Faculty Directory

Biography

Dong Chen is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Chen's research aims to build data-driven experimental computer systems at different scales to explore and advance the cross-cutting fields including Embedded AI, Embodied AI, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Recently, Dr. Chen has conducted pioneering research in many areas, including user/system security and privacy, system sustainability, and system efficiency in the applications of smart/edge devices, smart homes, smart buildings, smart urban and connected communities, and smart cities.

Personal Homepage

Education

• Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2018
• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Northeastern University, 2014

Labs & Research Centers

• Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory focuses on designing data-driven computer systems with an emphasis on improving Cybersecurity , User Privacy and Sustainability of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Projects

• PAROS
• TrafficSpy
• PrivacyGuard
• SmartAttack
• CHPr
• SunSpot
• Weatherman
• SolarTrader
• SolarDiagnostics
• SolarFinder
• SolarDetetor
• VoiceAttack

Publications

• I Still See You: Why Existing IoT Traffic Reshaping Fails (ACM EWSN’24)
• VoiceAttack: Fingerprinting Voice Command on VPN-protected Smart Home Speakers (ACM BuildSys’24)
• PAROS: The Missing "Puzzle" in Smart Home Router Operating Systems (ICCCN’23)
• PrivacyGuard: Enhancing Smart Home User Privacy (ACM/IEEE IPSN’21)
• SolarFinder: Automatic Detection of Solar Photovoltaic Arrays (ACM/IEEE IPSN’20)
• SolarTrader: Enabling Distributed Solar Energy Trading in Residential Virtual Power Plants (ACM BuildSys’20)

Journals

• [TIOT] "ITEMTK: IoT Traffic Exposure Monitoring Toolkit."
  Su Wang, Keyang Yu, Qi Li, and Dong Chen. 2025. ACM Trans. Internet Things Just Accepted (October 2025). https://doi.org/10.1145/3772091
• [TOSN] "Fingerprinting Voice Commands of VPN-protected Smart Speakers. "
  Xiaoguang Guo, Keyang Yu, Qi Li, and Dong Chen. 2025. ACM Trans. Sen. Netw. Just Accepted (May 2025). https://doi.org/10.1145/3734870
• [JCSS] "Enabling Automatic Solar PV Array Identification using Big Satellite Imagery."
  Qi Li, Keyang Yu, Carson Snow, Dong Chen
  ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies
• [TMC] "AgileDART: An Agile and Scalable Edge Stream Processing Engine",
  Ching, Cheng-Wei; Chen, Xin; Kim, Chaeeun; Wang, Tongze; Chen, Dong; Da Silva, Dilma; Hu, Liting.
  IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2025.
• [TOIT] Safeguarding User-Centric Privacy in Smart Homes.
  Keyang Yu, Qi Li, Dong Chen, Liting Hu.
  ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), 24, 4, Article 23 (November 2024), 33 pages. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3701726
• [SUSCOM] SolarDiagnostics: Automatic Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Array Damage Detection.
  Qi Li, Keyang Yu, Dong Chen.
  Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems (SUSCOM), 2020.
• [Sensors] A Dynamic Estimation of Service Level Based on Fuzzy Logic for Robustness in the Internet of Things.
  Bing Jia, Lifei Hao, Chuxuan Zhang, and Dong Chen.
  Sensors, 18(7), 2019.
• [TOSG] Preventing Occupancy Detection from Smart Meters.
  Dong Chen, Sandeep Kalra, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, and Jeannie Albrecht.
  IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 6(5), pp.2426-2434, 2015, Impact Factor: 8.267.
• [ComSiS] TRM-IoT: A trust management model based on fuzzy reputation for internet of things.
  Dong Chen, Guiran Chang, Dawei Sun, Jie Jia, Xingwei Wang.
  Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst. 8 (4), 1207-1228, 2011.
• [TIIS] A survey on security issues of M2M communications in cyber-physical systems.
  Dong Chen, Guiran Chang.
  KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS) 6 (1), 24-45, 2011.

Speaking & Conferences

• [BuildSys'24] “VoiceAttack: Fingerprinting Voice Command on VPN-protected Smart Home Speakers”,
  Xiaoguang Guo , Keyang Yu , Qi Li , and Dong Chen.
  In Proceedings of the 11th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, Hangzhou, China, November 7-8, 2024, Acceptance Rate = 16.85%, 11 pages.
• [EWSN'24] “I Still See You: Why Existing IoT Traffic Reshaping Fails”.
  Su Wang, Keyang Yu, Qi Li, and Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the 21st ACM International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN 2024), December 10th-13th, 2024, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Acceptance Rate = 22.86%. Best Paper Runner Up.
• [EWSN'24] “Configuring Industrial Wireless Mesh Networks via Multi-Source Domain Adaptation”.
  Xia Cheng, Mo Sha, and Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the 21st ACM International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN 2024), December 10th-13th, 2024, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Acceptance Rate = 22.86%.
• [CloudSummit'24] ``PACAS: A Privacy-Aware Smart Camera System”.
  Keyang Yu, Dong Chen.
  In the Proceedings of 8th IEEE Cloud Summit Conference, June 27-28, 2024, Washington DC, USA.
• [ICCCN'23] “PAROS: The Missing “Puzzle” in Smart Home Router Operating Systems“.
  Keyang Yu, Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the 32nd International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2023), July 24 – July 27, 2023, Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, HI, USA. Acceptance Rate = 30.38%.
• [IoTDI'23] SolarDetector: Automatic Solar PV Array Identification using Big Satellite Imagery Data.
  Qi Li, Sander Schott, and Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the 8th ACM/IEEE Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation, May 9-12, 2023, San Antonio, Texas, part of CPS-IoT Week'23, Acceptance Rate = 30.27%.
• [CNS'22] TrafficSpy: Disaggregating VPN-encrypted IoT Network Traffic for User Privacy Inference.
  Qi Li, Keyang Yu, Dong Chen, Mo Sha and Long Cheng.
  In Proc. of the 10th IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS 2022), 3-5 October 2022, Austin, Texas, USA. Acceptance Rate = 35.25%.
• [CNS'21] iAttackGen: Generative Synthesis of False Data Injection Attacks in Cyber-physical Systems.
  Md Hasan Shahriar, Alvi Ataur Khalil, Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman, Mohammad Hossein Manshaei, and Dong Chen
  In Proc. of the 9th IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS 2021), 4-6 October 2021, Virtual Conference, USA. Acceptance Rate = 26%.
• [SECON'21] BIoTA: Control-Aware Attack Analytics for Building Internet of Things.
  Nur Haque, Mohammad Rahman, Dong Chen, Hisham Kholidy.
  In Proc. of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication and Networking (IEEE SECON 2021), July 6-9, Virtual Conference, 2021, USA. Acceptance Rate = 26.42%.
• [IPSN'21] PrivacyGuard: Enhancing Smart Home User Privacy.
  Keyang Yu, Qi Li, Dong Chen, Mohammad Rahmann, and Shiqiang Wang.
  In Proc. of the 20th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, IPSN'21, May 18–21, 2021, Nashville, TN, USA. Acceptance Rate = 24.76%. (Source Code and Data)
• [BuildSys'20] SolarTrader: Enabling Distributed Solar Energy Trading in Residential Virtual Power Plants.
  Yuzhou Feng, Qi Li, Dong Chen, and Raju Rangaswami.
  In Proc. of the 7th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys 2020), Acceptance Rate = 24.3%, November 18–20, 2020, Virtual Event, Japan. (Source Code and Data)
  The Best Paper Award at ACM BuildSys'20.
• [IGSC'20] SolarDiagnostics: Automatic Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Array Damage Detection.
  Qi Li, Keyang Yu and Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the Eleventh IEEE International Green and Sustainable Computing Conference, IGSC'20, Oct 19-22, Acceptance Rate = 23%. (Source Code and Data)
• [IPSN'20] SolarFinder: Automatic Detection of Solar Photovoltaic Arrays.
  Qi Li, Yuzhou Feng, Yuyang Leng, and Dong Chen.
  In Proc. of the 19th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, IPSN'20, April 21-24, 2020, Sydney, Australia, Acceptance Rate = 21.33%. (Source Code and Data)
• [BuildSys'20] Automatic Damage Detection on Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Arrays: Poster.
  Qi Li, Keyang Yu, Dong Chen.
  In Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, BuildSys'20, November 18-20, 2020, Virtual Event, Japan.
• [BigDataCPS'20] SmartAttack: Open-source Attack Models for Enabling Security Research in Smart Homes.
  Kengyang Yu, Dong Chen.
  In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Big Data Analytics of Cyber-Physical Systems (BigDataCPS'20), Oct 19, 2020, co-located with IGSC'20.
• [WiSec'20] Poster:  IoT devices discovery and identification using network traffic data: poster.
  Yuzhou Feng, Liangdong Deng, Dong Chen.
  In Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, Miami.
• [WiSec'20] Poster: Exposing the location of anonymous solar-powered homes: poster.
  Qi Li, Dong Chen.
  In Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, Miami.
• [Milcom'19] IoTSpot: Identifying the IoT Devices Using Their Anonymous Network Traffic Data.
  Liangdong Deng, Yuzhou Feng, Dong Chen, and Naphtali Rishe.
  In Proc. of the 38th IEEE Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2019, November 12-14, 2019, Norfolk, VA.
• [MASS'19] Solar-TK: A Data-driven Toolkit for Solar PV Performance Modeling and Forecasting.
  Noman Bashir, Dong Chen, David Irwin, and Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proc. of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems, November 4-7, 2019, Monterey, CA, USA.
• [BuildSys'19] Demo: Solar-TK: A Solar Modeling and Forecasting Toolkit: Demo.
  Noman Bashir, Dong Chen, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proceedings of Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, BuildSys'19, November 13-14, 2019, New York, NY, USA.
• [BuildSys'18] Staring at the Sun: A Physical Black-box Solar Performance Model.
  Dong Chen, Joseph Breda, David Irwin.
  In Proc. of the 2018 ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys'18), November 07 – 08, 2018. Acceptance rate: 24.19%.
• [ICDCS'18] Private Memoirs of IoT Devices: Safeguarding User Privacy in the IoT Era.
  Dong Chen, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, David Irwin and Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proc. of the 38th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'18), July 2 – 5, 2018, Vienna, Austria.
• [BigData'17] Weatherman: Exposing Weather-based Privacy Threats in Big Energy Data.
  Dong Chen, David Irwin.
  In Proceedings of 2017 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData'17), Boston, MA, USA, Dec 11-14, 2017. Accept Rate = 87/437 = 20%.
• [eEnergy'17] SunDance: Black-box Behind-the-Meter Solar Disaggregation.
  Dong Chen, David Irwin.
  In Proceedings of the eighth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy'17), Hongkong, 2017. Acceptance ratio = 26.7%.
• [Greenmetrics'17] Black-box Solar Performance Modeling: Comparing Physical, Machine Learning, and Hybrid Approaches.
  Dong Chen, David Irwin.
  In Proceedings of 2017 ACM Greenmetrics (Greenmetrics'17), Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA, June 6, 2017. Re-published: Performance Evaluation Review, Vol. 45, No. 2, September 2017.
• [BuildSys'16] SunSpot: Exposing the Location of Anonymous Solar-powered Homes.
  Dong Chen, Srinivasan Iyengar, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments (BuildSys'16), Stanford, CA, USA, 2016. Accept Rate = 24.48%.
• [SmartGridComm'16] SmartSim: A Device-Accurate Smart Home Simulator for Energy Analytics.
  Dong Chen, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Smart Grid Communications (SmartGridComm'16), Sydney, Australia, 2016.
• [Percom'14] Combined Heat and Privacy: Preventing Occupancy Detection from Smart Meters.
  Dong Chen, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, Jeannie Albrecht.
  In Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (Percom'14), Budapest, Hungary, 2014. Acceptance rate = 14%.
• [BuildSys'13] Non-Intrusive Occupancy Monitoring using Smart Meters.
  Dong Chen, Sean Barker, Adarsh Subbaswamy, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy.
  In Proceedings of the Fifth ACM Workshop On Embedded Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficiency In Buildings (BuildSys'13), Roma, Italy, November 11-15, 2013. Accept Ratio = 39%.
• [ComSiS] TRM-IoT: A trust management model based on fuzzy reputation for internet of things.
  Dong Chen, Guiran Chang, Dawei Sun, Jie Jia, Xingwei Wang.
  Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst. 8 (4), 1207-1228, 2011.
• [ICGEC'11] A novel secure architecture for the Internet of Things.
  Dong Chen, Guiran Chang.
  In Proceedings of 2011 Fifth International Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computing, pages: 311-314.

Awards & Honors

Fellowships, Honors, and Awards in the U.S.:

• NSF CAREER Award 2023
• ACM BuildSys’20 Best Paper Award
• ACM EWSN’24 Best Paper Runner Up Award
• ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education) DELTA Junior Faculty Institute 2021
• ACM Travel Grant to e-Energy’17, 2017
• ACM SIGMETRICS/PERFORMANCE Travel Grant to Greenmetrics’17, 2017
• ACM Travel Grant to SenSys/BuildSys’16, 2016
• New Entering Doctoral Student Fellowship, from UMass Amherst, 2014

Fellowships, Honors, and Awards Outside of the U.S.:

• Best Dissertation Award, Northeastern University, 2014
• National Graduate Scholarship, from Ministry of Education, China, 2013
• Huawei Scholarship, 2011
• Academic Researcher Award for Doctoral Candidates, from Ministry of Education, China, 2011
• Best Academic Paper Award, from China Institute of Communications, 2011
• Innovative Design Award in National Competition on Internet of Things System Designing, 2011
• Outstanding Graduate Student Award from Northeastern University, 2010

Affiliations

Panelist

• NSF, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.

Program Chair

• IEEE International Workshop on Big Data Analytics of Cyber-Physical Systems, Oct 19, 2020.
• IEEE International Workshop on Big Data Analytics of Cyber-Physical Systems, Washington, D.C., Oct 21, 2019.

Organizing Committee Member

• General chair,  ACM BuildSys 2025
• Publication Chair: (BuildSys'21) The 8th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, November 17-18, 2021 in Coimbra, Portugal.

Program Committee Member

• SenSys'25: The 23rd ACM Conference on Embedded Artificial Intelligence and Sensing Systems, May 6-9, Irvine, USA.
• ICDCS'25: The 45th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), July 20-23, 2025, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.
• BuildSys'24: The 11th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation, November 7-8, 2024, Hangzhou, China.
• IPSN'24: The 23rd ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN), May 13-16, 2024, Hong Kong, China.
• IoTDI'24: The 9th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation, May 13-16, 2024, Hong Kong, China.
• BuildSys'23: The 10th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, November 15-16, 2023, Istanbul, Turkey.
• BigData'23: 2013 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Sorrento, Italy.
• ICDCS'23: The 43rd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Hong Kong, China.
• BuildSys'22: The 9th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, November 17-18, 2022, in Boston, Massachusetts.
• BigData'22: 2022 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Osaka, Japan.
• e-Energy'22: The Thirteenth ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems, virtual, online.
• IoTDI'22: The 7th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation, Milan, Italy.
• BuildSys'21: The 8th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, November 17-18, 2021, in Coimbra, Portugal.
• MASS'21: The 18th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems, Denver, Colorado, USA, Oct 4 -7 , 2021.
• ICDCS'20: The 41st IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, July 7 – July 10, 2021, Washington DC, USA
• IoTDI'20: The 6th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things Design and Implementation, Nashville, Tennessee.
• BuildSys'20: The 7th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Built Environments, Yokohama, Japan.
• IGSC'20: The Eleventh International Green and Sustainable Computing Conference.
• MASS'20: The 17th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems, Delhi NCR, India, December 10-13, 2020.
• BigData'20: 2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Atlanta, GA, USA.
• ICSCC'20: The 8th International Conference on Smart Computing and Communications, Kochi, Kerala.
• AIChallengeIoT'20: The 2nd International Workshop on Challenges in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Internet of Things.
• AICCSA'19: The 16th ACS/IEEE International Conference on Computer Systems and Application, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
• BigData'19: 2019 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Los Angeles, CA.
• IC3'19: 2019 the Twelfth International Conference on Contemporary Computing, Noida, India.
• BigData'18: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, Seattle, WA.
• AIChallengeIoT'19: The First International Workshop on Challenges in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Internet of Things, November 10-13, New York, NY, USA, 2019.
• The 2015 International Symposium on Next Generation Computing and Internet, Dubai.
• The 2015 IC Engineering and Computational Innovative Sciences, Morocco.

Journal Reviewer

• Ad Hoc Network
• ACM Computing Surveys
• ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks
• ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
• ACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies
• IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
• IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
• IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems
• IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
• IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
• Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
• Journal of Intelligent Systems
• Journal of Computers and Electrical Engineering
• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems
• Journal of Computer Science and Information Systems
• International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing
• Jorabian Journal for Science and Engineering
• IET Control Theory and Applications
• Journal of Educational Research and Reviews
• Journal of Experimental \& Theoretical Artificial Intelligence
• Applied Energy
• Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems (SusCom)
• IEEE Internet of Things Journal
• Data-Centric Engineering

External Reviewer

• (PETS'19) The 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2019), Stockholm, Sweden.