welcome.
I'm Sean Whalen, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University with Salvatore Stolfo. I recently finished my I3P postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the Computational Research Division, where I developed several methods for anomaly detection in high performance computing systems with Sean Peisert and David Bailey. Here's my curriculum vitae.
I finished my Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis in 2010 and was fortunate to be jointly advised by Matt Bishop (Computer Security) and Jim Crutchfield (Physics). I'm interested in applying techniques from complex systems and statistical physics to problems in computer security — touching on statistical inference, machine learning, complex networks, and dynamical systems. I'm also interested in information visualization and virtual reality, having previously developed a complex networks visualization tool for the KeckCAVES project.
My partner and frequent collaborator is Sophie Engle, currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco.
Recent Papers
- Structural Drift: The Population Dynamics of Sequential Learning, in review, 2012
- Network-Theoretic Classification of Parallel Computation Patterns, to appear in International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 2012
- A Taxonomy of Buffer Overflow Characteristics, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 2012 [bibtex]
- This is the Remix: Structural Improvisation using Automated Pattern Discovery, the 4th International Workshop on Machine Learning and Music (held in conjunction with the 25th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems), 2011
- Network-Theoretic Classification of Parallel Computation Patterns, Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Characterizing Applications for Heterogeneous Exascale Systems, 2011 [bibtex]
- Hidden Markov Models for Automated Protocol Learning, Proceedings of the 6th International ICST Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, 2010 [bibtex]
- A Risk Management Approach to the Insider Threat, Insider Threats in Cybersecurity — And Beyond, Springer Verlag, 2010 [bibtex]
- Case Studies of an Insider Framework, Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2009 [bibtex]
- We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, Proceedings of the 2008 New Security Paradigms Workshop, 2008 [bibtex]
Tutorials