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Research Interests

The best way to check my more recent research interests is to read the selected research topics on this page. The following list of research interests may be slightly out-dated.

Main Interests: Human Factors in Cyber Security - password security and usability/graphical passwords/observer-resistant password systems (ORPSs)/user authentication in general (e.g. PassInfinity)/mobile security and privacy/security and privacy in online social networks/human behavior in cyber security and privacy such as cognitive modeling/identity management/CAPTCHA/e-banking security/social engineering/phishing/malware/security visualization/privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), Security Economics - security and privacy issue in cryptocurrencies/e-banking security/identity theft/anti-phishing/economic modelling of security systems/e-payment/underground economy/economics of cyber crime, Information Hiding - Activities based information hiding/steganography and steganalysis/digital watermarking, Digital and Multimedia Forensics and applications to (cyber) crime investigation and prevention, Multimedia Security - multimedia encryption and cryptanalysis/applications of discrete optimization in multimedia security/multimedia forensics/perceptual hashing, Multimedia Computing - multimedia coding/visual quality assessment (VQA)/RVC (Reconfigurable Video Coding)/color science, applications of chaos and fractals in Computing - cryptanalysis of chaos-based cryptosystems/chaos in digital domain/applications of fractals for security

General Interests: Cyber Security and Privacy, Cyber Crime and Digital Forensics, Human Factors, Human-Computer Interface, Hybrid Human-Machine Computing (HHMC) such as human computation and crowdsourcing, Scientometrics, Nonlinear Science, Complex Networks

Publications

Research Opportunities for Prospective Students

The opportunities are also open to collaborators who are not students (faculty members and postdoctoral fellows) especially if they can bring students from their sides as human resources.

Research Grants/Fellowships

This list does not include all grants especially those smaller travel and equipment grants. For a complete list, see Shujun's CV.

Forthcoming

1. Andrew Martin (Project Lead), Lynne Coventry (Project Co-Lead), Adam Joinson (Project Co-Lead), Steven Murdoch (Project Co-Lead) and Mark Ryan (Project Co-Lead), "CRANE: Cyber Security Research and NetworkingEnvironment," funded by EPSRC, part of UKRI, funding amount £5,999,695 (80% fEC), 1 January 2025 - 31 December 2029 (60 months)
   • Shujun Li is not a named investigator but played/plays the following roles: member of CRANE's Board leading the establishment of a new learned society in cyber security research; one of the key initiators and main architects of the CRANE proposal; one of the main coordinators of the academic supporting base (700+ academics from 100+ UK HEIs) of the CRANE proposal.

Ongoing

1. Alexandra Covaci, Paraskevi Triantafyllopoulou, Shujun Li (Co-I), Oscar Zhou and Julie Anderson, "SaferVR: Investigating the Opportunities and Risks of Social Virtual Reality for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities," funded by UKRI (UK Research and Innovation) via the UKRI-funded National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN), UK, funding amount £71,039 (80% fEC), October 2024 - March 2025 (6 months)
2. Christopher Farmer, Shujun Li (Co-I) and Stephen Peckham, "Unlocking Data," funded by NHS England Kent-Medway-Sussex Sub-National Secure Data Environment (KMS SNSDE), UK, funding amount £105,089.59, 12 February 2024 - 31 March 2025 (~13.5 months)
3. Shujun Li (PI), "AISA4AI: AI-Assisted Security Analysis For Automotive Industry," funded by Honda Research Institute Europe (HRI-EU), Germany, funding amount £126,043.48, October 2023 - December 2024 (14 months)

Past

NB: Most small research grants are not listed here. See Shujun's CV for a complete list.

1. Paraskevi Triantafyllopoulou, Michelle McCarthy and Shujun Li (Co-I), "Safer online lives: use of the internet & social media by people with Intellectual Disabilities," funded by NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) SSCR (School for Social Care Research), funding amount £210,423, October 2020 - April 2024 (43 months)
2. Shujun Li (partner PI), "Mobility as a service: MAnaging Cybersecurity Risks across Consumers, Organisations and Sectors (MACRO)," funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/V039164/1), funding amount £550,218 (80% fEC, Kent share £175,123), August 2021 – February 2024 (30 months)
   • This project is led by Dr Nazmiye Ozkan of the Cranfield University, with Professor Weisi Guo, Dr Adam Zagorecki and Dr Chao Long of the Cranfield University as Co-Is.
3. Shujun Li (Co-supervisor @ UK), "Smart Healthcare System with Federated Learning," joint France-UK PhD studentship funded through a competitive scheme between the I-SITE ULNE and the University of Kent, funding amount €135,000, November 2020 - October 2023 (36 months)
   • This project will involve two French co-supervisors: Dr Kim Phuc Tran and Prof Ludovic Koehl, Human Centered Design (HCD) team, GEMTEX (Textile Research Laboratory), ENSAIT, French Grande Ecole in Roubaix, France.
   • The same team actually won the same PhD scholarship in 2019 as well, but due to the named applicant's withdrawal they had to re-apply in 2020 and won it for a second time.
4. Shujun Li (PI), "Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - University of Kent," funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), funding amount £64,602 (80% fEC), October 2018 – June 2023 (57 months)
5. Shujun Li (International Co-I), "Image/Video Quality Assessment: From Test Databases to Similarity-Aware and Perceptual Dynamic Metrics," Subproject A05 of SFB/Transregio (transregionalen Sonderforschungsbereiches, Transregional Collaborative Research Center in English) 161 "Quantitative Methods for Visual Computing", funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), total funding amount of SFB/Transregio 161 €~16m, July 2015 – June 2023 (two phases, 96 months)
   • Project partners: University of Konstanz; University of Surrey; SZTAKI (Institute for Computer Science and Control), MTA (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
6. Shujun Li (PI), "PriVELT: PRIvacy-aware personal data management and Value Enhancement for Leisure Travellers," funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/R033749/1, EP/R033609/2, EP/R033196/1), funding amount £~1.14m (80% fEC, Kent share £429,069), October 2018 – June 2023 (57 months)
   • This project involves a group of researchers working in 5 academic disciplines (Computer Science, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Psychology, Business, Law) at 3 UK universities, and be supported by 7 non-academic partners.
7. Anna Jodanous, Shujun Li and Ioanna Giorgi, "Unconscious bias in hiring," funded by Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) University Innovation Concept (UIC) via Home Office Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE), UK, funding amount £19,935.91, October 2022 – January 2023 (4 months)
8. Jason Nurse and Shujun Li (Secondary Supervisor), "Approaches and Technologies to Support Home Users' Engagement with Cyber Security," PhD studentship funded by National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), funding amount £115,153, January 2020 – December 2022 (36 months)
9. Virginia Franqueira, Sanjay Bhattacherjee and Shujun Li (Co-I), "Techwatch Newsletters on Cyber Deception," funded by Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), August 2020 – March 2022 (20 months)
10. Virginia Franqueira, Vince Miller and Shujun Li (Co-I), "Developing cyber skills amongst young people," funded by Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE), funding amount €50,000, April – December 2021 (9 months)
11. Shujun Li (PI), "ACCEPT: Addressing Cybersecurity and Cybercrime via a co-Evolutionary aPproach to reducing human-relaTed risks," funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/P011896/1), funding amount £880,980 (80% fEC, Surrey share £278,650), April 2017 – December 2020 (45 months)
    • This project involves a group of researchers working in 5 academic disciplines (Computer Science, Crime Science, Business, Engineering, Behavioural Science) at 6 UK research organizations, and be supported by an Advisory Board with 12 international/UK researchers and a Stakeholder Group formed by 10+ non-academic partners (including law enforcement agencies, industry and NGOs).
12. Shujun Li (PI), "Human-machine teaming for supporting human decision making to enhance security of cyber-physical systems," joint UK-France PhD studentship funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), funding amount £87,000, awarded in 2018, terminated in 2019 due to withdrawal of the named PhD candidate
    • This project will involve Prof Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro as a secondary supervisor and Prof Hervé Debar as a collaborator from Télécom SudParis, Institut Mines-Telecom, France.
13. Shujun Li (PI), "Proof of Claim (PoC): A human-in-the-loop AI based solution for semantic information integrity," funded the Innovate UK and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) through the Cyber Security Academic Startup Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) Phase 1, funding amount £12,981, April – May 2019 (2 months)
14. Shujun Li (PI), "Quantification of Human Error in Cyber Security for the Nuclear Sector," funded by Innovate UK, total funding amount £69,858 (Kent share £9,780, as a subcontractor), January – December 2018 (~11 months)
    • Partner: Corporate Risk Associates Limited (CRA)
    • 13 February 2018: CRA published a news release on the project.
15. Shujun Li (PI), "H-DLP: Human-assisted machine learning for bootstrapping DLP (data loss prevention) systems," jointly funded by Innovate UK, DMCS (Department for Culture, Media & Sport) and Clearswift Ltd as a KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership), funding amount £192,003 (£128,642 from Innovate UK and DCMS), January 2017 – January 2018 (12 months, originally 36 months, but terminated earlier due to the leave of the Associate)
16. Shujun Li (PI), "PassInfinity: An 'All in One' user authentication framework," funded by the University of Surrey's EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), funding amount £23,052, October 2017 – June 2018 (9 months)
17. Shujun Li (PI), "COMMANDO-HUMANS: COMputational Modelling and Automatic Non-intrusive Detection Of HUMan behAviour based iNSecurity," funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) (EP/N020111/1), funding amount £208,100 (80% fEC), April 2016 – April 2018 (25 months)
    • Project partner co-funded by Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF): Prof Robert H. Deng and Dr Yingjiu Li, Singapore Management University, funding amount S$416k
    • Unfunded project partner 1: Dr Mohamed Ali (Dali) Kaafar and Dr Hassan Jameel Asghar, NICTA, Australia
    • Unfunded project partner 2: Dr Toni Perković and Dr Mario Čagalj, University of Split, Croatia
18. Shujun Li (Co-I), "Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - University of Surrey," funded by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), funding amount £81,966 (80% fEC), July 2017 – June 2022 (5 years)
19. Shujun Li (PI), "Living lab for password research: Impact generation research with IT Services," funded by the University of Surrey's EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), funding amount £12,655, June – August 2017 (3 months)
20. Shujun Li (Co-I), "Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research - University of Surrey," funded by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in partnership with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), funding amount £20,185 (80% fEC), July 2015 – June 2017 (24 months)
21. Shujun Li (PI), "Password+," funded the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the Innovate UK through the SETsquared Partnership's Cyber Security ICURe (Innovation to Commercialisation of University Research) Programme, funding amount £~34k, January – March 2017 (3 months)
    • The name of the technology was later changed to Pass∞ (Pronouced PassInfinity) due to the conflict with an existing password manager with a similar name (PasswordPlus).
22. Shujun Li (PI), "Eyes Can Tell: Applications of Eye-tracking Devices in Cyber Security Research," small research grant funded by National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), funding amount £19,392 (for purchasing a high-end eye-tracker), October 2016 – March 2017 (6 months)
23. Shujun Li (PI), "POLARBEAR - Pattern Of Life ANPR Behaviour Extraction Analysis and Recognition," funded by the Innovate UK - Technology Strategy Board (TSB) through its Collaborative R&D Competition 'Data exploration - creating new insight and value', funding amount £329,453 (Surrey share £149,349), October 2014 – March 2016
    • Co-funded project partners: Thales UK Ltd, HPC Wales
    • Unfunded project collaborator: Surrey Police
24. Shujun Li (PI), "A novel scheme for countering unauthorised usage of digital media content," funded by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) through the Innovate UK - Technology Strategy Board (TSB)'s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), funding amount £157,937 (£83,529 for Phase II and £74,408 for Phase III), June 2013 – January 2014 for Phase II and October 2014 – March 2015 for Phase III
25. Shujun Li (PI), "Mobile Magic Mirror (M3): Steganography and Cryptography on the move," funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) through the Innovate UK - Technology Strategy Board (TSB)'s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), funding amount £59,672, July – November 2014
26. Shujun Li (Co-I), "Digital forensics: scenarios and standards," funded by the UK's Home Office (HOS/11/038), funding amount £39,013.20 (100% fEC, with VAT), December 2011 – May 2012 (6 months)
27. Shujun Li (Co-I), "Development of a system for fully digitized performance measurement of video capturing devices," funded by German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technologies (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie – BMWi, renamed to Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy / Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie in 2013), funding amount €151,276, September 2009 – April 2011 (20 months)
28. Shujun Li, Zukunftskolleg Research Fellowship (Junior Group Leader Position), 5-year full-time position in the salary group TV-L 14 plus €3,000 annual research allowance and €5,000 for recruiting student assistants in the first 1.5 years, funded by the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Germany, through the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, German Research Foundation)'s Excellence Initiative, July 2008 – June 2013 (60 months, resigned in August 2011 to take a Senior Lectureship in the UK)
29. Shujun Li, Humboldt Research Fellowship, full fellowship for 16 months plus some other financial support including mobility allowance, marital allowance, subsidy towards the cost of medical and liability insurance, costs for a two-month intensive German class, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, March 2007 – June 2008 (16 months), hosted by the FernUniversität in Hagen
30. Shujun Li, The University's Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (香港理工大学), funding amount HK$600,000, June 2005 – June 2007 (24 months, resigned in January 2007 to take a Humboldt Research Fellowship in Germany)

Professional Activities