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Photograph of Leah Ding

Leah Ding Associate Professor CAS | CSC | Computer Science

Contact
Leah Ding
CAS | Computer Science
4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW 108F
Degrees
PhD, University at Buffalo (The State University of New York at Buffalo), 2013.

Bio
Dr. Ding is broadly interested in trustworthy machine learning with its applications in cybersecurity and scientific data analytics.

She has extensive experience doing cybersecurity R&D in industrial research labs. Before joining AU, she was a Research Principal at Accenture Labs (the R&D division of Accenture), and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Selected Publications

"Perception-Aware Attack Against Music Copyright Detection: Impacts and Defenses,&辩耻辞迟;听R. Duan, Z. Qu, S. Zhao,听L. Ding, Y. Liu, Z. Lu,听in听IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, December, 2024.

"Parrot-Trained Adversarial Examples: Pushing the Practicality of Black-Box Audio Attacks against Speaker Recognition Models," R. Duan, Z. Qu, L. Ding, Y. Liu, Z. Lu, in听the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS), February, 2024.

"Toward Physics-informed Neural Networks for 3D Multi-layer Cloud Mask Reconstruction," Y. Wang, J. Gong, D. L. Wu,听L. Ding, in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS), vol. 61, pp. 1-14,听2023.

"Imbalanced Multi-layer Cloud Classification with Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) and CloudSat/CALIPSO Data," L. Ding, R. Corizzo, C. Bellinger C, N. Ching, S. Login, R. Yepez-Lopez, J. Gong, D. L. Wu, in IEEE International Conference on Big Data (2022 Big Data), Osaka, Japan, Dec. 2022, pp. 5902-5909.

"Perception-Aware Attack: Creating Adversarial Music via Reverse-Engineering Human Perception," R. Duan, Z. Qu, S. Zhao,听L. Ding, Y. Liu, Z. Lu, oin the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) (ACM CCS 2022), Nov. 2022.

"A Comprehensive Machine Learning Study to Classify Precipitation Type over Land from Global Precipitation Measurement Microwave Imager (GPM-GMI) Measurements," S. Das, Y. Wang, J. Gong,听L. Ding, S. J. Munchak, C. Wang, D. L. Wu, L. Liao, W. S. Olson, D. O. Barahona, Remote Sensing (Journal), Volume 14, Issue 15, July,听2022.

"ES Attack: Model Stealing against Deep Neural Networks without Data Hurdles,"听X. Yuan, L. Ding, L. Zhang, X. Li and D. O. Wu, in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence, March,听2022.

"Adversarial Email Generation Against Spam Detection Models Through Feature Perturbation," Q. Cheng, A. Xu, X. Li,听L. Ding, in IEEE International Conference on Assured Autonomy (ICAA), March,听2022.

"Defending against GAN-based DeepFake Attacks via Transformation-aware Adversarial Faces," C. Yang, L. Ding, Y. Chen, H. Li, in the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), July,听2021.

"Crafting Adversarial Email Content against Machine Learning Based Spam Email Detection," C. Wang, D. Zhang, S. Huang, X. Li, and听L. Ding, in Proceedings of the 2021 International Symposium on Advanced Security on Software and Systems (ASSS '21) with AsiaCCS, June,听2021.

"Are Smart Home Devices Abandoning IPV Victims?" A. Alshehri, M. B. Salem, L. Ding, IEEE TrustCom/C4W, December, 2020. []

"Connecting Web Event Forecasting with Anomaly Detection: A Case Study on Enterprise Web Applications Using Self-Supervised Neural Networks," X. Yuan, L. Ding, M. B. Salem, X. Li, D. Wu, SecureComm, October,听2020. []

"A Novel Architecture for Automatic Document Classification for Effective Security in Edge Computing Environments,&辩耻辞迟;听L. Ding,听M. B. Salem, IEEE/ACM Symposium on Edge Computing/EdgeSP, October,听2018. []

Patents

  1. "Methods and systems for protecting digital content against artificial intelligence-based unauthorized manipulation of the digital content",听猫咪社区app12182897B2, 2021.
  2. "Utilizing heuristic and machine learning models to generate a mandatory access control policy for an application",听猫咪社区app10824752B2, 2018.
  3. "Utilizing multiple stacked machine learning models to detect deepfake content",听猫咪社区app12062105B2,听2021.
  4. "Utilizing a neural network model to determine risk associated with an application programming interface of a web application",听EP3812929A1, 2019.
  5. "Container image vulnerability reduction",听猫咪社区app10936725B2, 2018.

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Professional Services

Chair, the Eighth ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Dec. 2025.

Co-chair, the Seventh ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Dec. 2024.

Co-chair, the Sixth ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Dec. 2023.

Co-chair, the Forth ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Dec. 2021. []

Co-chair,听IEEE International Workshop on Quantum Communication and Quantum Cryptography, Oct. 2021. [Link]

Local Chair, the IEEE/ACM International Conference on Connected Health Applications, Systems, and Engineering Technologies (CHASE), Dec. 2021. []

Publicity co-chair, the IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Oct. 2021. []

Co-chair, the Third ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Nov. 2020. []

Orgnazier and Panel Moderator, Women-in-Computing Forum of the ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing,听Nov.听2019. []

Co-chair, the First听ACM/IEEE Workshop on Security and Privacy in Edge Computing, Oct. 2018.听

Professional Presentations

"Understanding uncertainty in deep learning models: insights from a cloud ice retrieval study,&辩耻辞迟;听CloudSat/CALIPSO Science Team Meeting, February, 2025.

"A machine learning approach to connecting TSI and HMI observations," Sun-Climate Symposium, October, 2023.

"Extending 2D cloud images into 3D clouds using CloudSat/CALIPSO听data through machine learning," CloudSat/CALIPSO Science Team Meeting, October, 2023.

"Physics-informed neural networks for cloud structure and ice water path retrieval," invited talk, NASA GSFC AI Center of Excellence seminar, May, 2023.

"Trust Preservation in the age of AI," invited talk,听Women in Hardware and Systems Security(WISE) workshop, Dec.听2020. []

"Hype or hope? Machine learning based security analytics for web applications," L. Ding, X.听Yuan, M. B.听Salem,听Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC)/Case Studies, Dec.听2019. []

"Automated REST API endpoint identification for security testing at scale: how machine learning accelerates security testing,&辩耻辞迟;听L. Ding, J. Jacob, J. Chen, S. Pham, Blackhat Asia, Mar.听2019. []

Announcements

  • 2025 IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Outstanding Paper Award听for our paper "ES Attack: Model Stealing Against Deep Neural Networks Without Data Hurdles鈥 published in听IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence (TETCI)听[]

  • Open Positions: paid student research assistant positions are available in the areas of big data analytics and machine learning for AU undergraduate and AU graduate students. If you are interested, please email me your transcripts, resume, a brief description of your research interests (specifying your programming and analytical skills, and relevant projects).听

  • Congratulations to our labbers听Lexie Rista听(BS - Computer Science), Archibald Latham听(BS - Computer Science), and听Huong Doan听(MS - Data Science) on being the recipients of the 31st annual Robyn Rafferty Mathias Student Research Conference Awards! (April 2021) [link]