Kai Li

Kai Li

Assistant Professor at San Diego State University.

Welcome!

News

  • 2025/08: My research lab has moved to Stevens Institute of Technology.
  • 2025/07: Invited to serve on the TPC of NDSS 2026 and USENIX Security 2026.
  • 2025/02: Grateful to receive the “ETH Rangers” grant from the Ethereum Foundation!
  • 2024/10: Invited to serve on the TPC of ACM CCS 2025 and ACSAC 2025.
  • 2024/07: Our paper is accepted to ACM CCS 2024. Congrats to Shixuan!
  • 2024/04: My CRII proposal got funded. Thanks, NSF!
  • 2024/04: One co-authored paper is accepted to USENIX Security 2024!
  • 2024/04: My student Shixuan was awarded the Outstanding Computer Science Master Student at SDSU!
  • 2024/04: Invited to serve on the TPC of NDSS 2025.
  • 2024/02: Invited to serve on the TPC of ACSAC 2024.
  • 2023/10: Our paper is accepted to ACM SIGMETRICS 2024. Congrats to Shixuan and Darren!
  • 2023/10: Our paper is accepted to IEEE Blockchain 2023. Congrats to Darren and Shixuan!
  • 2023/07: Grateful to receive the “Run A Node” grant from the Ethereum Foundation.
  • 2023/06: Grateful to receive the Ethereum Academic Grant. Thanks, Ethereum Foundation! [Link]
  • 2023/03: One co-authored paper is accepted to EuroS&P 2023!
  • 2023/01: Invited to serve on the TPC of ICCCN 2023.
  • 2022/10: Invited to serve on the TPC of ACM CODASPY 2023.

About me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. Previously, I was an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at San Diego State University. My research interests lie in distributed system security, cybercrime detection and prevention, performance analysis and optimization. I received my Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2022, under the guidance of Dr. Yuzhe (Richard) Tang.

Currently, my research group focuses on understanding and hardening the security of largely deployed blockchains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin at different system layers, detecting and flagging emerging cryptocurrency scams and phishing attacks, and optimizing the performance of blockchain’s P2P network.

Student Opportunities

I am always looking for self-motivated students to work on system and network security. If you are interested, please read our recent papers before sending me an email with your CV and transcripts.