Vinod Ganapathy: Students Supervised

"It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it."—Jacob Bronowski in The Ascent of Man

I have supervised the research of a number of talented students and am grateful to them for choosing to work with me. This page only lists students that have graduated with degrees. For a list of advisees currently pursuing their degrees, please consult the CSSL page. Here is a link to my academic lineage.


Ph.D. Thesis Supervision
Student     Degree completion     Ph.D. Dissertation     First employer after Ph.D.
Saman Zarandioon     May 2012 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Improving the Security and Usability of Cloud Services with User-Centric Security Models (Thesis, Slides). Co-supervised with Prof. Danfeng Yao. DOI:10.7282/T3PC31B4     Amazon.com Inc., Seattle, WA.
Mohan Dhawan     May 2013 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Rethinking Web Platform Extensibility (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/T38P5Z39     IBM Research--India, New Delhi.
Liu Yang     May 2013 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     New Pattern Matching Algorithms for Network Security Applications (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/T3513WS6     HP ArcSight, Sunnyvale, CA.
Shakeel Butt     January 2015 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Self-service Cloud Computing (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/T3930VWX     NVidia Inc., Santa Clara, CA.
Amruta Gokhale     October 2015 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Similarity Detection Techniques for Mobile Platform Artifacts (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/T3J38VJN     Teradata Hadapt, Cambridge, MA.
Rezwana Karim     October 2015 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Techniques and Tools for Secure Web Browser Extension Development (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/T3000433     Samsung Research America, Mountain View, CA.
Hai Nguyen     October 2018 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Exploring Security Support for Cloud-based Applications (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/t3-dre3-gm67     Bloomberg, Princeton, NJ.
Daeyoung Kim     January 2019 (Ph.D., Rutgers)     Regulating Smart Devices in Restricted Spaces (Thesis, Slides). DOI:10.7282/t3-c6kf-j713     Assistant Professor, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ.




Post-doctoral Research Supervision
Postdoc     Duration     Ph.D. Background/Postdoc Research     First employer after postdoc
Arati Baliga     May-September 2009 (Rutgers)     Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rutgers University (January 2009). Post doctoral research on operating system integrity co-supervised with Prof. Liviu Iftode.     AT&T Security Research Center, New York, NY.




Masters (by Research) Thesis Supervision
The following students completed their masters research under my supervision. A masters-by-research degree requires the student to submit a thesis that will be reviewed by an external committee member, and the student defends this thesis in a Ph.D.-thesis-defense-like oral presentation.
Student     Degree completion     MS/M.Tech. Thesis     First employer after MS/M.Tech.
Jeffrey Bickford     January 2012 (MS, Rutgers)     Rootkits on Smart Phones: Attacks, Implications and Energy-Aware Defense Techniques (Thesis). Co-supervised with Prof. Liviu Iftode. DOI:10.7282/T3RJ4HHW     AT&T Security Research Center, New York, NY.
Yogesh Padmanaban     January 2013 (MS, Rutgers)     Learning API Mappings for Programming Platforms (Thesis). DOI:10.7282/T3GX498K     Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA.
Subhendu Malakar     April 2020 (M.Tech., IISc)     Experiences in using Reinforcement Learning for Directed Fuzzing (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     Cohesity India, Bangalore, India.
Aditya Shukla     July 2020 (M.Tech., IISc)     Model Extraction and Active Learning (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     ShareChat, Bangalore, India.
Ajay Ashok Nayak     June 2021 (M.Tech., IISc)     Design, Implementation, and Analysis of a TLB-based Covert Channel on GPUs (Thesis) Archived: IISc Library     Ph.D. candidate, IISc Bangalore.
Rakesh Rajan Beck     October 2021 (M.Tech., IISc)     A Framework for Privacy Compliant Delivery Drones (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     Citrix, Bangalore, India.
Rounak Agarwal     October 2021 (M.Tech., IISc)     A Trusted Hardware-Backed Secure Payments Platform for Android (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     NVidia, Bangalore, India.
Nikhil Agrawal     September 2022 (M.Tech., IISc)     An Evaluation of Basic Protection Mechanisms in Financial Apps on Mobile Devices (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     CradleWise, Bangalore, India.
Gokulnath Pillai     September 2023 (M.Tech., IISc)     Privadome: A System for Citizen Privacy in the Delivery Drone Era (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     Cerebras, Bangalore, India.
Chinmay Gameti     February 2024 (M.Tech., IISc)     Decentralized Information-Flow Control for the Robot Operating System (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     Samsung, Bangalore, India.
Kanmani A     May 2025 (M.Tech., IISc)     IEDFuRL: A Black-box Fuzz Tester for IEC61850-Based Intelligent Electronic Devices using Reinforcement Learning (Thesis). Archived: IISc Library     Wells Fargo, Bangalore, India.




Masters Project Supervision
Student     Degree completion     M.Tech. Thesis     First employer after M.Tech.
Zad Basheer     August 2018 (M.Tech., IISc)     A Security Analysis of Some Mobile Payment Applications.     Walmart Labs, Bangalore, India.
Sreepada Abhinivesh     July 2020 (M.Tech., IISc)     Anomaly Detection with Sparse Training Data     Wells Fargo, Bangalore, India.
Nikita Yadav     July 2020 (M.Tech., IISc)     Bug-finding Methods for Permissioned Blockchain Implementations     Ph.D. student, CSA Department, IISc.
Rishabh Ravindra Meshram     July 2020 (M.Tech., IISc)     Analysis of the SAFE Remote Proctoring System     Mindtree, Bangalore, India.
A. Akash     July 2021 (M.Tech., IISc)     Studies on Multi-cloud FaaS Applications     AMD India, Bangalore, India.
Eikansh Gupta     July 2022 (M.Tech., IISc)     Enhancing Privacy in ROS2-based Drones     Qualcomm India, Hyderabad, India.
Isha Bansal     July 2022 (M.Tech., IISc)     Improving ROS2 Security using eBPF     Ola Electric, Bangalore, India.
Vivek Kumar     July 2023 (M.Tech., IISc)     ML Model Privacy     Goldman Sachs, Bangalore, India
Himanshu Kumar     July 2023 (M.Tech., IISc)     Information Flow Control for ROS2     Wells Fargo, Bangalore, India
Dhruv P. Shah     July 2023 (M.Tech., IISc)     Security of IEDs on the Smart Grid     Silicon Labs, Bangalore, India
Shivraj Jamgadepatil
    July 2024 (M.Tech., IISc)     Privilege Separation for ROS2 Applications     Cisco Systems, Bangalore, India
Arpit Patel     July 2024 (M.Tech., IISc)     A Greybox Fuzzer for IEC61850     Polymage Labs, Bangalore, India
Hrushikesh Salunke     July 2024 (M.Tech., IISc)     OS-Secure Control Flow Path Attestation     Texas Instruments, Bangalore, India
Kunal Pansare     July 2025 (M.Tech., IISc)     Library Safe Control Flow Attestation     Micron Technology, Bangalore, India
Siddharth Baudh     July 2025 (M.Tech., IISc)     Infrastructure for Memory Forensics     Defense Research and Development Organization
Tarun Baha     July 2025 (M.Tech., IISc)     Fuzz Testing of IEC 61850 Server Using AFLNet    

Back to my home page