University Awards
The science of adversarial reasoning asks whether a design can withstand an intelligent attack. It is a way of thinking about all our creations. Asst Prof Prateek SAXENA
PhD (University of California, Berkeley); MSc (Stony Brook University); BEng (University of Pune)
Department of Computer Science
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  • Binary analysis
  • Computer security
  • Distributed cryptography
  • Web security
  • Pioneered “data-oriented” attacks which can defeat state-of-the-art control flow defence systems, long held to be immune against security attacks
  • Holds ownership of two patents for secure sharding-based architecture for open blockchains and trusted data service for encrypted MapReduce computation respectively
  • Developed web sandboxing techniques which have shaped the design of the Google Chrome extensions platform, Google App Store and Dropbox’s web infrastructure
  • Secured funding from global technology giants such as Intel and Symantec, as well as other agencies, valued at close to $2 million
  • His research team has created several start-ups — he co-founded Anquan Capital which provides high security infrastructure to financial services, and is technical advisor to start-ups led by his students, namely Dexecure, which enables fast and self-optimising web applications; and SmartPool, a non-profit entity under creation that offers efficient decentralised mining pools for existing cryptocurrencies
  • Consistently produces high quality research that is widely recognised both for its scholarly impact and practical adoption
  • Adept at galvanising students in discovering solutions to real-world problems, resulting in his students founding the first Y-Combinator Fellowship company in Singapore
  • Published close to 30 research papers in leading peer-reviewed conferences such as IEEE Security and Privacy, ACM Communication and Computer Security and USENIX Security Symposium and the journal IEEE Internet Computing
  • Obtained over 250 citations for papers
  • Member of the Technical Programme Committee for Usenix Security (2015, 2014, 2013)
  • Member of the Technical Programme Committee for IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (2016, 2015, 2014)
  • Invited to speak at Symantec (2015) and Intel (2014)
  • Top 10 ‘Innovators Under 35’ in Asia, MIT Technology Review (2017)
  • Best Paper Award, 19th International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems (2014)
  • Best Paper Award, Web 2.0 Security & Privacy (2014)
  • Dean’s Chair, NUS Computing (2012 - 2018)
"Computational intelligence will pervade our lives in unforeseen ways. Securing computer systems is not just an investment in our safety as humans, but will yield new insights into the complexity of these systems."
 Honour Roll Recipients