Rate My Professor Kangjie Lu

Kangjie Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, joining as an Assistant Professor in August 2017 and advancing to Associate Professor in August 2023. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2017. Earlier in his career, he held positions as a research intern at Samsung Research America in 2014 and NEC Labs America in 2013, a visiting scholar at MPI-SWS and CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany during summers 2015 and 2016, and research assistant roles at Georgia Institute of Technology from 2012 to 2017, Singapore Management University from 2010 to 2012, and Peking University from 2009 to 2010.

Lu's research specializes in systems security at the intersection of security, software engineering, operating systems, compilers, artificial intelligence, and security ethics. His key areas include operating systems and secure runtime environments, cloud and virtualization security, software analysis and open-source security, AI-assisted code understanding and vulnerability detection, and ethical security practices. His techniques have driven critical security enhancements in systems such as the Linux kernel, Android OS, Apple iOS, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms, with tools adopted by Linux, IBM, and Google. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in top venues including ACM CCS, USENIX Security, NDSS, and IEEE S&P, with highly cited works like 'ASLR-Guard: Stopping Address Space Leakage for Code Reuse Attacks' (CCS 2015, 222 citations), 'Where Does It Go? Refining Indirect-Call Targets with Multi-Layer Type Analysis' (CCS 2019, 203 citations, Best Paper Award), and 'UNIFUZZ: A Holistic and Pragmatic Metrics-Driven Platform for Evaluating Fuzzers' (USENIX Security 2021, 199 citations). Notable awards include the NSF CAREER Award (2021), Distinguished Paper Awards at ACSAC 2022 and ESORICS 2024. Lu teaches courses including CSCI 5271: Introduction to Computer Security and CSCI 4061: Introduction to Operating Systems, chairs workshops on security ethics, and serves on program committees for conferences such as ACM CCS and NDSS.