H. B. Acharya, Ph.D. — CEO

I'm an engineer, researcher, and educator in Computer Science and Engineering, specifically Networks and Cybersecurity. I have ten years' experience creating and leading research projects, coordinating small teams, presenting reports, and teaching. Some interests: Security (mechanisms and policy), Distributed Systems, Protocols, Network Science, Algorithms (string matching, sequence alignment, etc.) PROJECTS: 1. Programmable Network Security. - The P4 language allows SDN switches to parse packets and extract header fields – but not payload fields. It's "not for DPI". Or is it? We built DeeP4R, a system that actually *does* perform DPI on P4. We currently have a limited next-gen firewall, and are exploring intrusion detection with in-fabric ML and other use cases. 2. Internet Sovereignty and Control. - Do network outages and censors affect users *in other countries*? Can we route around them using overlays or CDN? Or, in the worst case (no disruption-free paths), can we "punch through" the blockage? Our Decoy Routing system, SiegeBreaker, is one way to do this. 3. New Datacenter Scale Protocols. - In Data Centers etc., we no longer compute loop-free paths or multi-paths at L2; it is all done in L3. *Can* a fast, resilient network backplane at L2 outperform L3 solutions? What happens when we scale across multiple data centers? SKILLS: 1. Communication – Ten years of experience in teaching, presentation, and technical and non-technical writing. Ratings of 4.5+/ 5 as a teacher. 2. CyberSecurity – Research experience in Firewalls, Intrusion Detection, Internet Security (BGP, DNS). Five years of experience teaching skills (firewall/proxy, flow tools, Snort/Zeek, VPN etc.) 3. Networks – Research experience with SDN, Internet Measurement, and Protocols. Five years of experience teaching skills (Wireshark/Scapy, Traceroute, Layer-2/Layer-3/overlay networks, software-defined and data-center networks etc.)

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cybersecurity and Network Engineering expert with a strong academic and research background.

Location: Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States

Experience: 19 yrs 1 mo

Skills

Communication
Cybersecurity
Networks

Career Highlights

Ten years of experience in research and teaching.
Expertise in Cybersecurity and Network protocols.
Proven track record in leading research projects.

Work Experience

Oklahoma State University

Assistant Professor (2 yrs 4 mos)

Rochester Institute of Technology

Assistant Professor (Cybersecurity) (6 yrs 4 mos)

IIIT Delhi

Assistant Professor (Teaching) (4 yrs 8 mos)

University of Texas at Austin

Ph.D. Candidate. (5 yrs 9 mos)

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) at The University of Texas at Austin

Bachelor of Technology (BTech) at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur

H. B. Acharya, Ph.D.

CEO

Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States19 yrs 1 mo experience

Highly Stable

Key Highlights

Ten years of experience in research and teaching.
Expertise in Cybersecurity and Network protocols.
Proven track record in leading research projects.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a Cybersecurity and Network Engineering expert with a strong academic and research background.

Contact

Skills

Core Skills

CommunicationCybersecurityNetworks

Other Skills

Stakeholder AnalysisLinuxProtocol StacksProgrammingWritingTechnological InnovationProject ManagementKubernetesContainer OrchestrationHiveHadoopApache SparkWritten CommunicationDesign DocumentsPublications

About

Experience

19 yrs 1 mo

Total Experience

5 yrs 7 mos

Average Tenure

2 yrs 4 mos

Current Experience

Oklahoma state university

Assistant Professor

Jan 2024 – Present · 2 yrs 4 mos · Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States · On-site

CommunicationStakeholder Analysis

Rochester institute of technology

Assistant Professor (Cybersecurity)

Aug 2017 – Dec 2023 · 6 yrs 4 mos · New York, United States

At RIT I researched networks and security, and was also interested in fault-tolerance, distributed systems, and ad-hoc networks. Some of our questions had technical answers; some had political answers; and some had no answers at all.
For example, WHY do computers route by IP address and not directly by MAC address? (IP addresses can be aggregated - one routing table entry can route to a whole prefix.) But then, why are routing tables still so large? Why did MPLS not solve this problem? What would it take to solve it? And so on.
I published actively (once again in strong venues such as PETS, ACSAC, and INFOCOM), started a research group and brought in grant funding, and mentored and graduated UG, PG and Ph.D. students. Some of my former students went on to become Asst Profs as well.

LinuxProtocol StacksCyberSecurityNetworks

Iiit delhi

Assistant Professor (Teaching)

Sep 2012 – May 2017 · 4 yrs 8 mos

After completing my PhD, I thought I'd give back to India, and went home to teach. But in my four years at IIIT, I learned more than I taught. Most importantly, I learned that teaching isn't just about knowing the material - it's about relationships. (You have to challenge your people and at the same time make them feel safe.) I'm still learning how, and probably always will.
I stayed active in research as well (our last paper won Best Paper at Securecomm - congrats Dev!) and I made a lot of friends. Mentors, colleagues, students. My own graduate students (two Assistant Professors); undergrads who went on to UC Berkeley, Oxford, and U Penn; a PM for Google Maps.

Protocol StacksProgrammingNetworks

University of texas at austin

Ph.D. Candidate.

Aug 2006 – May 2012 · 5 yrs 9 mos

My Ph.D. work was on security policies and access controls, and how to create, check, and optimize them. I also created a theoretical basis for network mapping with traceroute etc. In my later work, I ended up combining these threads – how crafted packets can be used for traceroute, how they can fool firewalls, etc.
In addition to my dissertation research, I also studied the game theory of distributed systems, and published on security theory (the Dolev-Yao adversary). I also designed secure protocols for two-way and anonymous internet authentication, for security in sensor networks, and (as a co-author) for integrity and non-repudiation.

LinuxWritingCyberSecurity