Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Education
- Bachelor's Degree, Shanghai Jiaotong University
Biography
Dr. Mengyuan Li is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. Before joining USC, he was a postdoctoral researcher at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research vision is to contribute to the creation of a secure and trustworthy computing environment where private data and programs are well protected. In pursuit of this vision, his research interests include system security and privacy, cloud security, Trusted Execution Environments, confidential computing, CPU security, micro-architectural security, GPU security, and AI security. He has published over 20 papers at leading security and privacy conferences, including IEEE S&P, Usenix Security, and CCS, and holds multiple technology patents. He discovered real hardware vulnerabilities in commercial CPUs that have been confirmed and publicly disclosed by vendors through hardware CVEs and multiple security bulletins. Additionally, he collaborates closely with industry teams from AMD, Intel, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu Security, WolfSSL, and others to develop mitigation measures and design commercial trustworthy hardware systems.
Research Summary
The increasing importance of a secure and trustworthy computing environment signals the dawn of a new era in computer security. My research has focused on, and will continue to pioneer, the integration of advanced hardware technologies with software systems. This fusion is essential for securing computation and safeguarding data privacy while achieving optimal performance, spanning a range of platforms from personal devices to cloud computing servers. My primary areas of interest include:
1.Uncovering, Understanding, and Defending Against System and Hardware Vulnerabilities, including cloud system security, CPU security, GPU security, and AI system security.
2.Software-Hardware Co-Design for Secure and Efficient Devices and Systems.
Related Research Keywords:
Side-channel attacks, Confidential computing, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), micro-architectural attacks, CPU and GPU security and architecture, program analysis, reverse engineering, software-hardware co-design, etc.
