Xiaokuan Zhang

Xiaokuan Zhang is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University (GMU) since 2022. Before joining GMU, he spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech. He completed his PhD in Computer Science from Ohio State University in 2021.

Zhang's research interests span the broad areas of system security and privacy, with a recent focus on extended reality (XR) security, Web3 security, and side channels. His work is regularly published in top-tier security conferences, including ACM CCS, IEEE Security and Privacy, USENIX Security, and NDSS. He also serves on the program committees of these conferences.

His papers have received an ACM CCS Distinguished Paper Award, an ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Award, a Springer Cybersecurity Award (Best Practical Research Paper), top 10 finalists in the NYU Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Best Applied Security Paper competition in 2016, 2018, and 2022. Additionally, he has received academic research awards from the Ethereum Foundation in 2023 and 2024. His website is https://mainarke.github.io.

Degrees

• PhD, Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State University (2021)