Grants & Awards
Research grants and academic honors
ποΈ NSF CISE CRII Grant β $167,500 (Sole PI)
Awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) grant as the Sole Principal Investigator.
This project has resulted in significant research impact.
π Publications from this Grant
A total of 5 peer-reviewed papers, including:
- π§ CVPR 2025 β 2 papers
- π ICDCS 2024 β 1 paper
- π» COMPSAC 2024 β 1 paper
- π‘ IEEE Consumer Electronics β 1 paper
ποΈ NSF NAIRR Pilot Grant β Sole PI
Awarded the NSF National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot grant for the project:
βARMOR-HAL: Unified Defense for Adversarial Robustness and Hallucination Mitigation in Large Vision-Language Models.β
This project advances secure and reliable AI systems through unified adversarial defense frameworks.
π Project Details:
NSF NAIRR Pilot Award Page
ποΈ ORAU Research Innovation Partnership Grant β Lead PI
Received the ORAU Research Innovation Partnership Grant as Lead PI.
Funded by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), this program supports innovative initiatives that foster interdisciplinary collaboration across university members and domain experts.
ποΈ DHS CINA Grant (Collaboration with FIU) β SIU PI
Awarded a competitive grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA) program.
π£ Featured in:
π Academic Honors & Distinctions
π Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award (2024)
Recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award (2024) from the School of Computing at Southern Illinois University, recognizing excellence in teaching, mentorship, and curriculum development.
π FIU 2022 Real Triumphs Graduate Award
Recipient of the prestigious 2022 Real Triumphs Graduate Award from Florida International University.
Each commencement, FIU recognizes a select group of graduates whose academic excellence, professional promise, and perseverance distinguish them among their peers.
π₯ Watch the Recognition Video:
YouTube Clip
ποΈ View Award Details:
Official Award Announcement
π University-Wide Outstanding Masterβs Degree Graduate Award
Recipient of the University-Wide Outstanding Masterβs Degree Graduate Award, presented to one masterβs graduate in recognition of exceptional academic achievement, impactful research contributions, and dedicated service.
π Best Paper Award β CSCI 2019
Received the Best Paper Award at CSCI 2019 for research on distributed IoT sensing and federated learning, developing scalable and privacy-preserving distributed learning frameworks.