Alfred Chen, PhD
University of California, Irvine, USA.
https://www.ics.uci.edu/~alfchen/
With the continuous advances in sensing, AI, networking, and control, Autonomous Driving (AD) and V2X (Vehicle-To-Everything)-based Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies have recently become particularly mature and practical. In these technologies, the AI stack is highly security- and safety-critical: for example, in AD systems, the autonomous AI stack is in charge of highly safety-critical driving decisions such as collision avoidance and lane keeping, and thus any security problems in it can directly impact public safety and the society. Over the past few years, my group has been actively studying and developing this research space in industry-grade AD systems and V2X-based ITS systems in general. Specifically, we performed the first security analysis on a wide range of critical AI components in industry-grade AD systems such as 3D perception, sensor fusion, lane detection, localization, prediction, and planning; the first to develop formal verification methods for cooperative AD algorithms, V2X protocols, and traffic-rule conformation; first to characterize AD software bugs; and the first to study the security of USDOT’s V2X-based intelligent traffic light. In this talk, I will talk about our journey so far, with highlights on our key findings and also how we address the domain-specific research challenges we encountered.
Alfred Chen is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of California, Irvine. His research interest spans AI security, systems security, and network security. His most recent research focuses are AI systems security in autonomous vehicles and intelligent transportation. His works have high impacts in both academic and industry with 30+ research papers in top-tier venues across security, mobile systems, transportation, software engineering, and machine learning; a nationwide USDHS US-CERT alert, multiple CVEs; 50+ news coverage by major media such as Forbes, Fortune, and BBC; and vulnerability report acknowledgments from USDOT, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Recently, his research triggered 30+ autonomous driving companies and the V2X standardization workgroup to start security vulnerability investigations; some confirmed to work on fixes. He co-founded the ISOC Symposium on Vehicle Security and Privacy (VehicleSec), and co-created DEF CON’s first autonomous driving-themed hacking competition. He received various awards such as NSF CAREER Award, ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, and UCI Chancellor’s Award for mentoring. Chen received Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 2018.