Latest News | DIPr Lab at PSU

UR2PhD program acceptance

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

About UR2PHD:

UR2PhD (Undergraduate Research to PhD) is a three-month, national virtual program run by the Computing Research Association that pairs undergraduate researchers with graduate student mentors in computing. The undergraduate research training course is a virtual, synchronous opportunity where undergraduate students receive support and training during their research with a faculty and graduate student mentor. It is designed for first-time researchers who want tostrengthen their technical and communication skills in the context of research.

Ambika Vyas and Nico Wood got accepted into the Undergraduate research training course for Spring of 2026.

“As an aspiring researcher, I’m grateful for this opportunity and the mentorship I will receive. I have been with the DIPr lab for a few months and have enjoyed participating in the research environment and working with Primal Pappachan & Anadi Shakya. Being able to continue this with additional support from computer science professionals at different institutions is something I’m looking forward to.” – Ambika Vyas

“As an undergraduate with an interest in research, I’m thankful for the opportunity provided by UR2PhD for a formal environment to build these skills and make connections with other researchers. Being new to the DIPr lab, I’m also very excited for the chance to work under the care of Anadi and Primal while Ambika and I progress through this course. I look forward to growing alongside each other and continuing to build community together going forward.” – Nico Wood

DIPr Lab at Northwest Database Society (2026) Meeting

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Northwest Database Society Annual Meeting brings together researchers and practitioners from the greater Pacific Northwest for a day of technical talks and networking on the broad topic of data management systems.

Orobosa Ekhator attended the full day event at University of Washington, Seattle. She presented a poster about the Clustering-Based Local Outlier Factor (CBLOF) classifier she developed for BL(u)E CRAB.

Data Privacy Day 2026

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Thesis Defense - Dylan Conklin

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Dylan Conklin successfully defended is M.S. thesis on BL(u)E CRAB.

Committee: Primal Pappachan, Roberto Yus, Bart Massey, Nirupama Bulusu, Wu-Chang Feng

Abstract: The usage of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-based tracker devices for stalking has become a salient privacy concern. Detecting unwanted or suspicious trackers is challenging due to their cross-platform compatibility issues, inconsistent detection methods, and lack of an industry-wide standard for detecting malicious devices. BL(u)E CRAB, Bluetooth Low Energy Connection Risk Assessment Benchmarking, scans and collects risk factors about nearby devices to classify them as suspicious or not. These risk factors include the number of encounters the user had with a device, the duration of time a device has been near the user, the distance a device has travelled with the user, the number of areas each device appeared in, the device’s proximity to the user, and the stability of the device’s signal strength. After collecting this information, BL(u)E CRAB uses one of several classifiers adapted to these risk metrics to determine whether a device is suspicious or not. We have integrated a multitude of new device classifier methods, including single- and multi-dimensional clustering methods. We evaluated these classifiers against existing methods using a diverse dataset of BLE tracker data in various real-world scenarios. The benchmark results show the efficacy of different classifiers in identifying suspicious BLE trackers. We also developed a full working prototype of BL(u)E CRAB that is an end-to-end solution that is easy to use, customizable, and can easily integrate other classifiers.

The thesis paper can be read here.

DIPr Lab at URMP Poster Competition

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Portland State University’s Undergraduate Research & Mentor Program (URMP) hosted a poster event that brings together student researchers and allows them to demonstrate their work. Spencer Henwood presented a poster about securing Publish-Subscribe (pub/sub) systems with fine-grained access control (FGAC).

UR2PhD program acceptance

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

About UR2PHD:

UR2PhD (Undergraduate Research to PhD) is a three-month, national virtual program run by the Computing Research Association that pairs undergraduate researchers with graduate student mentors in computing. As part of this, there is a structured mentorship course for graduate students. The course helps graduate mentors learn how to support undergraduate researchers effectively, with a focus on inclusive, research-based mentoring practices. Topics include how people learn in research settings, aligning expectations, articulating a mentoring philosophy, giving effective feedback, and helping mentees feel that they belong in the computing research community.

Orobosa Ekhator and Anadi Shakya got accepted into the Graduate Student Mentor Training Course for Fall 2025. The goal of the course is to provide mentors of undergraduate researchers with the essential skills necessary to build robust research settings.

“As a PhD student, this is helping me build skills I’ll need to eventually lead my own research projects and create a lab culture where undergraduates feel welcomed, supported, and able to see themselves as future researchers.” – Anadi

DIPr Lab at URMP Poster Competition

Tue, 06 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Portland State University’s Undergraduate Research & Mentor Program (URMP) hosted a poster competition that brings together student researchers and allows them to demonstrate their work. Satvik Mudgal presented a poster about Sieve, and placed as the second runner-up.

The poster can be found here.

DIPr Lab at PerCom 2025

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

IEEE PerCom is an annual meeting that brings together researchers and practitioners of pervasive computing and communications for technical talks and networking on the broad topic of pervasive computing. Dylan Conklin presented the demo paper and a live demonstration of BL(u)E CRAB.

We thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) for awarding Dylan Conklin a travel grant for this conference.

DIPr Lab at NorthWest Database Society (2025) Meeting

Fri, 07 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

DIPr lab members (from left to right): Orobosa Ekhator, Anadi Shakya, and Primal Pappachan attended the full day event at University of Washington, Seattle.

CyberPDX 2024

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

About CyberPDX:

CyberPDX is a no-cost 5-day residential summer STEAM camp hosted at the Portland State University Maseeh College of Engineering & Computer Science. This year’s camp is designed for Native and Indigenous high school students to introduce them to cybersecurity skills, principles, policies, and careers through an interactive STEAM curriculum and career exposure. All are welcome. The camp activities will be led by many PSU faculty and local experts, which includes local Indigenous leaders. This is an incredible opportunity for Native and Indigenous students to get an immersive, interdisciplinary, and fun experience on a college campus. No prior experience is necessary, and beginners are welcome!

This year’s CyberPDX had threads on Cryptography, Programming, Privacy, Policy and Film. Primal Pappachan was the instructor for the Privacy thread and Dylan Conklin was the Teaching Assistant. The topics covered in this thread include

Importance of Privacy
Difference between Privacy and Security
Debating risk versus convenience of app features
Reading Privacy Policies of Social Media Applications
Programming in Python to use Generative AI as a Privacy Assistant

To learn more about, please check out the CyberPDX website.

RPE presentation - Anadi Shakya

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Anadi Shakya successfully completed the oral part of her Research Profiency Examination (RPE) on ‘Sieve and Cache: Scalable Access Control for Dynamic IoT Applications’.

Committee Members: Primal Pappachan (Portland State University) ; Dave Maier (Portland State University) ; Wu-chang Feng (Portland State University)

Abstract: The proliferation of smart technologies and newer privacy regulations necessitate effective management of user preferences about data sharing using access control policies. Current Database Management Systems (DBMS) struggle to efficiently answer queries while enforcing a large number of Fine-Grained Access Control (FGAC) policies. Sieve is a middleware for relational DBMSs that generate guarded expressions, which are efficient rewriting of queries with a given set of policies. In this paper, we extend Sieve with caching of guarded expressions to better handle dynamic workloads involving a series of policy insertions and queries at different frequencies. Our novel caching approach includes a replacement policy based on clock algorithm and a refresh strategy based on cost analysis to select between regeneration and update of guarded expressions. We also develop a workload generator that creates different workloads with different distributions of policies, and queries that are relevant to a chosen scenario. These workloads simulate realistic IoT scenarios, such as smart campus applications. Experimental results show that Sieve, enhanced with caching, is effective in terms of cache-hits and efficient in terms of system load and latency of query answering, in dynamic environments.

DIPr Lab at 2024 Summer Research Academy (SRA)

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Summer Research Academy (SRA) is designed to engage undergraduate students interested in making a difference in their communities by pursuing research opportunities in STEM, biomedical, behavioral, clinical, health, and social sciences. Students do not have to have prior research experience to participate!

DIPr lab had a table at SRA 2024 with the following members attending (from left to right): Nicholas G.E. Morales, Michael Howard, Satvik Mudgal, Steve Willoughby, Primal Pappachan, and Dylan Conklin. We had many interested undergraduates stop by our table to learn about our various research projects.

To learn more about, please check out their website 2024 SRA website.

Welcome to DIPr lab at PSU

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Database & Internet Privacy Lab offically starts at the Portland State University. We are a diverse group of researchers studying problems in user privacy, data management, access control, differential privacy, systems, algorithms, and privacy regulations.