Gargi Mitra

I am a systems security and privacy researcher who investigates the risks that emerge when modern technologies are layered onto legacy infrastructure, and how to fix it before the consequences become irreversible. My work sits at the intersection of security, safety, and emerging technologies, with a particular focus on AI/ML-enabled medical devices, cloud-integrated industrial control systems, and large-scale networked applications.

Across industries, there is a recurring pattern: technologies introduced to improve efficiency, personalization, or scalability often invalidate long-standing threat models. During my PhD, I demonstrated how encrypted traffic, which was assumed to be safe, can still reveal sensitive user behavior at scale, influencing both public discourse and real-world deployments. In my current postdoctoral work at the University of British Columbia, I extend this systems-oriented approach to safety-critical domains, where similar blind spots can disrupt physical processes or directly endanger human lives.

I am motivated by a simple question: Can we make technological progress without systematically accumulating new security and privacy risks? My research combines rigorous threat modeling, empirical attack design, and practical mitigation strategies that satisfy real-world constraints such as latency, regulatory compliance, and deployment cost. I draw my motivation from engagement with industry practitioners, regulators, and interdisciplinary collaborators to ensure that security mechanisms are not only theoretically sound, but deployable and usable. This has led to tools and frameworks that help organizations reason about security risk from the early design stages, and with clearer cost–benefit trade-offs.

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I'm actively seeking opportunities in cybersecurity research and innovation. Let's explore how we can collaborate.