Mohamed Moustafa Dawoud

I am a PhD student in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Ramakrishnan (Ram) Sundara Raman. At my core, I am an empiricist with a mission. I believe that the future of technology cannot be designed in isolation — it must be grounded in evidence of how it is used, misused, and experienced by real people. I view security and privacy as socio-technical challenges, defined as much by human decisions and institutional practices as by the technologies that enable them. My research focuses on human-centered security and privacy, examining how technology, policy, and lived human experience intersect to shape — and too often undermine — trust, freedom, and dignity. I am especially interested in how different stakeholders form their mental models of security and privacy: how everyday users understand digital protections, how engineers and practitioners weigh trade-offs under pressure, and how policymakers interpret ambiguous or conflicting regulations. By studying these perspectives through large-scale internet measurements, experiments, surveys, and interviews, I aim to uncover where misunderstandings, misalignments, and compliance failures emerge — and to design interventions that close these gaps.

At the same time, I am equally interested in how AI can be harnessed for good. Beyond analyzing threats like deepfakes and disinformation, I explore how large language models (LLMs) can be leveraged to support stakeholders across the ecosystem — helping users make sense of risks, assisting experts with decision-making, and giving policymakers clearer evidence for action. Building on these insights, I design and evaluate systems that not only expose violations and resist censorship and surveillance, but also make protections more usable and transparent across contexts and borders. My long-term goal is not incremental fixes but evidence-based redesigns that bridge the gap between users, practitioners, and policymakers — and between academia and industry — reimagining technology and policy as forces that empower people and strengthen democratic values.

I proudly come from Zefta, Egypt — a city that once declared itself the Zefta Republic during the 1919 revolution, a bold act of defiance that continues to inspire me with its legacy of resilience and independence. That spirit shaped my own journey: as a high school student I ranked 18th out of more than 600,000 students nationwide in Egypt’s Thanawya Amma mathematics exam, which earned me a full merit scholarship to study Computer Science (Information Security) at the German International University in Cairo. While still in Egypt, I worked remotely with Prof. C. Jordan Howell on projects related to cybercrime and underground economies, resulting in a publication in Computers in Human Behavior that analyzed how Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) is marketed on darknet marketplaces. My path then brought me to the United States as a research intern at Georgia Tech, where I worked under Prof. Brendan D. Saltaformaggio on systems security and contributed to research that later appeared at USENIX Security. I then continued to Dartmouth College, where I served as a Graduate Teaching Assistant under Prof. Sami Saydjari and helped redesign a Security & Privacy course to embrace AI tools while encouraging deeper reflection among students.

When I’m not buried in research, you’ll probably catch me at the gym, walking along the California coast, wandering through redwood forests, or chasing down the next great coffee shop. I tell myself these moments are breaks from research — but truthfully, even while sipping coffee or hiking a trail, my mind drifts back to the same question: how can I leave the world better than I found it? Sometimes that means pushing my research forward, sometimes it means dreaming about building impactful startups, and sometimes it simply means working hard to be kind and present with the people around me. Either way, I’m always fueled by the same drive: fighting for people’s freedom, dignity, and trust in the digital age.