Hieu Le

Hieu Le

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Hieu Le

My research lies at the intersection of privacy and networking to improve the (1) transparency of data collection practices by characterizing advertising and tracking ecosystems across different platforms such as the web, smart TVs and Oculus VR; and the (2) control of data collection by designing frameworks and methodologies to automate the pain-points of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that block advertising and tracking on the web.

Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within Roya Ensafi’s Censored Planet Lab in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) School at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I received my PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at UC Irvine and was advised by Athina Markopoulou and part of the ProperData NSF Frontier project. For more information, see my CV.

Recent News:

  • Feb. 2024: I guest lectured on “Filtering the Online Experience: The Role of Filter Rules in Online Privacy”, hosted by Umar Iqbal at Washington University in St. Louis.
  • Jan. 2024: I gave a talk on “Automating Filter Rule Creation with Minimal Visual Breakage” to the Privacy Engineering Team at DuckDuckGo. Hosted by Anastasia Shuba.
  • Oct. 2023-Present: I am excited to join Roya Ensafi’s Censored Planet Lab at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a postdoc this fall!
  • Oct. 4-5th 2023: I presented my followup work to AutoFR at the Ad-Filtering Dev Summit 2023 in Amsterdam.
  • Aug. 28th 2023: I successfully defended by dissertation.

Interests

  • Ads & Tracking Ecosystems
  • Filter Rule Generation
  • Network Measurements
  • Framework/System Design

Education

  • PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2018-2023

    University of California, Irvine

  • M.S., Computer Engineering, 2021

    University of California, Irvine - GPA 3.96

  • B.S., Computer Science and Engineering, 2009

    University of California, Irvine - GPA 3.6

Recent & Upcoming Talks

Skills

Python

JavaScript

HTML

CSS

Chrome Extensions

Amazon Web Services

Docker

Java

Android