Academic Journey

I am Zhuoran Tan, currently pursuing a PhD in Computing Science at the University of Glasgow (2023–2026).

My research background spans software supply/AI security (focusing on runtime detection/defence), cyber defence (practical deployment, multi-source, data fusion), and graph-based learning (graph mining and temporal graph analysis).

I primarily work with Python, Go, and Rust, and I have a strong interest in secure system design and practical cyber defence.

Industry Stack

With over seven years of industry-orient experience in research and development related to security analytics, cyber defence system, threat intelligence analysis, and trustworthy AI systems.

  • LLM / AI Safety & Security: jailbreak & prompt-injection evaluation, safety guardrails, deepfake detection; PEFT fine-tuning (LoRA/AdaLoRA) and benchmark building, with knowledge on Langchain, MCP, and RAG.

  • Security Detection Pipelines: WAF / traffic / log / multi-source data anomaly detection/classification; end-to-end pipelines with automated retraining and monitoring (e.g., Airflow, ELK, Grafana, Zeek, Neo4j).

  • Threat Intelligence & Graph Analytics: threat intel analysis and graph-based learning for security analytics.

  • Systems Engineering: secure backend/service development for cyber defence systems with Python / Go / Rust.

  • Data & Retrieval: vector search / semantic retrieval with Milvus VectorDB.

  • MLOPs: git, Container, SLSA, CI/CD, Hugging Face, Dask, Numba, Ray, DVC, MLflow.

  • Cloud: AWS for Machine Learning, Azure for Log Analytics Workspace, BigQuery.

Research Interests

My research interests include:

  • AI Systems Security
  • Software & AI Supply Chain Security
  • LLM Safety and Secure Agent Design
  • Kernel and Container Security
  • Temporal Graph Learning and Graph Optimization
  • Trustworthy AI and AI for Security

Education

PhD in Computing Science

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
2023 – 2026 (expected)

Supervisors:

  • Dr Christos Anagnostopoulos
  • Prof Jeremy Singer

External Supervisors:

  • Prof Ashkan Sami (Edinburgh Napier University)
  • Dr Marc Juarez Miro (The University of Edinburgh)

External Collabrators:

  • Wenbo Guo (Nanyang Technological University)
  • Run Hao (Aarhus University)
  • Bo Shao (CISPA)
  • Chongyang Xu (MPI SWS)
  • JieWen Luo (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Research focus includes software and AI supply chain security, AI systems security, LLM safety, and temporal graph learning.

Visiting PhD Researcher

University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Feb 2026 – May 2026

Visiting research collaboration with Dr Marc Juarez, potentially focusing on AI security,

MSc in Information Security (with a Year in Industry)

Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
2018 – 2020

During my MSc studies, I was fortunate to receive high-quality training through rigorous coursework delivered by outstanding and internationally recognised lecturers. These included Lorenzo Cavallaro (Software Security, now at UCL), Martin R. Albrecht (Software Testing: Theory and Practice, now at King’s College London), and Daniele Sgandurra (Computer Security, now an industry research manager), among others.

BEng in Cyber Security & Law Enforcement

People’s Public Security University of China, Beijing
2013 – 2017

Academic Position

  • Reviewer: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Computer Networks, IEEE ICC, IEEE ICDCS

  • Editorial Board Member: Transnational Supply Chain Resilience

  • Programme Committee Member: IEEE ICDCS 2025, Open Source SecurityCon (KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2025)

Certificates

I previously held several professional security-related certificates. Some certifications are no longer active, and others were explored but not completed (e.g., OSCP). I consider certifications as complementary to hands-on research, system building, and long-term academic work, rather than as an end goal in themselves.

Personal Interests

  • Strategy games (Go, Chinese Chess)
  • Martial arts and disciplined physical training
  • Endurance sports and racket sports