Tao Wang is a dedicated Assistant Professor within the School of Computing Science, known for his specialized focus on enhancing online privacy and security through innovative research. Holding a PhD from the University of Waterloo, earned in 2015, he brings a rich educational background and a sharp focus on critical areas of computing science. His research interests are deeply rooted in anonymity networks, traffic analysis, and privacy-enhancing technologies, showcasing his commitment to advancing the field of online privacy. Alongside his research, Tao Wang is passionate about education, with teaching interests that span computer security and privacy, discrete mathematics, and machine learning. Through his work, he aims to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate and contribute to the evolving landscape of computing science.

1. Briefly share your background and what inspired your career in academia.

I grew up in Hong Kong and wanted to teach from a very young age – teaching is my passion. (Publishing research is just teaching people about things you found out!) I studied math for my undergraduate degree and was fascinated by cryptography, which was the starting point for my interest in security and privacy. 

2. What courses do you teach, and what aspects do you find most engaging?

I teach Systems Security and Privacy every Summer, as well as Cybersecurity Lab II for the MPCS students in the Spring. Our most exciting coursework involves learning how exploits in vulnerable systems are found and how to defend against them. For example, we ask students to find and fix vulnerabilities in code that could be used by an attacker to bypass authentication checks. 

3. Tell us about your current research focus and recent projects.

My research is in online privacy. Our team is investigating the use of side-channel traffic analysis attacks to compromise widely used privacy enhancing technologies such as Tor and HTTPS. We are finding out how attackers can determine what you are doing on the Internet using the latest machine learning techniques and proposing defenses against them. 

4. What are your hobbies or activities outside of academia?

I am fascinated with language learning though I never have enough time for them. I have dabbled in Japanese, Korean, and French (though fluent in none!), and I sometimes do amateur translations of old historical texts from Chinese and Japanese to English. 

5. What is the vision for the future of your field and your role?

As more of our lives move online, online privacy has become increasingly integral to our freedom of expression. The Internet was built with little privacy in mind - our key role as researchers is to create and investigate tools to safeguard privacy. I am optimistic about privacy: the Internet has become significantly more private over the last decade, with widespread adoption of TLS, and recent technologies such as encrypted SNI and DNS-over-TLS/HTTPS.