Statement of Research Interest (1-2 pages)
• Sample Publications (if any)
• Undergraduate and Graduate Transcripts
• GRE (The CS department requires GRE; but there is no score requirement)
• TOEFL or IELTS

For OSU admitted Ph.D. students, please contact Dr. Cong Pu and discuss the Ph.D. opportunity.

Prospective students are suggested to consider the above criteria to decide whether or not to apply.

Thesis / Creative Component Opportunity for M.S. Students: Dr. Cong Pu is looking for M.S. students to work towards the Thesis Option or the Creative Component Option. For OSU admitted M.S. students, please contact Dr. Cong Pu and discuss the opportunity. For prospective M.S. students, please apply the OSU Master's in Computer Science program.

Undergraduate Research Assistant Opportunity: Research assistant positions are available for ambitious undergraduate students. Undergraduate students who (1) have relevant research experiences or have strong performance on programming/algorithm/math courses; and (2) could devote enough time on research are encouraged to apply. After overcoming the learning curve, undergraduate students will receive hourly wage, $10 - $12 per hour. For further information, please contact Dr. Cong Pu.

• Female, low-income, first-generation, and under-represented minority students are strongly encouraged to apply.

Independent Study for M.S. and Undergraduate Students: Dr. Cong Pu offers independent study courses focusing on network security, data privacy, applied cryptography, wireless networking, and mobile computing. Please contact Dr. Cong Pu for more information.

Visiting Scholar Opportunity: Visiting scholars are always welcome for co-work at the Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, Oklahoma).

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Latest News More»

• Grant Caitlin Barnes (PI), Roger Mailler (Senior Personnel), and Cong Pu (Senior Personnel) received an OSRHE Grant Programs Award ($15,000) from the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education (OSRHE) to offer online cybersecurity training to Oklahoma K-12 STEM educators, Oct 30, 2024. Many thanks to OSRHE for their generous support!
• Grant Cong Pu (PI) received a SaTC award ($288,398) from National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve the security and privacy of Internet of Drones systems, July 15, 2024. Many thanks to NSF for their generous support!
• Grant Cong Pu (PI) received a grant ($127,128) from National Security Agency (NSA) to build an effective cybersecurity training program, June 16, 2023. Many thanks to NSA for their generous support!
• Journal Our paper entitled "Quantitative Study on the Performance of An Asynchronous Chain Model" has been accepted for publication by ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice, Oct 1, 2024.
• Conference Our paper entitled "Integrating Generative AI With Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis Course Homework" has been accepted to appear at the 2024 ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), July 23, 2024.
• Journal Our paper entitled "A Lightweight and Anonymous Application-Aware Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for the Internet of Drones" has been accepted for publication by IEEE Internet of Things Journal, February 15, 2024.
• Award Our paper entitled "A Lightweight Aggregate Authentication Protocol for Internet of Drones" has won Best Paper Award at the 2024 IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (IEEE CCNC 2024), January 8, 2024.
• Journal Our two papers have been accepted for publication by IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Nov 2023.
• Conference Our two security papers have been accepted to appear at the 2024 IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (IEEE CCNC 2024), January 6 – 9, 2024.
• Conference Our paper entitled "Resource-Efficient and Data Type-Aware Authentication Protocol for Internet of Things Systems" has been accepted to appear at the 2023 5th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (IEEE TPS 2023), November 1 - 3, 2023.
• Conference Our paper entitled "Privacy-Preserving and Fault-Tolerant Data Aggregation Protocol for Internet of Drones" has been accepted to appear at the 2023 6th IEEE Conference on Dependable and Secure Computing (IEEE DSC 2023), November 7 - 9, 2023.
• Conference Our paper entitled "A Featherweight Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for Internet of Drones Applications" has been accepted to appear at the 2023 IEEE 34th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC) - Track 2: Networking and MAC, September 5 - 8, 2023.

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Selected Publications All Publications»

CV   Google Scholar   DBLP   ORCID   Scopus   ResearchGate   Publons   Semantic Scholar  

• IEEE MASS'22 "Bilinear Pairing and PUF Based Lightweight Authentication Protocol for IoD Environment", Cong Pu, Andrew Wall, and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE 19th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS) - Security and Privacy Track, pp. 115--121, 2022.
• IEEE IoTJ "A Lightweight and Anonymous Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Wireless Body Area Networks", Cong Pu, Haleigh Zerkle, Andrew Wall, Sunho Lim, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, and Imtiaz Ahmed, IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Impact Factor: 9.471), Vol. 9, Iss. 21, pp. 21136--21146, 2022.
• IEEE ISJ "Drone Helps Privacy: Sky Caching Assisted k-Anonymity in Spatial Querying", Hema Naga Sai Sudha Jagarlapudi, Sunho Lim, Jinseok Chae, Gyu Sang Choi, and Cong Pu, IEEE Systems Journal (Impact Factor: 3.931), Vol. 16, Iss. 4, pp. 6360--6370, 2022.
• IEEE IoTJ "A Lightweight and Privacy-Preserving Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for Internet of Drones Environment", Cong Pu, Andrew Wall, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Imtiaz Ahmed, and Sunho Lim, IEEE Internet of Things Journal (Impact Factor: 9.471), Vol. 9, Iss. 12, pp. 9918--9933, 2022.
• IEEE MDM'22 "SecureIoD: A Secure Data Collection and Storage Mechanism for Internet of Drones", Cong Pu, Andrew Wall, Imtiaz Ahmed, and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM 2022), pp. 83--92, 2022. (Acceptance Rate: 26%)
• IEEE ICC'22 "A Reinforcement Learning Based Service Scheduling Algorithm for Internet of Drones", Cong Pu, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2022 - UAV5G Workshop, pp. 999--1004, 2022.
• IEEE VTC'22 "Mitigating Routing Misbehavior in the Internet of Drones Environment", Cong Pu and Pingping Zhu, Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE 95th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2022-Spring), Helsinki, Finland, June 19 - 22, 2022.
• Elsevier VEHCOM "DarkSky: Privacy Preserving Target Tracking Strategies Using a Flying Drone", Samhith Reddy Chinthi-Reddy, Sunho Lim, Gyu Sang Choi, Jinseok Chae, and Cong Pu, Elsevier Vehicular Communications (Impact Factor: 6.91), Vol. 35, pp. 100459, June 2022.
• Elsevier COSE "Lightweight Sybil Attack Detection in IoT Based on Bloom Filter and Physical Unclonable Function", Cong Pu and Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Elsevier Computers & Security (Impact Factor: 4.438), Vol. 113, pp. 102541, February 2022.
• IEEE GLOBECOM'21 "Defending against Flooding Attacks in the Internet of Drones Environment", Cong Pu and Pingping Zhu, Proceedings of the 2021 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), pp. 1--6, 2021.

All Publications»

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Selected Awards and Honors More»

• NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), National Science Foundation, July 15, 2024.
• IEEE CCNC'24 Best Paper Award, IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (IEEE CCNC 2024), January 2024.
• NSA Cybersecurity Training Program Grant, National Security Agency, June 16, 2023.
• NASA NASA EPSCoR Research Seed Grants Award, NASA WV EPSCoR, WV, USA, April 2020.
• IEEE ICDIS'19 Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security (ICDIS), June 2019.
• NASA NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium Research Initiation Grant Award, NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium, WV, USA, April 2018.

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Courses More»

Undergraduate Courses

• CS 3353: Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis I Course Webpage

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Professional Service More»

Editorial Boards

• Associate Editor, IEEE Access Journal. (07/2019 - Current)
  

Journal and Magazine Review

• Journal Review: IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems; IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence; IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology; Elsevier Journal of Industrial Information Integration; IEEE China Communications; Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems; IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems; Wiley Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies; Taylor & Francis Connection Science; Elsevier Array; IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (2021 Exemplary Reviewer ); Elsevier Internet of Things; IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (2023 Excellent Reviewer );
• Magazine Review: IEEE IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine; IEEE IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine; IEEE IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine; IEEE IEEE Network Magazine; IEEE IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine;

Conference Committees

• IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference: 2025 [IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (IEEE EDUCON 2025)]
• IEEE International Systems Conference: 2025 [19th Annual IEEE International Systems Conference (SysCon 2025)]
• IEEE ICC Workshop - NextG-WiSec: 2025, 2024 [IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) Workshop on NextG (6G and beyond) Wireless Security]
• IEEE ISCC: 2024 [29th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications]
• IEEE MetaCom: 2024, 2023 [IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Computing, Networking and Applications]
• IEEE CSE: 2020 [IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering]

Workshop and Symposia Committees

• IEEE WTS: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 [IEEE Wireless Telecommunications Symposium]

Invited Talk

• IEEE NAECON: Session "Machine Learning, Guidance, and Control", 2021 IEEE National Aerospace & Electronics Conference (NAECON), August 16-19, 2021, Dayton, OH, USA. (Virtual Conference)

More»

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Advising More»

• Ph.D. Opportunity: Ph.D. positions in the areas of network security, data privacy, applied cryptography, wireless networking, and mobile computing are open starting from Spring 2023 or Fall 2023. Prospective Ph.D. students who have interests in the above research areas are encouraged to send the CV and supporting documents (e.g., sample publications, transcripts, and GRE and TOEFL scores) to Dr. Cong Pu.
• Thesis / Creative Component Opportunity for M.S. Students: Dr. Cong Pu is looking for M.S. students to work towards the Thesis Option or the Creative Component Option.
• Undergraduate Research Assistant Opportunity: Research assistant positions are available for ambitious undergraduate students. Undergraduate students who (1) have relevant research experiences or have strong performance on programming/algorithm/math courses; and (2) could devote enough time on research are encouraged to apply.

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Systems

• PMAP Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for IoD
• SecureIoD Secure Data Collection and Storage System for IoD
• liteAuth Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Protocol for WBANs
• liteCrypto Bilinear Pairing and PUF Based Lightweight Authentication Protocol for IoD

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