“The fellowship has inspired me to think about my own research in a broader context of helping the public and the community at large.”

Summer Responsibilities: Kaushal’s project was designed to help the Department of Education expand opportunities for teaching computer science in K–12 classrooms. He compared the computer science education policies of Virginia with other states, analyzed such factors as the types of computer science courses available, and provided data-driven recommendations.

Background: Kaushal’s main research interests are in understanding the security and privacy threats in modern operating systems and building tools that help in their mitigation. His research has been published in various conferences such as ACM and IEEE. His paper on the study of security vulnerabilities in smart home platforms won the ‘best paper award’ at ACM CODASPY’19, and also received wide media coverage. Currently, he is the lead graduate student of the Secure Platforms Lab, supervised by Dr. Adwait Nadkarni.