cv

Research Statement

I aim to build open-source frameworks that create real-world impact while advancing academic research. My focus is on transforming digital advertising through automated content moderation and detecting malicious actors in the ad supply chain. My work includes empirical studies on privacy-enhancing technologies, propaganda, and harmful ads using AI to detect contextual nuances and mitigate these issues at scale. I aim to enhance user experience online by uncovering differential treatment, fighting fraud, and conducting large-scale measurements to improve widely used tools.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, New York University, Advisor: Prof. R. Greenstadt & Prof. BD. Gavitt, New York City, USA (Sep '21 – May '26)
    Thesis: Adblocking's Privacy Tradeoffs and the Future of Sustainable Advertising
  • B.Tech in Computer Science, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India (Sep '17 – May '21)
    Thesis: Large-scale assessment of vulnerabilities in open-source network server binaries

Selected Publications

  • PETS '25: Automated detection and evaluation of problematic 'allowed' advertisements (w/ Julia Jose, Hussam Habib, Rachel Greenstadt) [Paper] [Poster] [Code]
  • EMNLP '25 (under review): Propaganda Generation by Large Language Models (w/ Julia Jose, Rachel Greenstadt) [Poster]
  • AsiaCCS '24: User-Focused Evaluation of Privacy-Preserving Browser Extensions (w/ Rachel Greenstadt) [Paper] [Code]
  • SecWeb, IEEE S&P '24: Analysis of web breakages caused by adblockers (w/ Mitchell Zhou, Ben Stock, Rachel Greenstadt) [Paper] [Code]
  • USENIX '22: Drifuzz: Harvesting Bugs in Device Drivers from Golden Seeds (w/ Zekun Shen, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt) [Paper] [Code]

Technical Skills

  • ML Paradigms: NLP, Prompt Engineering, Sentiment Analysis, Thematic Analysis, Supervised/Unsupervised Learning, RAG
  • ML Frameworks: PyTorch, LLMs, VLMs, NumPy, Pandas, Jupyter
  • Internet Measurement: Puppeteer, Selenium, Playwright, Web Extensions
  • Languages: C/C++, Python, Bash, Java, Assembly, JavaScript
  • Security Tools: Kali Linux, Metasploit Framework, Xerosploit, Reversing Tools
  • Software: Linux, Git, MATLAB, MySQL, AutoCAD, LaTeX, AWS, HPC, Slurm

Internship Experience

  • CISPA Helmholtz Center (Jun – Aug '24), Saarbruecken, Germany — Developed mechanisms to identify differential adblocker treatment, instrumented V8 engine to collect JS logs.
  • University of California, Santa Barbara (Apr – Nov '20) — Developed KANF, a kernel-assisted network fuzzer; integrated with AFL.
  • A.P.T Portfolio (Apr – Jun '20) — Patched crucial bugs, developed dynamic latency-based exchange simulation model.
  • Lucideus (May – Jul '19) — Hardened CentOS Linux using 239 remediations, documented OWASP Top 10 attacks.

Reviewer Duties

Program Committee: NDSS '25, PETS '24, MADWEB '25; Artifact Committee: CCS '24/25, USENIX '23/24, PETS '25

Position of Responsibility

  • General Secretary, IIT Bombay CSE Association (Jul '20 – May '21) — Led team of 24+ students for organizing events and wellness webinars.
  • Teaching Assistant, NYU Application Security (Jan '22 – Apr '22) — Mentored 100+ students, facilitated practical demonstrations.
  • Thesis Mentor, NYU (Sept '23 – May '24) — Mentored undergraduate thesis on web breakages, leading to publication at SecWeb IEEE S&P.

Awards and Leadership

  • Presented research at Columbia Privacy Day and Google Ad Privacy Day [2025]
  • Summer school scholarship to EPFL, Switzerland and CISPA, Germany [2024]
  • Travel grant to RightsCon Costa Rica [2023]
  • SoE fellowship from NYU [2021]
  • JEE Advanced All India Rank 48 [2017]
  • Pratibha Scholarship (Aditya Birla Group) [2017-21]
  • KVPY Fellowship and NTSE Scholarship [2016]
  • 0.1% Certificate of Merit in Chemistry and Physics [AISSCE, 2017]