Phuong Tran, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor

Professional headshot of Dr. Phuong Tran, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science.

Dr. Tran’s research focuses on applied cryptography and cybersecurity. Dr. Tran obtained her master’s degree in Information Security at JAIST, Japan, in 2012 and her Ph.D. in Computer Science (Cryptography) at the University of Wollongong, Australia, in 2016. She conducted her first postdoc at Old Dominion University from 2017-2018 and her research fellowship between CSIRO and the University of Wollongong from 2018-2021. She was a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Cybersecurity of Old Dominion University from 2021-2023. She has conducted several works in the area of applied cryptography, which have been accepted by respectable conferences and journals.

Dr. Tran came to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as an Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity in the Spring of 2024. Her research will expand and fill the gap between industrial and academic works. She continuously works on applied cryptography, which serves for secure communications, on data privacy in machine learning/federated learning in the new era of IoT challenges, and on quantum resistance. These works have strengthened her background to comprehend the difference and the challenge to bring the theoretical work to adapt to human beings. She also teaches and brings these crypto mechanisms to equip the security background in her lectures and supervision for students.

Areas of Expertise:

  • Applied Cryptography
  • Internet of Things (IoT) security
  • Privacy Preserving for Machine Learning/Federated Learning
  • AI Security
  • Cloud Security

Contact Information:

Office: EIT 574
Phone: 501-916-5293
Email: ptran@ualr.edu