Research Interests

The primary goal of my research is to advance the state of the art of formal methods for correctness and security of computer systems, especially cyber-physical systems (CPSs), and to develop tools and techniques to help construct systems that are correct and secure. Formal methods are crucial for security goals, because they can show that no attack strategy will cause a system to misbehave. For the past several years, my research approach is to investigate sound, powerful, and pragmatic formal reasoning techniques for safety and security properties, and develop efficient enforcement mechanisms of these properties in constructing practical systems.

Recent Publications

• Measuring Robustness in Cyber-Physical Systems under Sensor Attacks, Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems (with Ruggero Lanotte, Simone Tini, Stephen Chong, and Massimo Merro).
• Quantitative Robustness Analysis of Sensor Attacks on Cyber-Physical Systems, HSCC 2023 (with Stephen Chong, Ruggero Lanotte, Massimo Merro, and Simone Tini).
• Relational Analysis of Sensor attacks on Cyber-Physical Systems , CSF 2021 (with Nathan Fulton and Stephen Chong).
• Co-Inflow: Coarse-grained Information Flow Control for Java-like Languages , Oakland 2021 (with Stephen Chong).
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Research Areas

• Formal methods for security
• Language-based security
• Information-flow analysis
• Verification of Cyber-physical systems
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Prospective students

I am looking for self-motivated students who are interested in building secure systems with formal methods. Please read this page before contacting me.

Some useful resources for students can be found here.

Teaching

In Fall 2024 I am teaching ITIS 6200 / 8200 - (Principles of Information Security and Privacy) at UNC Charlotte.

More details about past courses.

Office Hours

My office hours are typically individual meetings. I have regular office hours scheduled each week. Office hours are drop-in (no appointment needed). If you are unable to attend my office hours, you are welcome to email me to arrange an appointment. Appointments can be either in person (Woodward 330D) or on Zoom. For Zoom meetings, please use this URL to join: https://charlotte-edu.zoom.us/my/jxiang1.

I also will have research office hours available each week. You are welcomed to drop-in and discuss about research ideas, projects, and collaboration. You can find the my schedule here.

Short Bio

I am an assistant professor at the department of Software & Information System in the College of Computing and Informatics. I spent a few years as a Research Associate (Postdoctoral Researcher) in the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University working with Stephen Chong and his group. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Virginia, under the supervision of John Knight and Kevin Sullivan.

Email is the best way to contact me: jian.xiang@charlotte.edu .

My CV can be found here