Alisha Ukani

Postdoctoral Scholar

aukani@uw.edu

Website ◆ CV

Specializations

Internet measurement
Web privacy
Agentic web

Research Area

AI and Data Science

Biography

Alisha Ukani is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public (CIP). Her research focuses on measuring and improving web privacy, with an emphasis on practical applications and emerging privacy concerns. At the CIP, Alisha is researching how the Web is evolving in response to AI and how websites may manipulate AI chatbot responses. Previously, she earned a PhD in Computer Science from UC San Diego and received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Her research has been published at venues like USENIX Security, CCS, and IMC.

Education

Ph D, Computer Science, University of California, San Diego, 2026
MS, Computer Science, University of California, San Diego, 2022
BA, Computer Science, Harvard University, 2020

Awards

Distinguished Paper Runner-Up - USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX 2026), 2026
Best Poster Award Runner-Up - PETS, 2025
ARCS Foundation San Diego Fellowship - ARCS Foundation, 2021-2024
Award for Service/Leadership - UCSD CSE, 2024
Award for Contributions to Diversity - UCSD CSE, 2022
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship - National Science Foundation, 2022

Publications and Contributions

Workshop Paper

Countering Fabricated Legal Documents: Aligning Verification Attention to Salient Objects through Zero-Shot Detection of Confounding or Obscuring Symbols (2026)
Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops, pp. 11040-11047 Authors: Vrishan Inukollu, Porfirio Montoya, Ross Greer, Alisha Ukani, Katherine Izhikevich, Earlene Fernandes, Stefan Savage, Alex C. Snoeren
Conference Short Paper

Rooting Out Incorrect RIPE Atlas Probe Geolocations (2026)
Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Internet Measurement Conference, pp. 1057-1066 Authors: Katherine Izhikevich, Ben Du, Samantha Rao, Manda Tran, Alisha Ukani, Ray Bellis, Liz Izhikevich
Conference Paper

WarrInt: Integrity Validation for Criminal Legal Process (2026)
Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium Authors: Alisha Ukani, Ross Greer, Katherine Izhikevich, Earlene Fernandes, Alex C. Snoeren, Stefan Savage
Conference Paper

Local Frames: Exploiting Inherited Origins to Bypass Content Blockers (2025)
Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS '25), Authors: Alisha Ukani, H. Haddadi, A. Snoeren, P. Snyder
Conference Paper

The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
WWW '24: Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2024, pp. 1690 - 1701 Authors: A. Senol, Alisha Ukani, D. Cutler, I. Bilogrevic
Workshop Paper

In the Line of Fire: Risks of DPI-triggered Data Collection (2023)
Proceedings of the 16th Cyber Security Experimentation and Test Workshop, pp. 57-63 Authors: Ariana Mirian, Alisha Ukani, Ian Foster, Gautam Akiwate, Taner Halicioglu, Cynthia T. Moore, Alex C. Snoeren, Geoffrey M. Voelker, Stefan Savage
Conference Paper

Measuring UID smuggling in the wild (2022)
IMC '22: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Internet Measurement Conference, pp. 230-243 Authors: A. Randall, P Snyder, Alisha Ukani, Alex Snoeren, G. Voelker, S Savage, A Schulman
Conference Paper

Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2021)
IMC '21: Proceedings of the 21st ACM Internet Measurement Conference Authors: Alisha Ukani, Ariana Mirian, Alex Snoeren

Presentations

Country-in-the-Middle: Measuring Paths between People and their Governments (2025)
CAIDA GMI-AIMS-5 Workshop -
Local Frames: Exploiting Inherited Origins to Bypass Content Blockers (2025)
IETF 123 Privacy Enhancements and Assessments Research Group (PEARG) -
Practical Support for Integrity Validation of Criminal Legal Process (2025)
UCSD Center for Networked Systems (CNS) Research Review -
Practical Support for Integrity Validation of Criminal Legal Process (2025)
UCSD Women in Data Science Lunch -
The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
University of Maryland -
The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
UCSD Center for Networked Systems (CNS) Research Review -
The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
Boston University Security Seminar -
The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
MIT PDOS Group -
The Double Edged Sword: Identifying Authentication Pages and their Fingerprinting Behavior (2024)
Northeastern University -
Trusted Computing (2023)
Guest lecture for UCSD Graduate Security class (CSE 227) - San Diego
Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2022)
UCSD CSE Research Open House -
Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2021)
Stanford Empirical Security Seminar -
Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2021)
Google -
Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2021)
Google -
Locked-In during Lock-Down: Undergraduate Life on the Internet in a Pandemic (2021)
MIT Security Seminar -