Steven Y. Ko

I generally work in the area of systems. My research currently focuses on improving the reliability and security of mobile systems by developing techniques at the intersection of mobile computing, programming languages, and software engineering.

I received a B.S. degree in Mathematics from Yonsei University, an MS in Computer Science and Engineering from Seoul National University, and a PhD in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I worked as a postdoc in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton University.

Until 2020, I was with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York as a (tenured) Associate Professor.

I am looking for new undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD students as well as postdocs. If you are interested, please email me. You can find my email address at the top of this page.

Students and Postdocs

I have been fortunate to work with the following wonderful students and postdocs.

Postdoc

• Frédéric Tuong (2022-2024)

PhD Students

• Mohammad Omidvar Tehrani: Current student.
• Shishir Gopinath: Current student.
• Chang Min Park: Graduated in 2023. First employment at Yahoo!. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu.
• Sharath Chandrashekhara: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Samsung Research America. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu.
• Feng Shen: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Google. Co-advised with Lukasz Ziarek.
• Taeyeon Ki: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Samsung Research America.
• Yin Yan: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Facebook. Co-advised with Lukasz Ziarek.
• Sharath Chandrashekhara: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Samsung Research America. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu.
• Feng Shen: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Google. Co-advised with Lukasz Ziarek.
• Taeyeon Ki: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Samsung Research America.
• Yin Yan: Graduated in 2018. First employment at Facebook. Co-advised with Lukasz Ziarek.
• Kyungho Jeon: Graduated in 2017. Currently at GraphAI. First employment at Samsung Research Korea.

MS Students

• Tien Vo: Current student.
• Toan Dao: Current student.
• Nhan Nguyen Thien: Current student.
• Le Hai Dang: Current student.
• Soudabeh Mohammadhashemi: Graduated in 2026.
• Tarek Elsayed: Graduated in 2026. First employment at Amazon.
• Parsa Hosseininejad: Graduated in 2026.
• Kimia Khabiri: Graduated in 2025.
• Tan Khang Le: Graduated in 2025. First employment at Amazon.
• Dhruv Kumar: Graduated in 2024. First employment at Amazon.
• AmirMohammad Deilami: Graduated in 2023. First employment at Auperatech.
• Yash Upadhyay: Graduated in 2016. First employment at Microsoft. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu.
• Pratik Lade: Graduated in 2016. First employment at FactSet. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu.
• Varun Anand: Graduated in 2014. First employment at Akamai. Co-advised with Karthik Dantu and Dimitrios Koutsonikolas.

Visitors

• Donghwi Kim: Visiting PhD student from KAIST. Advised by Sung-Ju Lee.

Honors

• Best Paper Award for “FLUID: Flexible User Interface Distribution for Ubiquitous Multi-device Interaction,” ACM MobiCom, 2019
• Best Paper Award Honorable Mention for “Gesto: Mapping UI Events to Gestures and Voice Commands,” ACM EICS, 2019
• Qualcomm-KAIST Innovation Award for “Cross-App Function Sharing through X-Droid,” 2018
• Distinguished Alumni Educator Award, CS Department, UIUC, 2017
• UB Exceptional Scholar: Teaching Innovation Award, University at Buffalo, 2016
• Early Career Teacher of the Year Award, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo, 2015
• UB Exceptional Scholar: Young Investigator Award, University at Buffalo, 2014
• CAREER Award, NSF, 2014
• Community Award Honorable Mention for “Serval: An End-Host Stack for Service-Centric Networking,” NSDI, 2012

Selected Professional Activities

• Recent TPC: MociCom’26, MobiCom’25, ICDCS’24, MobiSys’24, INFOCOM’24, MobiSys’23, INFOCOM’23, MobiCom’22, MobiSys’22,
• Editor: ACM GetMobile Magazine, 2019-Present
• General Co-Chair: MobiSys’17