About Me
I’m Nima (Farsi: نیما), a 2nd-year PhD student in the School of Computing at University of Connecticut (UConn). I’m advised by Prof. Yuan Hong and I’m a member of the DataSec Lab.
I’m passionate about investigating the privacy and safety risks of AI models, especially those stemming from model design, behavior, and deployment strategies. In general, I’m interested in deeply understanding how AI models behave and might expose risks in practice. Right now, I’m all about digging into AI models 🕵️♂️, finding what breaks, and uncovering hidden vulnerabilities that others might miss — but always curious and open to learning how to patch things up 🛠️ (when needed).
I’m always open to discussing new ideas and collaborations—feel free to reach out!
📰 News
- July 2025: Received the USENIX Security '25 Student Grant. Thanks for the support!
- June 2025: Our paper on unlearning evaluation was accepted at USENIX Security '25 (See you in Seattle 🌧️☕🏔️) [paper] | [code] | [poster] | [slides (short version)]
- December 2024: Passed the Qualifying Exam
- April 2024: Awarded the Synchrony Fellowship for Spring 2024
🎓 Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Connecticut (Sep 2023 – Present)
B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, K.N. Toosi University of Technology (2017 – 2022)
📄 Service
- Artifact Evaluation Committee, ACM CCS 2025
- Reviewer, AAAI 2024
- External Reviewer, USENIX Security 2025, 2024, 2023; ACM CCS 2025, 2024; NDSS 2026, 2025; IEEE S&P 2026, 2024; KDD 2025; CVPR 2024