Helen Jiahe Wang, Ph.D.

Microsoft Research
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
+1-425-707-4249
helenw@microsoft.com
http://www.research.microsoft.com/~helenw/
Home
4610 246th Pl. SE
Issaquah, WA 98029
+1-206-419-1093
goodwintercrop@gmail.com
http://www.nicemice.net/helen/

Areas of Interest

Security, privacy, systems, protocol architecture, networking, mobile computing and applications


Education

University of California, Berkeley Computer Science Ph.D. (2001)
University of California, Berkeley Computer Science M.S. (1998)
University of Texas, Austin Computer Science B.S. (1994)


Awards

2007 SIGMOD Test-of-Time award for "Online Aggregation".

NSF Graduate Fellowship 1996-1999.

Research Experience

Shield (2003-present)
http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/shield/
I have been leading the Shield project. Shield is a vulnerability-driven end-host firewall where network traffic is "patched" according to known software defects. Such a data-driven "patch" is much easier to test for and to deploy than software patches, and can effectively protect the critical time window between vulnerability disclosure and patch application where 90% of the attacks take place today. To further protect dynamic content such as web pages with embedded scripts, we developed a BrowserShield framework which transforms web pages into safe equivalents for browsers to render. These safe equivalent pages perform static analysis and run-time checking for malicious scripts and HTML pages. A number of Microsoft product groups are actively engaged in the tech-transfer of the Shield technologies.

Location Privacy in Wireless Networks (2005-present)
I have been leading this project to address the location privacy in wireless networks. We achieve location privacy by obfuscating all dimensions of information exhibited from a mobile node, including sender identity, time of transmission, and signal strength. And we validate our design through real-system implementation and field experiments along with analysis and simulations.

PeerPressure (2003-2004)
http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/ftn/
I led PeerPressure project in which we diagnose PC misconfigurations by using statistics of configuration values from other machines. This is in contrast with methods that require manual identification on a healthy machine for diagnosing misconfigurations. The elimination of this manual operation makes a significant step towards automated misconfiguration troubleshooting. This technology has been built by Microsoft's ATC into a toolkit for Microsoft PSS.

Friends Troubleshooting Network (2003-2005)
http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/ftn/
I led the FTN project to investigate privacy- and integrity-preserving peer-to-peer troubleshooting using PeerPressure. To this end, we constructed a friends peer-to-peer overlay to gather PC configuration samples using source-less and destination-less random walk, during which search is carried out simultaneously with secure parameter aggregation for the purpose of troubleshooting. For secure parameter aggregation, we designed a novel open-membership homomorphic scheme.

CoopNet (2002-2004)
http://research.microsoft.com/projects/coopnet/
I was one of the main contributors to the CoopNet project at MSR. In this project, we enable resilient living streaming in peer-to-peer networks by providing redundancy in both path and data. We use multiple, diverse distribution trees to provide redundancy in network paths and multiple description coding (MDC) to provide redundancy in data.

ICEBERG (1999-2001)
I led the design, implementation, deployment, and maintenance of a unified communication network system called ICEBERG at U.C. Berkeley. For my dissertation research, I designed, built and evaluated the soft-state signaling protocol, mobility support, and the network- and device-independent service creation model for the system. I also served as the system integrator for our ICEBERG releases.


Employment History

Microsoft Research Redmond, WA (Nov 2001 - present): Researcher
Research in Shield, Location privacy, PeerPressure, Friends Troubleshooting Networks, and CoopNet. Mentored 6 graduate student interns. Tech-transfered multiple projects.

U. C. Berkeley Berkeley, CA (1996-2001): Graduate Student
Research in ICEBERG and policy-driven vertical handoff in heterogeneous wireless networks. TA-ed graduate level mobile computing class. Mentored 7 undergraduate students.

Daimler Benz Research Lab Palo Alto, CA (Summer 1997): Summer Intern
Researched on policy-driven handoffs across heterogeneous wireless networks, and deployed and measured my architecture and protocol.

IBM Almaden Research Center San Jose, CA (Summer 1996): Summer Intern
Designed and implemented the access control mechanism for Grand Central Station, an information gathering and redistribution system for the web.

Nortel Dallas, TX (1995-1996): Software Engineer
Worked on Intelligent Cellular Remote Module Operation, Administration and Maintenance (ICRM OA&M) and Over-The-Air-Activation-Provisioning (OTASP) in CDMA systems.

U. T. Austin Austin, TX (1992-1994): Undergraduate Researcher and TA
Researched on the integration of the real-time system verification and simulation. Taught self-paced Introduction to Computer Science class and graded math class exams and homeworks.


Professional Activities

Program committee member for:

NSF Proposal Reviewer, Summer 2005

Panelist for: