About Me

I am a PhD student under Professor Ross Anderson in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at University of Cambridge where I spend most of my time analyzing the security of systems (software and otherwise) in order to make them more robust. I also work as a security engineer at Jitsuin. Before my move to Cambridge I worked as a researcher at ETH Zurich where I also finished my Master's under the supervision of Prof Srdjan Capkun and Dr. Kari Kostiainen.

I am interested in all aspects, technical and social, of privacy, provenance and security engineering. I think designing systems that preserve these requires more than good code, it requires at the very least a rudimentary understanding of economics, law and human behaviour. This is why I try to take a broad view of the various forces tugging at systems in my research.

I recently (August 2019) changed my name to Mansoor Ahmed-Rengers from Mansoor Ahmed, in case you were wondering why my publications have a different name.

Publications

My Google Scholar page generally has the most updated version of my publications. Below are the ones I've remembered to add here:

• FrameProv: Towards End-to-End Video Provenance, NSPW 2019
• Snitches Get Stitches: On the Difficulty of Whistleblowing, Security Protocols Workshop 2019; Best Paper Award
• Short Term Firm-Specific Stock Forecasting with BDI Framework, Journal of Computational Economics, 2019
• Don’t Mine, Wait in Line: Fair and Efficient Blockchain Consensus with Robust Round Robin, Under review
• Tendrils of Crime: Visualizing the Diffusion of Stolen Bitcoins, GraMSec 2018
• Bitcoin Redux, Workshop on Economics of Information Security, 2018
• Making Bitcoin Legal, Security Protocols Workshop 2018
• ROTE: Rollback Protection for Trusted Execution, USENIX Security Symposium 2017
• Towards A Generic Framework for Short Term Firm-Specific Stock Forecasting, ICACCI 2014

Invited Talks

• DMapp: Decentralized mapping solutions, Future of Blockchain competition, 2019; Winner of Zilliqa challenge
• Privacy in a Mass Surveillance World, University of Amsterdam, 2018
• On The Future of Cryptocurrencies, University of Amsterdam, 2018
• Panel Discussion: Future trends for blockchains, Inaugration of Cambridge Blockchain Society, 2018
• Identity Management in Hyperledger, Hyperledger session at Open Source Summit (OSS) Europe, Edinburgh, 2018
• Access Control in Hyperledger projects, Hyperledger Europe meetup, Cambridge, 2018

Posters

• Cybercrime, Consensus and Video Provenance, Thales Academic Showcase, Reading, 2018
• A First Attempt at Regulating Smart Contracts, CUSPE Forum, Cambridge, 2018

Collaboration

I am always open to collaborations, especially from disciplines not directly related to mine. In the first instance, please drop me an email and we can take it from there.

Project Supervisions

If you're a Master's / Part II student at Cambridge looking for projects, don't hesitate to send me an email or to drop by my office (SN17). I have a few ideas on my whiteboard that might be interesting.

Teaching

I supervise or have supervised the following courses:

• Economics, Law and Ethics
• Software and Security Engineering
• Security II
• Concurrent and Distributed Systems

Outside the lab

President of the Cambridge Blockchain Society.
I am an avid writer; I run the Cambridge Creative Writing Sessions weekly.
Formerly served as the Academic Officer at the Graduate Union and as the BME officer for Queens' MCR.

Contact

Mansoor Ahmed
University of Cambridge
Computer Laboratory
15 JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge CB3 0FD
United Kingdom
Email: firstname.lastname AT cl.cam.ac.uk
You can find me on LinkedIn as well.