Xiaoyan (Sherry) Sun

Xiaoyan (Sherry) Sun

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Email: xsun7 AT wpi.edu · Office: Fuller Labs 306

Research Interests

  1. Network and distributed system security
  2. AI Security, machine Learning and LLM security
  3. IoT & embedded system security, privacy
  4. Mobile & software security
  5. Security & digital forensics education, workforce development

Grants

We sincerely and gratefully thank our sponsors for their generous support, which has been instrumental in advancing our work.

  1. NCAE-C NCTC'24, $2.59M awarded to the coalition (8 institutions), WPI share $278K, PI at WPI, 2024-2027.
  2. NCAE-C NCTA'24 #3, subaward from UALR, WPI amount $81K, PI at WPI, 2024-2027.
  3. NSF EAGER, $149K, Co-PI, 2025-2027.
  4. NCAE-C DRIFT, $2.5M awarded to the coalition (6 institutions), WPI share $1.049M, Co-PI at WPI, 2024-2027.
  5. NSF SaTC EDU Grant, $391K, PI, 2021-2026.
  6. SWEEPS Grant, $2.5M awarded to the coalition (6 institutions), WPI share $690K, Co-PI at WPI, 2023-2026.
  7. NCAE-C NCTA'24 #2, subaward from UALR, $30K, CO-PI at WPI, 2023-2024.
  8. NCAE-C NCTA'24 #1, subaward from UALR, $34K, CO-PI at WPI, 2021-2024.
  9. NCAE-C NCTA'22, $753K, Co-PI, 2022-2025.
  10. GenCyber'22, $149K, Co-PI, 2022-2024
  11. CySP'24, $116K, Co-PI, 2024-2025.
  12. NSF SFS at Sac State, $3.09M, Co-PI (Relinquished Co-PI responsibilities with employment change), 2023-2028.
  13. NSF CS4NorthCal Grant, $345K, Co-PI, 2022-2026.
  14. NIST'22, $11K, PI, 2022-2023
  15. NIST'20, $11K, PI, 2020-2021
  16. GenCyber'21A, $149K, Co-PI, 2021-2023
  17. GenCyber'21, $99K, Co-PI, 2021-2022
  18. CSU Chancellor’s Office Grant for Computer Science Supplementary Authorization Program, $25K, Co-PI, 2022
  19. CSU Chancellor’s Office Grant for Computer Science Supplementary Authorization Program, $30K, Co-PI, 2021
  20. CSU Chancellor’s Office Grant for Computer Science Supplementary Authorization Program, $30K, Co-PI, 2020
  21. CSU System-wide CRF award, $9K, PI, 2017

Media Coverage

  1. The Privacy Risk on Your Wrist, February 12, 2026
  2. WPI Selected as Key Partner in National Cybersecurity and AI Training Initiative to Advance U.S. Automotive Innovation, August 13, 2025
  3. SWEEPS Educational Initiative Offers Application Security Training, November 19, 2024
  4. WPI to Offer Training Aimed at Bolstering Nation's Cybersecurity Defenses, November 15, 2024

Projects

Below we provide links to a subset of our projects related to security & forensics education and workforce development; this list is not intended to be comprehensive.

  1. INFER Project
  2. CARE-AI Project
  3. DRIFT Project
  4. SWEEPS Project

Awards

  1. Outstanding Faculty Award for Scholarly and Creative Activities, Sac State, Dec 2022
  2. Frequent Contribution Silver Award, International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), Dec 2022
  3. IDEA Award, Sac State, 2019
  4. Sac State Probationary Faculty Development Grant, PI, 2018
  5. Workshop for Women in Cybersecurity Research (CyberW) Travel Grant, 2020
  6. Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) 2020 Faculty Grant, 2019
  7. Robert Hall Award by College of Engineering and Computer Science at Sac State, 2019
  8. Outstanding Faculty Award for Teaching, Sac State, 2021
  9. NSF ASSIST Travel Grant, Engineering Early-Faculty Career Development Symposium at HENAAC conference, 2016
  10. Army Research Office (ARO) Junior Faculty Travel Grant, 2016
  11. Open Educational Resources (OER) Faculty Grant, Sac State, 2016