The following center and lab are directed by Dr. Kaushik Roy.

Center for Trustworthy AI (CTA)

The Center for Trustworthy AI (CTA, Link: https://www.ncat.edu/research/centers/cta.php) at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T) conducts research to advance trustworthy AI-driven technologies. Our focus at this Center is on the safety, security, and reliability of AI-driven technology through inclusive and multidisciplinary research. We strive to promote and attract brilliant minds eager to contribute to the advancement of AI trustworthiness through research. The CTA brings together researchers from across the areas of Cyber-Physical Systems, Cyber Autonomy, Cyber Identity, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Healthcare, Agriculture, Natural Language Processing, and Robotics. CTA will engage faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and postdoctoral researchers pursuing research on fundamental advances in the above areas. We are also deeply engaged in innovation in the cross-cutting themes of deep learning, generative AI, adversarial and explainable AI, human-on-the-loop AI, and connecting AI with other scientific disciplines and the humanities. This Center will collaborate with NC A&T’s other major interdisciplinary centers [Center for Cyber Defense (CCD), National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE)-CAE-R and CAR-CD, and Center of Excellence in Product Design and Advanced Manufacturing (CEPDAM)] to bring complementary expertise to augment AI capabilities. This Center will play a vital role in elevating our university's standing from R2 to R1 in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
Mission: CTA’s mission is to develop cutting-edge methods and procedures that will provide solutions using tools and integrated systems to result in safe, reliable, and secure AI-driven technologies. We utilize research expertise in the quest for technological advancements that create resilient AI-driven systems. The CTA commits to participate and be instrumental in the development of AI trustworthiness that fosters ergonomic designs, systems, and security. The CTA’s mission aims to achieve trustworthy AI by instituting hardware and software technologies to ameliorate present restrictions and limitations. We, also, provide quality education for the next generation of Trustworthy AI technology leaders through the state-of-the-art learning and professional development.
Vision: The CTA is geared towards equipping scholars to professionally make impactful contributions to the future of AI. CTA initiative is to aspire to innovative, exemplary, fundamental, and enhanced research to curate trustworthy AI.

The Center for Cyber Defense (CCD)

The Center for Cyber Defense, led by Dr. Kaushik Roy, at North Carolina A&T State University is a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education designated by the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The Center for Cyber Defense impacts all facets of the University through its research and the solutions developed by the center. The interdisciplinary research activities performed at the center provide a vehicle for the university as a whole to remain on the cutting edge of Information Assurance Education, Research, and Technology. The objectives of the Center for Cyber Defense are: 1) to provide innovative education and training programs that prepare students to become professionals and leaders in Information Assurance; 2) to become one of the leading academic institution for research in information assurance; and 3) to serve the University and the community with leadership and distinction.

Cyber Defense and AI Lab

The main goal of the Cyber Defense and AI lab, led by Dr. Kaushik Roy, is to promote advanced and interdisciplinary research on cybersecurity, cyber identity, trustworthy and explainable AI, adversarial machine learning, and data science.


Current Projects:

  • Computational Framework and Data Science for Identification
  • Intrusion Detection
  • Cyber Physical Systems/IoT/IoBT Security
  • AI-Assisted Ransomware Attack Detection
  • Presentation Attack Detection
  • Trustworthy and Explainable AI
  • Sentiment Analysis
  • Adversarial Machine Learning
  • Periocular Authentication, Multifactor Authentication
  • DeepFake
  • Big Data Privacy and Security

Datasets Produced

  • Ransomware Dataset Version 1
  • SMITH Malware Dataset Version 1 and 2
  • Cyber Identity and Biometrics Lab Traffic Sign Dataset Version 1 (CIB TS V1, Release date 10.31.2019)
  • Cyber Identity and Biometrics Lab Mouse Dynamics Dataset Version 1 (CIB MD V1, Release date 06.25.2021)
  • Center for Cyber Defense-IDS Version 1 Labeled Flow-based IoT Dataset (CCD-IDS V1, will be released soon)
  • Center for Cyber Defense-IoT Network Intrusion Dataset Version 1, an IoT Dataset(CCD-INID-V1, will be released soon)

Software and Tools Produced

  • Mouse clickstream Data Analysis Tool (McDAT)
  • Biometric Labeler and Image Segmentation Sandbox (BLISS) system

Advisement/Mentorship (Jan 2013-Present)

  • 13 Postdocs/Research Associates
  • 16 PhD Students(Graduated)
  • 18 MS Thesis Students (Graduated)
  • 4 MS Project Students (Graduated)
  • 60+ Undergrad Researchers

Current Members (35+)

  • Dr. Janelle Mason (Postdoc, Topic: Cybersecurity and Cyber Identity Science [Jan 2024-] 
  • Dr. Bernard Aldrich (Postdoc, Topic: IOT/CPS Security [Jan 2024-] 
  • Dr. Yaa Acquaah (Postdoc, Topic: IOT/CPS Security [June 2023-] 
  • Dr. Mesafint Fanuel (Postdoc, Topic: Human Action Recognition [May 2024-] 
  • Bianca Govan (Program Manager, Center for Trutworthy AI) [June 2023-] 
  • Camila Gaitan Cardenas (Maria) (PhD Student, Topic: Explainable AI) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Alexis Cooper (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2022-] 
  • David Johnson (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2022-] 
  • Stefan Green (PhD Student, Topic: Large Language Model) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Daniel Machooka (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Richard Farrell (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Winston Hill (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2022-] 
  • Sesan Akintade (PhD Student, Topic: Feature Engineering and Explainable AI [Jan 2022-] 
  • Tony Gwyn (PhD Student, Topic: Smartphone authentication [Aug 2020-] 
  • Swetha Chittam (PhD Student, Topic: Deepfake [Jan 2022-] 
  • Amber Hoenig (PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2022-] 
  • Shaun Little (PhD Student, Topic: NLP for African Language) [Aug 2020-] 
  • Steve Chesney(PhD Student, Topic: IoBT Security, Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2019-] 
  • John Jenkins (PhD Candidate, Topic: Anti-Spoofing using Deep Learning) [Aug 2018-]College and University Winner of Outstanding Junior GRA 2018 College and University Winner of Outstanding Thesis 2019  
  • Tasnim Alam (MS thesis, Topic: Gun violence detection) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Javeyon Vaughn (MS thesis, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Genea Taylor (MS thesis, Topic: Trustworthy Cyber physical systems) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Clarence Rose (MS thesis, Topic:Analysis for Body-Worn Camera Data) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Anindya Roy Chowdhury (MS thesis, Topic: IoT Security) [Jan 2023-] 
  • Subhram Dasgupta (MS thesis, Topic: DeepFake) [Aug 2022-] 
  • Alexander Nanor (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Jan 2024-] 
  • Sade Washington (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Jan 2024-] 
  • Jamal Hill (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Jan 2024-] 
  • Iyan Tookes (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Michael Paylor (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Melvin Marin (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Nakayla Minott (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Ryan Douglas (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Amun Jackson (Undergrad Research, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2023-] 
  • Arihant Singh (Early college, Topic: CPDS Security) [Aug 2022-] 
  • Anish Patel (Early college, Topic: CPDS Security) [May 2023-] 

Previous Members

  • Dr. Abdulrahman Alrajhi (Research Associate, Topic: DeepFake [Feb 2023-June 2023] 
  • Dr. Niraj Thapa (Research Associate, Topic: Spoofing Attack [May 2021-Dec 2022] 
  • Dr. Ahmed Al Hamoud (Research Associate, Topic: DeepFake [Oct 2021-May 2022] 
  • Dr. Zhipeng Liu (Research Associate, Topic: Cyber Physical Systems [July 2022-Dec 2022] 
  • Dr. Emmanuel Nuakoh (Research Associate, Topic: Credit card fraud detection [Sept 2020-Jan 2021] 
  • Dr. Pravin Chopade(Postdoc, Topic: Network Data Analytics) [Aug 2015-Dec 2016] 
  • Dr. Joseph Shelton(Postdoc, Topic: Mitigating Replay Attack) [Jan 2016-Jan 2017] 
  • Mesafint Fanuel(PhD Student, Topic: Activity recognition [Aug 2021-Dec 2023] 
  • Karen Schnell (PhD Student, Topic: Data Privacy [Aug 2019-July 2023] 
  • Daryle Smith(PhD Candidate, Topic: Realtime ransomware detection [Jan 2021-July 2023] 
  • Mansi Bhavsar(PhD Student, Topic: Trustworthy Defenses to Adversarial Machine Learning for Smart Car [Jan 2021-July 2023] 
  • Zhipeng Liu(PhD Completed, Topic: Data Science Enabled Connected IoT/IoBT Devices) [July 2018-May 2022] College Winner of Rising Scholar 2019, CoE GTA, CoE and University GRA 
  • Bianca Govan (Research Associate) [Nov 2021-April 2023] 
  • Abdulrahman Alrajhi(PhD Completed, Topic: Road defect detection [Aug 2021-Aug 2022] 
  • Ahmed Al Hamoud(PhD Completed, Topic: Twitter data analytics--Sentiment analysis and Topic Modeling) [Aug 2016-May 2021] 
  • Ali Alwehaibi(PhD Completed, Topic: Twitter data analytics--Sentiment analysis) [Jan 2017-May 2021] 
  • Niraj Thapa (PhD Completed, Topic: Deep-learning framework for phos-phorylation site prediction) [Jan 2019-May 2021] 
  • Sultan Almalki(PhD Completed, Topic: User Identification through Behavioral Biometrics) [Aug 2017-May 2021] 
  • Rushit Dave (PhD Completed, Topic: Power Reduction and Prediction: An Android Application) [Jan 2018-June 2020] 
  • Prosenjit Chatterjee (PhD Completed, Topic: Iris and Face-based Presenation Attack Mitigation using Deep Learning) [June 2017-June 2020] 
  • Emmanuel Nuakoh (PhD Completed, Topic: Traffic Sign Recognition using Deep Learning) [June 2017-Oct 2019] 
  • Sara Althubiti(PhD Completed, Topic: Intrusion Detection Using LSTM and Autoencoders) [Aug 2016-June 2019, Received Department Grad RA award] 
  • Nawaf Awad(PhD Completed, Topic: Authentication based on dynamic password and swipe pattern) [Aug 2014-May 2017, Received Department Grad RA award] 
  • Camila Gaitan Cardenas (Maria) (MS thesis, Topic: Explainable AI) [Jan 2022-July 2023] 
  • Udaysri Nannuri (MS thesis, Topic: Mask-based face/periocular authentication) [Aug 2021-May 2023] 
  • Russell Mcllwain (GRA, Topic: Smartphone Authentication) [Aug 2021-July 2022] 
  • Bhanu Prakash Reddy (MS thesis, Topic: Malware Analysis) [Aug 2021-Dec 2022] 
  • Rawshan Ara Mowri (MS thesis, Topic: Ransomware Attack) [Jan 2022-Dec 2022] 
  • David Johnson (MS thesis completed, Topic: Deepfake) [June 2021-July 2022] 
  • Swetha Chittam (MS thesis completed, Topic: NLP and Big Data Analytics) [Aug 2020-Dec 2021] 
  • Sonya Burroughs (MS thesis, Topic: DeepFake) [Aug 2019-May 2021] 
  • Shannon Brown (MS thesis, Topic: Smart Vehicles-Traffic Sign Detection) [Aug 2018-June 2020] 
  • Melodee Montgomery (MS Thesis, Topic: Touch-based authentication using deep learning) [Aug 2017-July 2019] 
  • Ashkan Ghattan (MS Thesis, Topic: Drone-Based Face Recognition using Deep Learning) [Jan 2018-July 2019] 
  • John Jenkins (MS Thesis, Topic: Anti-Spoofing using Deep Learning) [Jan 2017-June 2018] 
  • [Received the outstanding junior researcher of the year 2018]
  • Dylan Gunn (MS Thesis, Topic: Cloud-LSTM for Active Authentication) [Aug 2016-July 2018] 
  • Anthony Dobson (MS Thesis, Topic: Apache Spark Framework for Intrusion Detection) [Aug 2017-July 2018] 
  • Christopher Kelley (MS Thesis, Topic: Authentication for wearable devices) [Jan 2017-July 2018] 
  • Mohammad AbdulWaheb (MS Project, Topic: Presentation Attacks Detection) [Jan 2020-June 2020] 
  • Pablo Arias(MS Project, Topic: Biometric antispoofing using deep learning) [Aug 2015-May 2017][Defended MS project, 2 published articles]
  • Jessie Aroche Rios(Ugrad Research, Topic: Spoofing Attacks) [Aug 2021-Dec 2021] 
  • Khalil Ngom (Ugrad Research, Topic: Whole body biometrics) [Aug 2021-Dec 2021] 
  • Matthew Hunter(REU Research, Topic: Spoofing Attacks) [June 2021-July 2021] 
  • Eric Wang(Early College, REU Research, Topic: Spoofing Attacks) [June 2021-July 2021] 
  • Malik Jackson (Undergrad, Topic: CPDS Security) [ Jan 2023-May 2023] 
  • Oluwatimileyin Fawole (Undergrad, Topic: CPDS Security) [Jan 2023-May 2023] 
  • Geoffrey Thrope (Ugrad research, Topic: Smart Car Security) [June 2020-Dec 2020] 
  • Jordan Scott (Ugrad research, Topic: Data Privacy and Security) [Aug 2019-May 2020] 
  • Shondale Rhodes (Ugrad research, Topic: Multimodal Deep Learning Model) [Aug 2019-Dec 2019] 
  • Jalen Moore (Ugrad research, Topic: Touch Analytics) [Aug 2019-Dec 2020] 
  • Christopher Lawson (Ugrad research, Topic: Author Identification) [Aug 2019-] 
  • Robert Mwaniki (Ugrad research, Topic: Periocular Authentication) [Jan 2018-] 
  • Sarah Aljbali (MS, Topic: Adversarial Machine Learning) [June 2018-May 2019] 
  • Thomas Danner (Ugrad research, Topic: Drone-Based Authentication) [Jan 2019-Dec 2020] 
  • Russell Mcllwain (Ugrad research, Topic: Smartphone Authentication) [Aug 2019-July 2021] 
  • Kyndell Geddis (Ugrad Research, Topic: Fake news detection) [Jan 2021-May 2021] 
  • Austin Washington (Ugrad research, Topic: Periocular Authentication) [Jan 2018-Dec 2018] 
  • Anthony Saqwan (Ugrad research, Topic: Periocular Authentication) [Jan 2018-Dec 2018] 
  • Eric Jones (Ugrad research (REU), Topic: Anomaly Detection) [June 2018-Aug 2018] 
  • Alexander Yalcin (Ugrad research (REU), Topic: Presentation Attack Detection) [June 2018-July 2018] 
  • Shayla Jadae Baldwin(Ugrad research (REU), Topic: Presentation Attack Detection) [June 2018-July 2018] 
  • Avery Bridges(MS, Topic: Community Detection) [May 2016-Aug 2016] 
  • Brandon Long (Ugrad research, Topic: Anti-spoofing) [Jan 2018-May 2018] 
  • Muhammad Hanan (Ugrad research, Topic: Browser Behaviour detection) [Jan 2018-May 2018] 
  • William Leingang (Ugrad, Topic: Touch dynamics--NSF REU Student) [May 2017-Aug 2017]
  • Deborah Lawrence(Ugrad, Topic: CNN-based anti-spoofing--NSF REU Student) [May 2017-Aug 2017]
  • Berry Spencer(Ugrad, Topic: CNN-based anti-spoofing--NSF REU Student) [May 2017-Aug 2017]
  • Ye Seon Lee(Ugrad, Topic: Touch dynamics using deep learning--NSF REU Student) [May 2016-Aug 2016]
  • William Hetchily(Ugrad, Topic: Touch dynamics using artificial immune system--NSF REU Student) [May 2016-Aug 2016]
  • Joel Bloch(Ugrad, Topic: Author Identification--NSF REU Student) [May 2015-Aug 2015]
  • Alex Sumner(Ugrad, Topic: Biometric based Replay Attack--NSF REU Student) [May 2015-Aug 2015]
  • Foysal Ahmed (MS Thesis, Topic: Game Theory for Multispectral Iris,Flywing Biometrics) [Aug 2013-July 2014] [8 published articles]Completed
  • Khary Popplewell (MS,Topic: Multispectral Iris Recognition) [3 published Papers]
  • Shiva Shata Ainala Reddy [Aug 2014-](MS Project, Big Data)[1 accepted paper] Completed
  • Brian O'Connor (Ugrad, Topic: Nonideal Iris Recognition) [Jan 2013-May 2014][8 published articles]Completed
  • Timothy Harmon (Ugrad research, Topic:Authentication and Deep Learning) [Jan 2019-May 15 2019] 
  • Meenakshi Singh (Early College, Topic: Augmented Identity) [Aug 2018-May 2019] 
  • Deriech Cummings (Ugrad research, Topic:Spooging Attacks) [June 2019-July 2019] 
  • Adam Deebs (Ugrad research, Topic:Flying Drone) [June 2019-July 2019] 
  • Daniel Xie (Early College, Topic: Smart Car) [May 2019-July 2019] 

Contact us:

Cyber Defense and AI Lab, MERIC 371
North Carolian A&T State University
1601 E. Market Street
Greensboro, NC 27411
Email: kroy@ncat.edu