Zhigang's Homepage
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Dr Zhigang LU 卢 志刚 |
Short Bio
Dr Zhigang Lu is a Senior Lecturer of Computer Science, an Academic Program Advisor with the School of Computer, Data and Mathematical Sciences, Western Sydney University (WSU) and a member of WSU Artificial Intelligence Research Group (AIRG). He is also an Adjunct Lecturer with James Cook University since August 2024.
His academic career began as a continuing Lecturer of Information Technology at James Cook University from January 2023, where he was recognised as one of the best lecturers based on student evaluations. He played a leading role in developing a new cyber security major to refresh the Master of Information Technology program, which is set to launch in Trimester 1, 2025.
Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub, Macquarie University from Jan 2020, working closely with Prof Dali Kaafar, Dr Hassan Asghar and Dr Dinusha Vatsalan. He was funded by the Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub, in partnership with the Defence Science & Technology Group and Data61-CSIRO, through the Next Generation Technologies Fund.
He obtained his PhD (supervised by Prof Hong Shen and Prof Michael Sheng, funded by the Adelaide Graduate Research Scholarship) and MPhil (supervised by Prof Hong Shen and A/Prof Nickolas Falkner) degrees from the University of Adelaide (now Adelaide University) and BEng degree from Xidian University, all in computer science. He was one of the two recipients of the University Master by Research Medal in 2015. He won a First Award in the National Undergraduate Mathematical Contest in Modelling (Shaanxi Division) in 2009 and a Third Award in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC Intramural Competition) in 2008.
He also worked as a Data Scientist in the industry for three months in early 2022.
Research Interests
Topics on privacy, security, robustness and alignment of AI/ML.
News
May, 2025. Our paper, ‘Near-Optimal Algorithms for Instance-level Constrained k-Center Clustering’, was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (TNNLS, CORE A*).
Apr, 2025. I joined the supervision panel for WSU PhD student Shawal Khan.
Feb, 2025. Our team at AIRG secured a $68k grant in collaboration with our industrial partner. I will be leading the project moving forward.
Jan, 2025. I was appointed as the Special Issue Chiar for SmartIoT-2025.
Jan, 2025. I was appointed as the Academic Program Advisor (APA) for Bachelor of CompSci and Bachelor of ICT (WSU Penrith campus).
Dec, 2024. Our paper, ‘PriDM: Effective and Universal Private Data Recovery via Diffusion Model’, was accepted by IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC, a Top-2 cybersecurity journal).
Dec, 2024. The subject, Artificial Intelligence, I coordinated and lectured from Week 4 at WSU, received 75% overall satisfaction from the student feedback. This is the second-best student evaluation over the past five years.
Nov, 2024. Welcome MPhil student Hong Chen to the AIRG, WSU.
Oct, 2024. Our paper, ‘Practical, Private Assurance of the Value of Collaboration via Fully Homomorphic Encryption’ was accepted by the 25th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS-2025, CORE A).
Sep, 2024. Our paper, ‘GAP-Diff: Protecting JPEG-Compressed Images from Diffusion-based Facial Customization’, was accepted by the 32nd Annual Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS-2025, a Big-4 cybersecurity conference). Only 3% papers were accepted directly this year.
Aug, 2024. I joined Western Sydney University (WSU) as a Senior Lecturer and was granted a $10,000 research start-up package. I was also appointed as an Adjunct Lecturer with JCU.
May, 2024. The subject, Network Security, I coordinated and lectured at JCU, received 89% satisfaction from JCU internal students evaluation.
May, 2024. The subject, Internet Foundamentals, I coordinated and lectured at JCU, received 84% satisfaction from JCU students evaluation.