Prior to joining GWU, he was an assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington from 2006 to 2008. He received the B.S. degree from Peking University in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University in 2006, both in computer science. His current research interests span security and privacy issues in databases, data mining, and computer networks, including privacy and anonymity in data collection, publishing, and sharing, privacy-preserving data mining, and wireless network security and privacy. He received the NSF CAREER award in 2008.