Featured Partners
🇯🇵 Japan — NICT Cybersecurity Research Institute · CREATE / AI Security Research Center
2017 – present
long-term joint research
9+ joint papers
50+ visits
Joint Collaborators
- Tao Ban 班 濤 — Senior Researcher, CREATE / Cybersecurity Laboratory · most frequent collaborator (15+ joint papers)
- Takeshi Takahashi 高橋 健志 — Director General, CREATE (Center for Research on AI Security and Technology Evolution); direct supervisor of Cheng's NICT-resident students
- Daisuke Inoue 井上 大介 — Director General, Cybersecurity Research Institute
- Koji Nakao 中尾 康二 — Distinguished Researcher, NICT
Highlight Publications
- OJCOMS 2026 — Conformance Testing of F1AP in 5G O-RAN
- ICISC 2024 — Reinterpreting system calls for IoT malware (Best Paper Award)
- Computers & Security 2023 — IoT malware classification with reinterpreted FCG
- IEEE TrustCom 2020 — Cross-platform IoT-malware classification (Best Paper Award)
- plus 10+ more in PST, ICICS, TrustCom, AsiaJCIS, ICONIP, S&P SafeThings
Students sent to NICT
- Cheng-Feng Hung 洪晟峰 — joined NICT as full Researcher at CREATE after his PhD (2025)
- Yi-Shun Cheng 鄭依淳 — visit 2024 Summer + 2025 Intern
- Po-Lin Lai 賴柏霖 — visit 2023 Summer + 2024 Intern
- Man-Ying Chen 陳曼穎 — two-visit alumna (2023 Summer + 2024 Summer)
- Jr-Wei Huang 黃智威 — 2019 Intern
- Bing-Kai Hong 洪稟凱 — multiple long-term visits during PhD (2018+, including 2019 Intern)
- 2017 Summer · First-ever overseas research visit (移地研究) — Jia-Jhun Lin 林家諄, Yen-Chun Liu 劉彥君, and Kai-Ching Wang 王凱慶.
- Single-visit MS roster (20+ students across all seasons) is tagged inline on the Alumni and Lab Members pages
PI Visits
- 2019 · Cooperative Visiting Researcher at NICT (sabbatical-style stay)
- 2017 – 2026 · Regular working visits including NSTC-funded overseas research visits (移地研究) — joint experiments, platform demos, paper writing sessions
- Total NICT trips: 50+ over the past decade
NICT Centers Visited (see NICT locations)
- Headquarters · Koganei, Tokyo — primary destination for most working visits (Cybersecurity Research Institute is here)
- Innovation Center · Nihonbashi, Tokyo — base of CREATE (Center for Research on AI Security and Technology Evolution)
- Hokuriku StarBED Technology Center · Kanazawa — visited 2018 with students for testbed tour
- Wireless Networks Research Center (WNRC) · Yokosuka — visited 2024/02, hosted by then-researcher Wei-Shun Liao (who has since moved to UTokyo)
NICT – Taiwan Joint Workshops (co-organized)
- 2nd TWN – NICT Cybersecurity Workshop · Tokyo, Japan (2025, hosted by NICT-CREATE)
- 1st TWN – NICT Cybersecurity Workshop · Taipei, Taiwan (2023, hosted by TACC at NTUST)
- 3rd TWISC – NICT Joint Workshop · Kinmen, Taiwan (2019, Jinhu Hotel)
- 2nd TWISC – NICT Joint Workshop · Takayama, Japan (2018, Hotel Associa Takayama Resort)
- 1st TWISC – NICT Joint Workshop · Taipei, Taiwan (2018)
🇯🇵 Japan — University of Tokyo (UTokyo)
2024 – present
new collaboration
Joint Collaborators
- Wei-Shun Liao 廖偉舜 — Research Associate at Nakao Laboratory (Prof. Akihiro Nakao 中尾 彰宏, Department of Systems Innovation, School of Engineering, UTokyo); formerly Researcher at NICT WNRC (Yokosuka). Initial NTUST-UTokyo discussions began 2024/05; ongoing visits planned.
🇨🇿 Czech Republic — Brno University of Technology (BUT) · Flowmon / Progress
2024 – 2028
2 bilateral grants
3 students sent
Bilateral Grants (NSTC)
- MAESTRO 2026 – 2028 · LLM-Enhanced Cybersecurity Network Monitoring & Governance (Taiwan-Czech Bilateral, NSTC)
- 7th Taiwan-Czech Science Day (第七屆台捷科技日) 2025 · Bilateral science day (Taiwan-Czech Bilateral, NSTC)
- PREACT 2024 – 2025 · Privacy-respecting Explainable Threat Assessment (Taiwan-Czech Bilateral, NSTC)
Joint Collaborators
- Ondřej Ryšavý — BUT, Faculty of Information Technology
- Martin Holkovič — Flowmon / Progress
- Michaela Studená — BUT, Faculty of Information Technology · international office
Students sent to BUT (Brno)
- Tommy Chen 陳柏宏 — MAESTRO program 2026
- Chui-Chen Kuo 郭垂蓁 — PREACT internship 2024; now working full-time at BUT
PI Visits
- 2026 · BUT MAESTRO kick-off
- 2025 · BUT continuing visit (PREACT) · 7th Taiwan-Czech Science Day (第七屆台捷科技日) in Prague
- 2024 · BUT initial visit (PREACT) · PCSC (Prague Cyber Security Conference)
🇺🇸 USA — IBM T.J. Watson Research
2016 – present
AAAI 2019 paper (557 citations)
3 Watson visits
Joint Collaborators
- Pin-Yu Chen 陳品諭 — IBM T.J. Watson Research · Trusted AI Group
Highlight Publications
- AAAI 2019 — AutoZOOM: zeroth-order black-box attack (557 citations as of 2026)
- IEEE Comm Mag 2017 — Traffic-aware patching (IEEE Xplore Innovation Spotlight)
- Multiple joint security & networking papers
PI Visits
- 2024 · 2025 · Continuing collaboration with Pin-Yu Chen on adversarial ML
- 2016 · First Watson visit
🇵🇱 Poland — Warsaw University of Technology (WUT)
2018 – 2024
Taiwan – Poland Bilateral
3 joint co-author teams
Bilateral Grants (NSTC)
- NTUST – WUT Institutional Academic Collaboration 2024 – 2025 · Cybersecurity joint research with Prof. Mazurczyk's group (funded by NTUST research office)
- ACMEC 2020 – 2022 · Access Control in 5G MEC (Taiwan-Poland Bilateral, NSTC)
- Taiwan – Poland Bilateral Conference on Cybersecurity 2018 · Taipei; Prof. Cheng served as General Chair
Joint Collaborators
- Wojciech Mazurczyk — WUT, Institute of Computer Science (2024– new collaboration)
- Tomasz Głowka — WUT, Institute of Computer Science · PhD student (2024– new collaboration)
- Zbigniew Kotulski — WUT, Institute of Telecommunications (ACMEC)
- Mariusz Sepczuk — WUT, Institute of Telecommunications (ACMEC)
- Wojciech Niewolski — WUT, Institute of Telecommunications (ACMEC)
- Tomasz Nowak — WUT, Institute of Telecommunications (ACMEC)
Highlight Publications
- Telecommunications Review 2022 — ACMEC: Access control in 5G MEC, joint research project of NTUST and WUT
Students sent to WUT (Warsaw)
- Cheng-Feng Hung 洪晟峰 — PhD student, dispatched twice as PI's representative: once for the ACMEC follow-up (2022 post-pandemic delegation with Prof. Richard Hsu of NSYSU) and again for the 2024–2025 NTUST-WUT institutional project with Prof. Mazurczyk & Tomasz Głowka
PI Visits
- PI's own travel to Warsaw was held back by COVID-19 timing; the relationship was sustained entirely through student-led visits
🇮🇱 Israel — Ashkelon Academic College (AAC)
2015 – 2018
Taiwan–Israel Bilateral
CPS
CyberWeek 2023
Bilateral Grants (MOST)
- Taiwan–Israel Bilateral Cooperation (臺以雙邊合作) 2015 – 2017 · Cyber Security on Cyber-Physical Systems (Taiwan-Israel Bilateral, MOST)
Joint Collaborators
- Prof. Etty David אסתר דוד — Department of Computer Science, Ashkelon Academic College · principal Israeli PI
- Guy Leshem — Ashkelon Academic College & Ben-Gurion University · co-PI
- Prof. Menachem Domb מנחם דומב — Head of the Department of Computer Science, Ashkelon Academic College
Highlight Publications
- IEEE Access 2018 — Privacy preserved mobile sensing using region-based group signature
Students sent to AAC (Ashkelon)
- Ching-Lin Wang 王鏡霖, Kai-Ching Wang 王凱慶 — 2016 Summer
- Li-An Chang 張利安, Chen-Hua Tsai 蔡振華 — 2016 Fall
PI Visits
- 2023 · Israel CyberWeek, Tel Aviv University — as Deputy Director-General representing moda ACS
- 2017 · Second PI visit with students · lab tours, on-site student projects at AAC
- 2016 · First PI visit · joint research planning meetings with Prof. Etty David & Guy Leshem at AAC
- Recurring · Etty & Guy visiting Taipei (NTU IoX Center / NTUST) — joint discussions on Wi-Fi P2P, mobile-sensing privacy, IoT
CTF Coaching & International Cyber Hands-on Camps
🇺🇸 DEF CON CTF — Las Vegas, USA · DEF CON CTF
2015 – present
Multiple Global Top-3 Finals
AIS3 team leader since 2019
Taiwan Team Results at DEF CON CTF (newest first)
- DEF CON 33 (2025) · Taiwan team did not qualify for the Final this year
- DEF CON 32 (2024) · "if this works we'll get fewer for next year" — Global #7 in CTF Final
- DEF CON 31 (2023) · TWN48 — Global #3 in CTF Final
- DEF CON 30 (2022) · Balsn.217@TSJ.tw — Global #9 in CTF Final
- DEF CON 29 (2021) · HITCON ⚔ Balsn — Global #5 in CTF Final (online)
- DEF CON 28 (2020) · HITCON ⚔ Balsn — Global #3 in CTF Final (online)
- DEF CON 27 (2019) · HITCON ⚔ BFKinesiS — Global #2 in CTF Final · AIS3 + HITCON merged into one joint Taiwanese entry
- DEF CON 26 (2018) · HITCON #3 (observation) · BFS #12 — first year AIS3 students competed; Prof. Cheng begins as team leader together with Prof. Chun-Ying Huang 黃俊穎 (NYCU)
- DEF CON 25 (2017) · HITCON — Global #2 · accompanied for observation
- DEF CON 24 (2016) · HITCON — Global #4 · accompanied for observation
- DEF CON 23 (2015) · HITCON — Global #4 · first observation trip with the veteran Taiwanese team
- DEF CON 22 (2014) · HITCON — Global #2 · the catalyst result that motivated the founding of AIS3 in Taiwan
🇯🇵 SECCON · CODE BLUE — Tokyo, Japan
2017 – 2025
Japanese CTF community
Recurring engagements
- SECCON — Japan's leading CTF; AIS3 team participates and observes annually
- CODE BLUE — international security conference in Tokyo; AIS3 community visits, talks, networking with Japanese researchers
- GCC (Global Cybersecurity Camp) 2020 — Tokyo edition; AIS3 students participated
- Complementary to NICT joint research — Tokyo trips often combined
🇰🇷 CodeGate · BoB · GCC — Seoul, Korea
2017 – 2026
Korean cyber-talent programmes
Recurring engagements
- CodeGate — Korea's signature CTF + security conference; AIS3 team observation, technical exchange
- BoB (Best of the Best) — Korea's elite cyber-talent training programme; visited as benchmark for AIS3
- GCC (Global Cybersecurity Camp) — annual cross-country bootcamp rotated across Asia; AIS3 sends students as participants/mentors
🇪🇪 NATO Locked Shields · CyCON — Tallinn, Estonia
2023 · 2025
NATO CCDCOE
Cyber Defence Exercise + Conference
- 2025 — CyCON conference only
- 2023 — CyCON conference + Locked Shields live-fire cyber-defence exercise (NATO CCDCOE)