NOVEMBER | Dr Sharif Abuadbba

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Dr Sharif Abuadbba has a PhD in computer security from RMIT university, Melbourne, Australia 2017. He was the winner of RMIT prestigious VC award of Research Excellence in Technology 2018. He was also the winner of Eureka innovation award 2018 for his cybersecurity startup named EyeCura. Dr Sharif has joined Data61 Distributed System Security group early 2019 as a Research Scientist and Cybersecurity CRC fellow. Dr Abuadbba has previously worked with Californian based technology companies, OptCTS Inc and AgilePQ Inc, as a senior R&D engineer and contributed to a few US IP patents in cybersecurity. He has mentored 30+ research interns and joiner engineers. He also has several publications in high-quality venues. Dr Abuadbba has recently helped in defining Data61 Cyber Security CRC projects, such as Deception as a Service and Smart Shield which got +$3M dollar funds. He is currently supervising 2 PhD students. His specialist and interests include AI for cybersecurity, machine learning privacy and security, Applied cryptography and watermarking. What are your highlights? I find the work in CSIRO’s Data61 significantly motivational as we here are attempting to address real-world security problems that face Australian and international industries. One recent work I take a lot of pride in is that we demonstrated how a simple object, such as a piece of clothing of a particular colour, could be used to easily exploit, bypass, and infiltrate YOLO, a popular Artificial intelligence based object detection camera. Our motivation is to raise business awareness to the fact that loopholes in AI algorithms may exist, thus users may need to carefully consider the data that has been used to train smart cameras. I have been recently interviewed by ZDnet to talk about our work https://www.zdnet.com/article/australian-and-korean-researchers-warn-of-loopholes-in-ai-security-systems/ We also have been interviewed the Australian.

What are your qualifications?

I have a PhD in computer science from RMIT university.

What are your top 3 professional areas?

1. Autonomous Security
2. AI for Cybersecurity
3. Privacy and security of AI

What are your top 3 Skills?

1. Perseverance
2. Independent Researcher
3. Problem solving oriented

Have you any awards you would like to share?

RMIT prestigious VC award of Research Excellence in Technology 2018 Eureka innovation award 2018 for his cybersecurity startup named EyeCura, where he turns old/left over mobile devices into security cameras https://eyecura.com.au/ What successful grants have you achieved? Deception as a Service (1M$), funded by Penten and CSCRC Smart Shield – AI bases anti-phishing system (1M$), funded by Western Australian government and CSCRC PhD student at RMIT, CSIRO’s Data61 Scholarship PhD student at QUT, CSCRC Scholarship Honour student at ECU, CSCRC Scholarship Honour student at UNSW, CSCRC scholarship 5 Interns from UNSW, University of Sydney, CSIRO’s Data61 scholarship.

Do you have any current students?

I am currently supervising 2 PhD students and 2 Honours student.

Fei Zhu, PhD student at RMIT
Robert, PhD student at QUT
Keelan Evan, Honours student at ECU
Lachlan Jacobs, Honours student at UNSW

Why do you enjoy working at CSIRO's Data61?

I enjoy working at CSIRO’s Data61 because we are solving real-life problems that positively impact people’s lives. We also have the opportunity to collaborate with the best research’s and students to collaboratively solve critical research challenges. Besides, working with people smarter than I to solve cutting edge research problems always encourages me to learn, improve and challenge my status quo for the better. The great news is that I am surrounded by many of them here at CSIRO’s Data61.