Lisa Oakley
CV | Google Scholar | GitHub | LinkedIn
oakley.l at northeastern dot edu
Pronouns: she/her
I am a fourth year PhD Candidate at Northeastern University, advised by Professor Alina Oprea as a part of the NDS2 lab.
My primary line of research focuses on formal specification and verification of cybersecurity and privacy problems. In particular, I am using tools from formal verification and probabilistic programming including probabilistic model checking and weighted model counting for exact probabilistic inference to verify robustness properties including differential privacy. In addition to my primary research goals, I am also working on implementing adversarially robust reinforcement learning for cybersecurity applications, and applying reasoning from differential privacy to real world information leakage applications including U.S. equities trading.
Check out the Khoury News article about my paper award on reinforcement learning for game theoretic cybersecurity!
Apart from research interests I do crossword puzzles, perform improv comedy, crochet, and dance. I am also a co-organizer of the Khoury College PhD Women Group.
Education
Ph.D. Computer Science, September 2020-present
Northeastern University, Boston MA
M.S. Computer Science, August 2022
Northeastern University, Boston MA
B.S. Mathematics and Computer Science, December 2018
Northeastern University, Boston MA
summa cum laude
Papers
Synthesizing Tight Privacy and Accuracy Bounds via Weighted Model Counting
Lisa Oakley, Steven Holtzen, Alina Oprea
Manuscript (In Submission) (2024)
[preprint]
Defining and Controlling Information Leakage in US Equities Trading
Arthur Américo, Allison Bishop, Paul Cesaretti, Garrison Grogan, Adam McKoy, Robert Moss, Lisa Oakley, Marcel Ribeiro, Mohammad Shokri
In 24th Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs) (2024)
Poster at Theory and Practice of Differential Privacy Workshop (2023)
[conference paper]
[blog post]
Adversarial Robustness Verification and Attack Synthesis in Stochastic Systems
Lisa Oakley, Alina Oprea, and Stavros Tripakis
In 35th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF, FLoC) (2022)
[conference paper]
[video]
[code]
[project site]
QFlip: An Adaptive Reinforcement Learning Strategy for the FlipIt Security Game
Lisa Oakley and Alina Oprea
In Proceedings of the Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (GameSec) (2019)
**Outstanding Student Paper Award**
[conference paper]
[code]
[project site]
Talks
What Does Privacy Mean for Stock Trading?
Speakers: Allison Bishop, Lisa Oakley
Other Contributers: Arthur Américo, Paul Cesaretti, Garrison Grogan, Adam McKoy, Robert Moss, Marcel Ribeiro, Mohammad Shokri
IACR Real World Crypto (RWC) (2024)
Differential Privacy Verification
Lisa Oakley
Northeastern Software Day (2023)
Adversarial Robustness of AI Agents Acting in Probabilistic Environments
Lisa Oakley, Alina Oprea, and Stavros Tripakis
Workshop on Foundations of Computer Security (2020)
[workshop paper]
[video]
Employment
Research Assistant
Northeastern University Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute
Boston, MA
September 2018 - Present
Quant Researcher
Proof Trading, Inc.
New York, NY
June 2022 - Present
Course Assistant
CS 2800: Logic and Computation
Instructors: Stavros Tripakis and Daniel Patterson
Boston, MA
Fall 2022 & Spring 2023
Course Assistant
CS 3000: Algorithms and Data Structures
Instructors: Huy Nguyen and Jon Ullman
Boston, MA
Spring & Fall 2018
Software Engineering Intern
VMWare Tanzu Greenplum
Palo Alto, CA
June 2018 - August 2018
Software Engineering Co-op
VMWare Tanzu
New York, NY
July 2017 - December 2017
Course Assistant
CS 2800: Logic and Computation
Instructors: Pete Manolios, Thomas Wahl, David Sprague
Boston, MA
Spring 2017
QA Engineering (mobile) Co-op
Asics Digital (Runkeeper)
Boston, MA
July 2016 - December 2016
Administrative Assitant
BNY Mellon Asset Management Company LLC
Boston, MA
October 2015 - June 2016
Public Works Intern
County of Napa
Napa, CA
April - August 2015 & June - September 2014