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-title: "Academic Pages is a ready-to-fork GitHub Pages template for academic personal websites"
+title: "Mabon Ninan"
 author_profile: true
 redirect_from: 
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   - /about.html
 ---
 
-This is the front page of a website that is powered by the [Academic Pages template](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io) and hosted on GitHub pages. [GitHub pages](https://pages.github.com) is a free service in which websites are built and hosted from code and data stored in a GitHub repository, automatically updating when a new commit is made to the respository. This template was forked from the [Minimal Mistakes Jekyll Theme](https://mmistakes.github.io/minimal-mistakes/) created by Michael Rose, and then extended to support the kinds of content that academics have: publications, talks, teaching, a portfolio, blog posts, and a dynamically-generated CV. You can fork [this repository](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io) right now, modify the configuration and markdown files, add your own PDFs and other content, and have your own site for free, with no ads! An older version of this template powers my own personal website at [stuartgeiger.com](http://stuartgeiger.com), which uses [this Github repository](https://github.com/staeiou/staeiou.github.io).
+## About Mabon Ninan  
 
-A data-driven personal website
-======
-Like many other Jekyll-based GitHub Pages templates, Academic Pages makes you separate the website's content from its form. The content & metadata of your website are in structured markdown files, while various other files constitute the theme, specifying how to transform that content & metadata into HTML pages. You keep these various markdown (.md), YAML (.yml), HTML, and CSS files in a public GitHub repository. Each time you commit and push an update to the repository, the [GitHub pages](https://pages.github.com/) service creates static HTML pages based on these files, which are hosted on GitHub's servers free of charge.
+Mabon Ninan is a first-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at **Texas A&M University**, advised by **Dr. Marcus Botacin**. His research focuses on **explainable machine learning for next-generation malware detection**, with an emphasis on **adversarial robustness, interpretability, and security in AI-driven systems**. His work explores how machine learning models can be made more transparent and resilient against evolving cyber threats, particularly in the context of malware analysis and detection.  
 
-Many of the features of dynamic content management systems (like Wordpress) can be achieved in this fashion, using a fraction of the computational resources and with far less vulnerability to hacking and DDoSing. You can also modify the theme to your heart's content without touching the content of your site. If you get to a point where you've broken something in Jekyll/HTML/CSS beyond repair, your markdown files describing your talks, publications, etc. are safe. You can rollback the changes or even delete the repository and start over -- just be sure to save the markdown files! Finally, you can also write scripts that process the structured data on the site, such as [this one](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/talkmap.ipynb) that analyzes metadata in pages about talks to display [a map of every location you've given a talk](https://academicpages.github.io/talkmap.html).
+### Research Interests  
 
-Getting started
-======
-1. Register a GitHub account if you don't have one and confirm your e-mail (required!)
-1. Fork [this repository](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io) by clicking the "fork" button in the top right. 
-1. Go to the repository's settings (rightmost item in the tabs that start with "Code", should be below "Unwatch"). Rename the repository "[your GitHub username].github.io", which will also be your website's URL.
-1. Set site-wide configuration and create content & metadata (see below -- also see [this set of diffs](http://archive.is/3TPas) showing what files were changed to set up [an example site](https://getorg-testacct.github.io) for a user with the username "getorg-testacct")
-1. Upload any files (like PDFs, .zip files, etc.) to the files/ directory. They will appear at https://[your GitHub username].github.io/files/example.pdf.  
-1. Check status by going to the repository settings, in the "GitHub pages" section
+Mabon’s research spans multiple domains at the intersection of **machine learning, cybersecurity, and embedded systems security**, including:  
 
-Site-wide configuration
-------
-The main configuration file for the site is in the base directory in [_config.yml](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/_config.yml), which defines the content in the sidebars and other site-wide features. You will need to replace the default variables with ones about yourself and your site's github repository. The configuration file for the top menu is in [_data/navigation.yml](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/_data/navigation.yml). For example, if you don't have a portfolio or blog posts, you can remove those items from that navigation.yml file to remove them from the header. 
+- **Explainable AI (XAI) for Malware Detection** – Developing interpretable models to enhance trust and transparency in malware classification.  
+- **Adversarial Machine Learning** – Investigating attack vectors and defenses in malware detection systems.  
+- **Side-Channel Attacks & Hardware Security** – Exploring deep learning-based side-channel attacks and defenses against software and hardware discrepancies.  
+- **Tiny Neural Networks & Model Optimization** – Designing efficient deep learning models for low-power and embedded devices.  
+- **AI for Medical Imaging** – Collaborating with **Cincinnati Children’s Medical Hospital** to improve interpretability and robustness in pediatric radiology models.  
 
-Create content & metadata
-------
-For site content, there is one markdown file for each type of content, which are stored in directories like _publications, _talks, _posts, _teaching, or _pages. For example, each talk is a markdown file in the [_talks directory](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/tree/master/_talks). At the top of each markdown file is structured data in YAML about the talk, which the theme will parse to do lots of cool stuff. The same structured data about a talk is used to generate the list of talks on the [Talks page](https://academicpages.github.io/talks), each [individual page](https://academicpages.github.io/talks/2012-03-01-talk-1) for specific talks, the talks section for the [CV page](https://academicpages.github.io/cv), and the [map of places you've given a talk](https://academicpages.github.io/talkmap.html) (if you run this [python file](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/talkmap.py) or [Jupyter notebook](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/talkmap.ipynb), which creates the HTML for the map based on the contents of the _talks directory).
+### Academic Background  
 
-**Markdown generator**
+Mabon earned his **B.S. in Computer Engineering** from the **University of Cincinnati**, graduating **summa cum laude**. Under the mentorship of **Dr. Boyang Wang**, his undergraduate research focused on **domain adaptation for deep learning models and tiny neural networks**. His work in this space led to **multiple publications in top-tier security and machine learning conferences**, such as **RAID, HOST, and WiSec**.  
 
-I have also created [a set of Jupyter notebooks](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/tree/master/markdown_generator
-) that converts a CSV containing structured data about talks or presentations into individual markdown files that will be properly formatted for the Academic Pages template. The sample CSVs in that directory are the ones I used to create my own personal website at stuartgeiger.com. My usual workflow is that I keep a spreadsheet of my publications and talks, then run the code in these notebooks to generate the markdown files, then commit and push them to the GitHub repository.
+### Publications & Contributions  
 
-How to edit your site's GitHub repository
-------
-Many people use a git client to create files on their local computer and then push them to GitHub's servers. If you are not familiar with git, you can directly edit these configuration and markdown files directly in the github.com interface. Navigate to a file (like [this one](https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io/blob/master/_talks/2012-03-01-talk-1.md) and click the pencil icon in the top right of the content preview (to the right of the "Raw | Blame | History" buttons). You can delete a file by clicking the trashcan icon to the right of the pencil icon. You can also create new files or upload files by navigating to a directory and clicking the "Create new file" or "Upload files" buttons. 
+Mabon has authored and co-authored **several research papers** in the fields of **malware detection, adversarial AI, and side-channel attacks**, including:  
 
-Example: editing a markdown file for a talk
-![Editing a markdown file for a talk](/images/editing-talk.png)
+- **RAID 2024**: *A Second Look at the Portability of Deep Learning Side-Channel Attacks over EM Traces*  
+- **IEEE HOST 2024**: *TinyPower: Side-Channel Attacks with Tiny Neural Networks* (*Best Student Paper Award*)  
+- **ACM WiSec 2023**: *Portability of Deep-Learning Side-Channel Attacks against Software Discrepancies*  
+- **ICMLA 2023**: *EvilELF: Evasion Attacks on Deep-Learning Malware Detection over ELF Files*  
 
-For more info
-------
-More info about configuring Academic Pages can be found in [the guide](https://academicpages.github.io/markdown/). The [guides for the Minimal Mistakes theme](https://mmistakes.github.io/minimal-mistakes/docs/configuration/) (which this theme was forked from) might also be helpful.
+His research contributions also extend to **white papers, book chapters, and ongoing submissions**, further advancing knowledge in security and AI.  
+
+### Research & Work Experience  
+
+- **Research Assistant, Texas A&M University** (2024 – Present)  
+  - Investigating **cross-regional malware detection** using model distillation and federated learning.  
+  - Developing novel **interpretability techniques for machine learning-based malware detection**.  
+
+- **Research Scientist, Cincinnati Children’s Medical Hospital** (2024 – Present)  
+  - Developing **foundation models for CXR imaging** to enhance interpretability in pediatric clinical settings.  
+  - Establishing **evaluation metrics that integrate textual and visual features** in radiology reports.  
+  - Leveraging **BERT-based models** to classify pediatric reports into common disease categories.  
+
+- **Research Assistant, University of Cincinnati Data Security and Privacy Lab** (2022 – 2024)  
+  - Designed a **custom pruning algorithm reducing model complexity by up to 98%** for deployment on embedded devices.  
+  - Developed **reinforcement learning-based architecture search** to optimize models for high-noise environments.  
+  - Proposed **unsupervised training techniques** to enhance domain adaptation in deep learning.  
+
+### Awards & Recognition  
+
+- **Best Student Paper Award**, IEEE HOST 2024  
+- **Undergraduate Research Fellowship**, University of Cincinnati, 2023  
+
+### Selected Talks  
+
+Mabon has presented his work at leading security and AI conferences, including:  
+
+- **RAID 2024 (Padua, Italy)** – *A Second Look at the Portability of Deep Learning Side-Channel Attacks over EM Traces*  
+- **IEEE HOST 2024 (Washington, D.C.)** – *TinyPower: Side-Channel Attacks with Tiny Neural Networks*  
+- **ACM WiSec 2023 (United Kingdom)** – *Portability of Deep-Learning Side-Channel Attacks against Software Discrepancies*  
+- **CHEST Annual Conference 2024 (Connecticut, USA)** – *Side-Channel Attacks and Tiny Neural Networks*  
+
+### Future Directions  
+
+Mabon aims to bridge the gap between **AI security, malware research, and explainability**, with the goal of **developing trustworthy, resilient, and interpretable machine learning systems**. His work seeks to **enhance security in real-world applications**, from malware detection to critical AI-driven medical diagnostics.  
+
+For more details, visit [Mabon’s personal website](#) or reacxh out via email.