Sixuan (Nick) Dang [CV]

PhD Candidate

Department of Computer Science

Duke University

Email: sd570 [at] duke (dot) edu

Research Topics

Security and Privacy
Information Flow
Static Analysis
Blockchain

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

- Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate advised by Prof. Danfeng Zhang at Duke University Department of Computer Science. I am currently working on ensuring information flow security with static analysis.

News

Mar-2024: Our paper "CtChecker: a Precise, Sound and Efficient Static Analysis for Constant-Time Programming" was accepted by ECOOP 2024!
May-2023: I will attend PLMW@PLDI 2023 funded by ACM SIGPLAN.
Aug-2022: Starting my PhD at Penn State, We Are!
May-2022: I have successfully defended my Master's thesis.
Jan-2022: Our paper "A Behavior-Aware Scheme for Personalized Credit Computing" was accepted by CSCWD 2022!
Nov-2021: I was nominated Outstanding Graduate by Sichuan Province and UESTC.
Oct-2021: I was awarded National Scholarship and The First Prize Scholarship.
Aug-2021: Our paper "Dynamic Incentive Mechanism Design for Regulation-Aware Systems" was accepted by International Journal of Intelligent Systems!
Jul-2021: Our paper "Regulation-as-a-Service: Model Checking for Decision-Making Behaviors in Price-Sensitive Service Systems" was accepted by SCC 2021!

Education

2023.08-present: PhD in Computer Science
Department of Computer Science, Duke University
2022.08-2023.07: PhD in Computer Science and Engineering
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Penn State
2019.09-2022.06: Master's Degree in Software Engineering
School of Computer Science and Engineering, UESTC
2015.09-2019.06: Bachelor's Degree in Software Engineering
School of Information and Software Engineering, UESTC

Publications

Agora: Trust Less and Open More in Verification for Confidential Computing
Hongbo Chen, Quan Zhou, Sen Yang, Sixuan Dang, Xing Han, Danfeng Zhang, Fan Zhang, Xiaofeng Wang
Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2025)
Poster: AGORA: Trust Less and Open More in Verification for Confidential Computing
Hongbo Chen, Quan Zhou, Sen Yang, Sixuan Dang, Xing Han, Fan Zhang, Danfeng Zhang, Xiaofeng Wang
The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS 2025)
CtChecker: a Precise, Sound and Efficient Static Analysis for Constant-Time Programming
Quan Zhou, Sixuan Dang, Danfeng Zhang
European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024) doi: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.46
A Behavior-Aware Scheme for Personalized Credit Computing
Sixuan Dang, Sheng Cao*
IEEE International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD 2022) doi: 10.1109/CSCWD54268.2022.9776175
Dynamic Incentive Mechanism Design for Regulation-Aware Systems
Sixuan Dang, Sheng Cao*, Jingwei Li, Xiaosong Zhang
International Journal of Intelligent Systems, doi: 10.1002/int.22670
Regulation-as-a-Service: Model Checking for Decision-Making Behaviors in Price-Sensitive Service Systems [code]
Sixuan Dang, Sheng Cao*
IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2021) doi: 10.1109/SCC53864.2021.00012
A Blockchain-based Access Control and Intrusion Detection Framework for Satellite Communication Systems
Sheng Cao, Sixuan Dang, Yuan Zhang*, Wei Wang*, Nan Cheng
Computer Communications, doi: 10.1016/j.comcom.2021.03.023
An Electric Vehicle Charging Reservation Approach Based on Blockchain
Sheng Cao, Sixuan Dang, Xiaojiang Du, Mohsen Guizani, Xiaosong Zhang, Xiaoming Huang*
IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom 2020), doi: 10.1109/GLOBECOM42002.2020.9322093

Patents

Insurance Compensation Apparatus and Method based on Hybrid Smart Contracts
Sheng Cao, Qian Zhang, Sixuan Dang, Guanghao Xiong, Haoqu Chen, Jiaxi Yang, Songdeng Niu, Zifeng Yang
ZL202110835114.8
An Incentive Mechanism Method for Decision-Making
Sheng Cao, Sixuan Dang, Qian Zhang, Guanghao Xiong, Jiaxi Yang, Haoqu Chen, Songdeng Niu, Zifeng Yang
ZL202110835181.X
Routing Node Selection Method and Apparatus for Cross-Blockchain Transaction
Sheng Cao, Qian Zhang, Guanghao Xiong, Sixuan Dang, Runze Chen, Ting Chen, Xiaosong Zhang
ZL202110942516.8

Teaching Assistant

COMPSCI 250D: Computer Architecture
Duke / 2024-Fall
COMPSCI 390: Programming Language Concepts
Duke / 2024-Spring
Network Programming and Blockchain (International Student)
UESTC / 2020-Spring
Data Structure and Algorithm Design (Undergraduate Student)
UESTC / 2020-Spring