PMC Senior Project Engineer

The Center for Cyber Security at New York University Abu Dhabi seeks to recruit a Research Engineer to work on disinformation and security aspects related to it. Online misinformation and disinformation (aka “Fake News”) has taken on an increasing global significance in recent years. The spread and application of such content can have disastrous consequences in the real world, such as influence on socio-political events (elections), spread of diseases (due to parents choosing not to vaccinate children), violence, discrimination (targeting of specific religions such as Islam), and so on. A great deal of such content is seeded and/or spread and/or amplified by malicious individuals or state actors, often with the use of bots. As such, investigating and tackling this problem requires a sociotechnical and multidisciplinary approach that considers not only threat models and security considerations but also improved user interfaces and experiences, increased information literacy, informed public policy, etc.

The successful applicant will work on interdisciplinary sociotechnical research to detect and reduce the spread and influence of online misinformation and disinformation. To that end, the research may involve applying a number of approaches, including but not limited to: machine learning, user interface design, building and evaluating prototypes of novel solutions, online surveys, and experiments. The research will also incorporate an investigation of cultural influences, with a specific focus on the context of the populations in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. We expect the results to be published in top-tier journals and conferences in security and human-computer interactions (IEEE S&P, Usenix Security, CCS, NDSS, CHI, CSCW, SOUPS, WWW, etc.). The Research Engineer will be supervised by Prof. Nasir Memon (NYU, NYU Abu Dhabi). Collaborators on the project include Mustaque Ahamad (Georgia Tech) and Prof. Sameer Patil (University of Utah).

Applicants for the Research Engineer position must have a Master's in Computer Engineering or a related discipline. Excellent experimental skills relevant to the project are required.

The terms of employment are very competitive and include housing and educational subsidies for children.