CS@W&M Welcomes Three New Faculty
Yue Xiao
Yue Xiao is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary. Previously, she was a Research Scientist at IBM Research and earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University Bloomington. Her research spans privacy compliance analysis, software supply chain security, and GenAI security . Yue’s work has been published in top-tier venues such as ACM CCS and USENIX Security, where she has uncovered critical vulnerabilities and privacy risks in major systems. Her research has had real-world impact—leading to security improvements adopted by major platforms including WeChat, Google, Twitter, Meta, and Opera. Her work has also received broad media coverage from outlets such as Forbes, CNBC, Hacker News, and Naked Security. Yue is a recipient of several prestigious honors, including the Distinguished Artifact Award at NDSS 2025, the Luddy Outstanding Researcher Award, and Indiana University’s Distinguished Ph.D. Dissertation Award, the highest recognition for graduate students.
In Fall 2025, Yue will be teaching a COLL 100 class, titled: “Smashing LLMs for Fun and Profit”.
In this hands-on, discussion-driven course, students will explore the power—and pitfalls—of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. The class will pull back the curtain on how these models work, what they can (and can’t) do, and the security, privacy, and ethical risks they pose in the age of generative AI.
Ayan Mukhopadhyay
Ayan is a senior research scientist at Vanderbilt University, where he leads several NSF, DoE, and DoT-funded projects. His research focuses on developing scalable and adaptive algorithmic methods for decision-making under uncertainty for positive societal impact. Ayan’s work has won best paper awards at multiple top-tier venues, such as IJCAI, ICCPS, INFORMS, ICLR’s AI for Good Workshop, and the Google Research AI for Good program. He is the recipient of the 2020 Google AI Impact Scholar Award. Ayan is particularly passionate about translating research to practice, and his work has been successfully deployed by multiple community partners in several countries. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where he received the Center for Automotive Research postdoctoral fellowship. He holds a doctorate in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University. His doctoral dissertation on scalable algorithmic approaches for semi-Markovian decision processes was nominated for the IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award. Ayan will join CS@W&M in Spring 2026.
Trey Woodlief
Trey is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at William & Mary. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Virginia. His research interests lie at the intersection of robotics and software engineering, with a focus on understanding and improving autonomous system safety by developing novel verification and validation techniques tailored to the unique constraints of the robotics domain. Results of his work have appeared in top venues in robotics and software engineering including ICRA, IROS, ICSE, and FSE. He is the recipient of multiple prestigious honors, including the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science Copenhaver Charitable Trust Bicentennial Fellowship, the UVA SEAS Dean’s Scholar Fellowship, and the UVA Computer Science Outstanding Graduate Research Award. His teaching and mentorship have also been recognized with the UVA All-University Graduate Teaching Award and his contributions in supporting STEM education through FIRST robotics was recognized with the FIRST Tech Challenge global Volunteer of the Year award.
In Fall 2025, Trey will be teaching CSCI 420 “Robotics”. This elective course will explore every component of the robot software stack from sensors and perception to planning and control. Students will learn to use domain-specific abstractions, architectures, libraries, and validation approaches and tools to safely perform robot activities like motion, navigation, perception, planning, and interaction.