Welcome to NetΣyn!
Our everyday life runs on networks. From the way we communicate to the way we learn, work, vote, and pay, all depend on a network.
NetΣyn lab's research aims at making all those networks secure, reliable, and performant.
To do so, we go beyond traditional discipline barriers and apply various techniques and technologies including measurements, machine learning, data processing, and hardware.
Interested in working with us?
Prospective PhD students: please apply here and mention my name in your application.
Prospective research interns: please email me and include your CV and one publication or project you have worked on.
Students already in Princeton: please email me, I am happy to meet and/or brainstorm about research projects or thesis.
Curious about what NetΣyn means?
Net is obviously for networks. Σyn (συν-) is a prefix occurring in loanwords from Greek, having the same function as co- (synthesis; synoptic); used, with the meaning “with,” “together,” in the formation of compound words (synsepalous) or “synthetic” in such compounds (syngas).
News
Our papers entitled "Invariant Discovery for Networked Systems" and "No Hyperscaler? No Problem. Your Students also Break (and Fix) Networks" were accepted at HotNets 2026.
Anchengcheng Zhou was named a 2027 Siebel Scholar in Computer Science, recognizing her academic achievements and leadership in the field.
Our proposal on "Secure and Robust Mission-Critical Networks via Iterative Model Refinement" was awarded an Office of Naval Research (ONR) sole-PI grant in Basic and Applied Scientific Research from the Mathematics, Computer and Information Sciences (MCIS) Division!
Our paper entitled “Cross-Flow Correlations Survive Synthesis: Measuring Source-Level Privacy Leakage in Synthetic Network Traces” was accepted at NDSS 2027.
Our papers entitled "Worst-Case Discovery and Runtime Protection for RL-Based Network Controllers" and “KnowCheck: Cost-Effective and Explainable East-West Intrusion Detection in Public Clouds” were accepted at NSDI 2027.
Joshua Lau won a Hisashi Kobayashi Prize, awarded for outstanding accomplishments in computing! Joshua's senior undergraduate thesis, advised by Prof. Apostolaki, explored modeling logical constraints in networked systems.
Class 2026 ECE Awards
Maria has been selected as a 2026 Sloan Research Fellow in Computer Science by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The Sloan Research Fellowship recognizes early-career scholars who are among the most promising scientific researchers today and whose achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada.
Our proposal titled "Neurosymbolic Synthesis of Control and Diagnostic Algorithms for Networking" has received an AI Lab Seed grant from the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence.
Our papers entitled "Making Logic a First-Class Citizen in Network Data Generation with ML" and “Starfish: A Topology-Routing Co-Design for Small-Scale Data Centers” were accepted at NSDI 2026.
Our paper entitled "Passive Data-Plane Telemetry to Mitigate Long-Distance BGP Hijacks" was accepted at NINeS 2026.
Our paper entitled "Routing Attacks in Ethereum PoS:A Systematic Exploration" was accepted at FC 2026.
Our paper entitled "Confucius: Adapting Home Routers to Congestion Control's Reactions for Consistent Low Latency" was accepted at IEEE INFOCOM 2026.
