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Tasnia Ashrafi Heya earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Texas Tech University in Summer 2024. She holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from BRAC University with high distinction.

Her research interests span across cyber security, homomorphic encryption, machine learning, human-computer interaction and the Internet of  Things (IoT). She has a notable record in teaching, having served as a teaching assistant and guest lecturer in various computer science subjects at Texas Tech University, along with prior teaching roles at BRAC University.

Tasnia's professional experiences include roles as a graduate fellow Student at Texas Tech, research assistant at BRAC University and director and developer at BulbInc. Ltd., a startup company. Her work has led to numerous publications in conferences and  journals, exploring diverse topics from IoT to cybersecurity using machine-learning applications.

Her academic excellence is further highlighted by her receiving the Whitacre Graduate Recruitment Fellowship Award at Texas Tech and multiple VC, as well as Dean’s list awards at BRAC University. She also holds significant experience in reviewing academic papers and actively contributes to community service projects.

Research interests

Courses taught

Professional activities and affiliations

• Graduate Teaching Assistant (August 2023-August 2024), Texas Tech University
• Graduate Fellow Student (August 2019-August 2023), Texas Tech University
• Graduate Research Assistant (September 2017-August 2018), School of Computer Science and Engineering, BRAC University.
• Director and Developer at BulbInc. Ltd., start-up company (April 2017-September 2017)
• System Engineer, Jadoo Digital (January 2017-March 2017)

Selected publications

T. A. Heya, A. Serwadda, “Exploiting Voice-controlled Devices to Infer the Layouts of Private Spaces”, 16th International Conference on Human System Interaction (HSI 2024)

T. A. Heya, A. Serwadda, “Secure Audio Classification for Voice Assistants: A Multi-Party Homomorphic Approach”, 16th International Conference on Human System Interaction (HSI 2024)

T. A. Heya*, Y. Ineza*, A. Serwadda, S. E. Arefin, “Stable or Shaky? The Semantics of ChatGPT's Behavior Under Repeated Queries”, accepted in 18th IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC 2024).

S. E. Arefin, T. A. Heya, H. Al-Qudah, Y. Ineza and A. Serwadda, "Unmasking the giant: A comprehensive evaluation of ChatGPT’s proficiency in coding algorithms and data structures", accepted in the 16th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence 2024, pre-print available in arxiv. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2307.05360

G. Casaquero, S. E. Arefin, T. H. Ashrafi, H. Wassawa and A. Serwadda, “Weaponizing IoT Sensors: When Table Choice Poses a Security Vulnerability”, IEEE TPS: 4th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy, and Security, 2022.doi:10.1109/TPSISA56441.2022.00029

T. A. Heya, A. Serwadda, I. Griswold-Steiner, R. Matovu, “A Wearables-Driven Attack on Examination Proctoring”, 18th International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST), 2021. doi:10.1109/PST52912.2021.9647760 [Presenter]

T. A. Heya, S. E. Arefin, M. Alam and A. Chakrabarty, "Image Processing Based Indoor Localization System for Assisting Visually Impaired People", Ubiquitous Positioning, Indoor Navigation and Location-Based Services (UPINLBS), 2018. doi:10.1109/UPINLBS.2018.8559936 [Presenter]

S. E. Arefin, T. A. Heya, and J. Uddin, “Real-life Implementation of Internet of Robotic Things Using 5 DoF Heterogeneous Robotic Arm”, 7th International Conference on Informatics, Electronics and Vision and International Conference on Imaging, Vision and Pattern Recognition, Japan, 2018. doi: 10.1109/ICIEV.2018.8641019

T. A. Heya, S. E. Arefin, M. A. Hossain, A. Chakrabarty, "Comparative analysis of computation models for IoT: Distributed fog vs. conventional cloud", 4th International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering (ICAEE), 2017. doi:10.1109/ICAEE.2017.8255456

T. A. Heya, S. E. Arefin, M. A. Hossain, K. D. J. Das, A. Chakrabarty, “Service Based FOG Computing Model for IoT", IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (CIC), San Jose, CA, 2017, pp. 163-172. doi: 10.1109/CIC.2017.00031

T. A. Heya, S. E. Arefin, M. A. Hossain, K. D. J. Das, A. Chakrabarty, “Fog Based Distributed IoT Infrastructure”, Second International Conference on Internet of things and Cloud Computing (ICC), 2017, Cambridge, UK. doi: http://10.1145/3018896.3036365 [Presenter]