Welcome to my webpage!
I am a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. I was born in Tianjin, China (many years ago). I received my Computer Science Ph.D. degree from Brown University. I also studied at Princeton University and IU, Bloomington. You can find a bit more about my previous work on this page.
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A PROFESSIONAL DESCRIPTION OF DAPHNE:
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Brown University, Computer Science
M.S. Indiana University, Bloomington, Computer Science
M.A. Princeton University, Chemistry
B.S. Peking University, Chemistry
Daphne Yao is an Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow and CACI Faculty Fellow.
She was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist for her outstanding scientific contributions to computing.
Dr. Yao’s expertise is on software and system security. Her recent work on Java secure coding has driven multiple high-profile Apache projects to harden their code, including Apache Spark and Apache Ranger. In the past decade, she has been working on designing and developing deployable anomaly detection to defend against stealthy exploits and attacks. She holds multiple U.S. patents for her anomaly detection technologies. She is the lead author of the book “Anomaly Detection as a Service”.
Dr. Yao received her PhD degree from Brown University, MS degrees from Princeton University and Indiana University, Bloomington, BS degree from Peking University in Beijing, China. She has been named an ACM Distinguished Scientist for her contributions to cybersecurity.
Dr. Yao received the NSF CAREER Award for her work on human-behavior driven malware detection and ARO Young Investigator Award for her semantic reasoning for mission-oriented security work. Dr. Yao has several Best Paper Awards and Best Poster Awards.
She was given the Award for Technological Innovation from Brown University.
Dr. Yao is involved in over $8 million federal and industrial fundings, with $3.8 million personal share (as of July 2017).
Dr. Yao is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) and an editorial board member for ACM Digital Threats: Research and Practice. She serves as PC members in numerous top computer security conferences, including ACM CCS and IEEE Security & Privacy Symposium. She has over 85 peer-reviewed publications in major security and privacy conferences and journals, including ACM CCS, USENIX Security, ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS).
Dr. Yao serves as the ACM SIGSAC Secretary/Treasurer.
A SHORT INTERVIEW OF DAPHNE BY VT CS
What do you enjoy about Computer Science?
Daphne: Algorithmic thinking, where one can solve a complex problem step-by-step, is what I enjoy most about computer science. Algorithms are both elegant and empowering. Interesting, I found that being able to think and reason algorithmically is a useful life skill as well. It has helped me sort out many messy situations.
What are your personal interests?
Daphne: I love spending time with my brilliant daughter, Radia. Radia and I enjoy singing, karaoke style. Singing is very therapeutic, an effective stress reducer. My daughter is a better singer than I am, I am glad.
Radia also took this photo of me at Busch Garden, Williamsburg. Love it!
I also started reading several years ago. I found a used copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at a local Goodwill store and got hooked on reading since then. I finished reading the fourth book in this series, which has a fascinating plot built around AI and hacking.
What are your interest areas in Computer Science?
Daphne: System security is my current focus. I design methods and develop tools to ensure the runtime integrity of machines and programs. Security research is fun and dramatic, because of the (indirect) interactions and dynamics between attackers and defenders.
How did you get involved in Computer Science?
Daphne: Natural sciences have always been my favorite subjects. I was a Chemistry Ph.D. student in Princeton University in 1999, doing organic synthesis and immunoassay. Because of the Dot-Com boom, everyone around me was taking classes from the Computer Science Department. I took an amazing Discrete Math course from Professor Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, and the rest is history.