Transformative Innovation for Trustworthy AI and Network Security (TITANS) lab is part of the Department of Computer Science at the Southern Illinois University Carbondale , led by PI: Alvi Ataur Khalil. The TITANS Lab is dedicated to advancing research in cybersecurity, blockchain systems, and artificial intelligence. Our mission is to design secure, scalable, and intelligent technologies that address real-world challenges.
We develop systematic defenses, intrusion-detection pipelines, formal verification workflows, and cryptographic protocol enhancements by combining data-driven modeling, program analysis, and zero-knowledge techniques.
Our research lies at the intersection of cybersecurity, reinforcement learning, control theory, optimization, and privacy-preserving techniques. It explores how intelligent agents can make strategic, adaptive decisions in adversarial and distributed environments. Key themes include designing robust defense mechanisms against stealthy attacks, developing secure multi-agent coordination protocols, and leveraging game-theoretic reasoning for decision-making under uncertainty.You can find an overview of some of our research themes at our Research page.
We are looking for highly motivated PhD students students to join the team (more info) !
June 2025
Dr. Khalil is invited to serve on the TPC of the Special Session on Multi-modal Machine Learning at IEEE ICMLA 2025.
January 2025
Dr. Khalil is invited to serve on the SPC of for the 12th IEEE Swiss Conference on Data Science, taking place on June 26-27, 2025, in Zürich, Switzerland.
January 2025
Dr. Khalil received Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) Honor Society Scholarship 2024 with the IEEE Computing Sciences and the IEEE Computer Society.
November 2024
Dr. Khalil was awarded the Dissertation Year Fellowship from FIU University Graduate School (UGS) for Spring and Summer 2025 semesters.