Aron Laszka

Assistant Professor

Pennsylvania State University

Biography

Aron Laszka is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Houston, a Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, and a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.

His research interests revolve around artificial intelligence and cyber-physical systems, focusing on machine learning for decision making and optimization, with applications in smart and connected communities, critical infrastructure, and cybersecurity.

His research is funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and other agencies.

Open PhD Student Positions

Research Areas

Artificial Intelligence

Machine Learning, Optimization

Cyber-Physical Systems

Transportation, Power Systems, IoT

Cybersecurity

Decision Support, Data Analytics

Recent Publications

Sophie Pavia, David Rogers, Amutheezan Sivagnanam, Michael Wilbur, Danushka Edirimanna, Youngseo Kim, Philip Pugliese, Samitha Samaranayake, Aron Laszka, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Abhishek Dubey (2024). Deploying Mobility-On-Demand for All by Optimizing Paratransit Services. IJCAI 2024. Acceptance rate: around 20%.

PDF Project Project

Sophie Pavia, David Rogers, Amutheezan Sivagnanam, Michael Wilbur, Danushka Edirimanna, Youngseo Kim, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Philip Pugliese, Samitha Samaranayake, Aron Laszka, Abhishek Dubey (2024). SmartTransit.AI: A Dynamic Paratransit and Microtransit Application. IJCAI Demos 2024.

PDF Project Project

Amutheezan Sivagnanam, Ava Pettet, Hunter Lee, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Abhishek Dubey, Aron Laszka (2024). Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning with Hierarchical Coordination for Emergency Responder Stationing. ICML 2024.

PDF Project Project

Jose Paolo Talusan, Chaeeun Han, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Aron Laszka, Dan Freudberg, Abhishek Dubey (2024). An Online Approach to Solving Public Transit Stationing and Dispatch Problem. ICCPS 2024. Best Paper Award.

PDF Project Project

Chaeeun Han, Jose Paolo Talusan, Dan Freudberg, Ayan Mukhopadhyay, Abhishek Dubey, Aron Laszka (2024). Forecasting and Mitigating Disruptions in Public Bus Transit Services. AAMAS 2024. Acceptance rate: 25%.

PDF Project Project

See all publications

Applied Artificial Intelligence Lab

Faculty

Aron Laszka

Assistant Professor

Students

Taha Eghtesad

Ph.D. student

Afiya Ayman

Ph.D. student

Amutheezan Sivagnanam

Ph.D. student

Shanto Roy

Ph.D. student

Salah Uddin Kadir

Ph.D. student

Farzana Yasmin

Ph.D. student

Soodeh Atefi

Ph.D. student

Projects

AI for Equitable and Resilient Food Distribution during Disasters

Food insecurity is the lack of consistent and reliable access to nutritious food. In the Houston (Texas) area, over 14% of Harris County households experienced food insecurity before the emergence of COVID-19.

Equitable Electric Mobility: Smart Charging and Smart Parking

This Houston-based project establishes a collaborative process with community and commercial technology partners to accelerate the equitable development of accessible fast charging infrastructure and electric vehicle (EV) ownership for low income families by leveraging regional markets of early EV adopters.

AI-Engine for Optimizing Mixed-Fleet Transit Operations

In every public transit system, a trade-off has to be made between concentrating service into very useful routes that serve large numbers of people and spreading service out to ensure that people everywhere have access to at least some service.

Microtransit Solutions for Underserved Communities

Public transportation infrastructure is an essential component in cultivating equitable communities. However, public transit agencies have historically struggled to achieve this since they are often severely stressed in terms of resources as they have to make the trade-off between concentrating service into routes that serve large numbers of people and spreading service out to ensure that people everywhere have access to at least some service.

Addressing Transit Accessibility Challenges due to COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only disrupted the lives of millions but also created exigent operational and scheduling challenges for public transit agencies. Agencies are struggling to maintain transit accessibility with reduced resources, changing ridership patterns, vehicle capacity constraints due to social distancing, and reduced services due to driver unavailability.

Blockchain Security and Applications

This project studies the following research topics: Security of blockchain-based consensus protocols Secure smart contracts Applications of blockchains

Efficient and Scalable Bug-Bounty Programs

Many organizations and companies have recently chosen to use so-called bug-bounty programs (also known as vulnerability reward programs), which allow outside security experts to evaluate the security of an organization’s products and services and to report security vulnerabilities in exchange for rewards.

Data-Driven Energy Optimization for Multi-Modal Transit

The goal of this project is to develop a high-resolution system-level data capture and analysis framework to revolutionize the operational planning of a regional transportation authority, specifically the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA).

Blockchains for Transactive Energy Systems

Due to rapid growth in renewable energy resources and improvements in battery technology, power grids are undergoing major changes, which create significant management and control challenges. To tackle these challenges, decentralized solutions are needed, which can support the evolution of electrical power distribution systems.

Correct-by-Design Blockchain-based Smart Contracts

The adoption of blockchain based distributed ledgers is growing fast due to their ability to provide reliability, integrity, and auditability without trusted entities. One of the key capabilities of these emerging platforms is the ability to create self-enforcing smart contracts.

Academic Experience

Assistant Professor

Pennsylvania State University

2022 – Present

Assistant Professor

University of Houston

2017 – 2022

Research Assistant Professor

Vanderbilt University

2016 – 2017

Postdoctoral Scholar

UC Berkeley

2015 – 2016

Postdoctoral Research Scholar

Vanderbilt University

2014 – 2015

Visiting Research Scholar

Pennsylvania State University

2013 – 2013

Academic Service

Program Chair

SMARTCOMP 2023 (8th IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing)
DI-CPS 2023 (3rd Workshop on Data-Driven and Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems at CPS-IoT Week 2023)
DI-CPS 2022 (2nd Workshop on Data-Driven and Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems at CPS-IoT Week 2022)
DI-CPS 2021 (1st Workshop on Data-Driven and Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems at CPS-IoT Week 2021)
TREC4CPS 2018 (1st International Workshop on Trustworthy and Real-time Edge Computing for Cyber-Physical Systems)

General Chair

BlockNet 2020 (ACM MobiHoc Workshop on Blockchain for Network Resource Sharing)

Program Committee Member

ICLR 2025 (13th International Conference on Learning Representations)
AAAI-25 (39th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
NeurIPS 2024 (38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems)
DESTION 2024 (6th Workshop on Design Automation for CPS and IoT at IEEE/ACM CPS-IoT Week)
AAMAS 2024 (23rd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
AAAI-24 (38th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
NeurIPS 2023 (37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems)
IJCAI-23, Distinguished PC Member Recognition (31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
ICCPS 2023 (14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems)
AAMAS 2023 (22nd International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
AAAI-23 (37th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
DESTION 2022 (4th Workshop on Design Automation for CPS and IoT at IEEE/ACM CPS-IoT Week)
IJCAI-22, Distinguished PC Member (Top 3%) Recognition (31st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
AAMAS 2022 (21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
AAAI-22, Senior PC Member (36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2021 (12th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
AAMAS 2021 (20th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
FC21 (25th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security)
AAAI-21 (35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2020 (11th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
ICBC 2020 (2nd IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency)
AAMAS 2020 (19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
FC20 (24th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security)
AAAI-20 (34th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2019 (10th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
WEIS 2019 (18th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security)
AAMAS 2019 (18th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
HotSoS 2019 (6th Annual Hot Topics in the Science of Security Symposium)
FC19 (23rd International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security)
AAAI-19 (33rd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2018 (9th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
AAMAS 2018 (17th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems)
WEIS 2018 (17th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security)
AAAI-18 (32nd AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2017 (8th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
WEIS 2017 (16th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security)
AAAI-17 (31st AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
GameSec 2016 (7th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
IJCAI-16 (25th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
SecMAS 2016 (AAMAS-16 Workshop on Security and Multi-Agent Systems)
FC16 (20th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security)
GameSec 2015 (6th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)
WEIS 2015 (14th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security)
WEIS 2014 (13th Annual Workshop on the Economics of Information Security)

Work-in-Progress Track Chair

HotSoS 2021 (8th Annual Hot Topics in the Science of Security Symposium)

Tutorial Chair

ICBC 2020 (2nd IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency)

Publicity Chair

GameSec 2015 (6th Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security)

Reviewer for Journal

ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems
ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security
IEEE Access
IEEE Communications Letters
IEEE Computer
IEEE Internet of Things Journal
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
IEEE Power Engineering Letters
IEEE Software
IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems
IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics
IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
Artificial Intelligence Review
Automatica
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Autonomous Robots
Computers & Security
Cyber-Physical Systems
European Journal of Operational Research
International Journal on Software & Systems Modeling
Journal of Big Data
Journal of Cleaner Production
Journal of Cybersecurity
Mathematical Social Sciences
Pervasive and Mobile Computing
Royal Society Open Science
Telematics and Informatics Reports

Reviewer for Conference

ECAI 2023 (26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence)
ICML 2022 (39th International Conference on Machine Learning)

Education

CrySyS Lab, Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Ph.D. in Computer Science, Summa cum Laude

2011 – 2014

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

M. Sc. with Honors in Computer Engineering

2009 – 2011

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

B. Sc. with Honors in Computer Engineering

2005 – 2009

Talks

Data-driven Optimization of Public Transit Services with Mixed Fleets of EVs and ICEVs

Urban Tech Academy 2023 at Cornell Tech Nov 2023

New Directions on Artificial Intelligence and Cognition for Cyber Deception

Future of Cyber Deception, ARO Workshop at CMU Oct 2023

Blockchain-based Smart Contracts: Security Challenges and Correct-by-Design Development

Joint Workshop of NTT Labs and NTT Research Dec 2019

Economics of Crowdsourced Cybersecurity: Market Mechanisms in Bug Bounty Programs and Platforms

Workshop on Competitive Economics of Cybersecurity at Sandia National Laboratories Nov 2018

Resilient and Trustworthy Transactive Platform for Smart and Connected Communities

18th Annual High Confidence Software and Systems Conference (HCSS 2018) May 2018

Games of Timing for Security

Session on Game Theory in Security and Privacy at the 2017 INFORMS Conference Jan 2017

Vulnerability of Transportation Networks

Smart Cities Workshop at the 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control Dec 2015

Teaching

Data Mining II(IST 558)

Pennsylvania State University 2024 Spring

Introduction to Data Sciences(DS 200)

Pennsylvania State University 2022 Fall – 2023 Fall

Foundations of Security(COSC 6347)

University of Houston 2020 Fall, 2021 Fall

Cybersecurity(COSC 3371)

University of Houston 2019 Fall – 2020 Spring, 2021 Spring, 2022 Spring

Web Security(COSC 4371)

University of Houston 2018 Spring – 2019 Spring

Computer Organization(CS 2231)

Vanderbilt University 2017 Spring

Network Security(CS 4285, CS 5285)

Vanderbilt University 2016 Fall

Security of Cyber-Physical Systems(CS 396-02)

Vanderbilt University 2015 Spring

Contact

aql5923@psu.edu
Twitter
Google Scholar
ResearchGate
Westgate Building, University Park, PA 16802