Sophia Yoo
Assistant Professor,
Department of Computer Science
Amherst College
syoo[at]amherst.edu
About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Amherst College. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Princeton University, where I worked with Professor Jennifer Rexford and Professor Maria Apostolaki to design high-performance, Internet-native systems for network security and privacy. My research lies at the intersection of software-defined networking, systems, and security, leveraging programmable data planes to make today's networks safer and smarter.
At Amherst, I am building a student-centered research group focused on practical network security and privacy, programmable networked systems, and emerging networking challenges in AI, mobile, and edge environments. Please reach out if you are interested in my work or research opportunities.
Research
Network Edge
Volumetric Attack Defenses
Building in-network defenses on programmable hardware that intercept DDoS and SYN flood attacks at line rate — and uncovering novel attack surfaces in 5G fronthaul infrastructure.
Network Core
Routing Security & Privacy
Enabling cooperating networks to jointly discover and select safer Internet paths using existing BGP mechanisms — and leveraging path diversity to defeat website fingerprinting attacks.
Selected Publications
USENIX Security 2024
On the Criticality of Integrity Protection in 5G Fronthaul Networks
Patent pending · w/ Microsoft Research
News
2026–Present
Teaching
Sep 2026
Teaching Networks and Operating Systems at Amherst, Fall 2026
Instructor of record for Networks (COSC-283) and
Systems II: Operating Systems (COSC-275), co-taught with Scott Kaplan.
See the Teaching page for details.
Position
Jul 2026
Joins Amherst College as Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Excited to be at Amherst and to start building a research group in network
security and programmable systems. Actively recruiting undergraduates — please reach out!
Position
May 2026
Appointed Research Scholar in Computer Science at Princeton University
Continuing network security and privacy research with Jennifer Rexford
as a Research Scholar in the Department of Computer Science, bridging doctoral work
and the Amherst faculty appointment.
Degree
May 2026
Ph.D. Awarded from Princeton University, ECE Department
Dissertation: Cooperative Network Systems for Protecting Internet Users,
advised by Jennifer Rexford and Maria Apostolaki.
Committee: David Hay, Prateek Mittal, Adrian Perrig.
Award
Apr 2026
Named Finalist in Princeton's Three-Minute Thesis Competition
Selected as a finalist in Princeton's university-wide 3MT competition, distilling
years of doctoral research into a single three-minute talk for a general audience.
Service
Spring 2026
Joins Program Committee for ACM SIGCOMM Posters and Demos 2026
Serving on the program committee for the ACM SIGCOMM Posters and Demos track —
one of the flagship venues for networking research.
Mentoring
Spring 2026
Mentee Sofia Marina Nominated for Princeton's Best Overall Senior Project Prize
Mentored Sofia on independent work evaluating network traffic path splitting against
transformer-based website fingerprinting attacks. Nominated for Best Overall Project
Prize among all graduating Princeton seniors (co-advised with Maria Apostolaki).
Mentoring
Spring 2026
Mentee Cynthia Zhang Completes First Independent Research Project at Princeton
Mentored Cynthia on a tiered, scalable, privacy-preserving stateful firewall design
for Princeton junior independent work (co-advised with Jennifer Rexford).
Mentoring
Fall 2025–Spring 2026
Mentee Veronika Kitsul Joins University of Michigan PhD Program
Mentored Veronika through her Princeton senior thesis on application- and network-level
characterization of ChatGPT traffic. Continuing to a PhD program at the University
of Michigan (co-advised with Jennifer Rexford, Satadal Sengupta, and Hossein Valavi).
2025
Award
Spring 2025
Receives Wallace Memorial Fellowship, Princeton Engineering's Highest Honor
Awarded the Wallace Memorial Fellowship, the highest recognition for graduate
engineering research excellence at Princeton University — one of the most
competitive fellowships in Princeton Engineering.
Talk
Apr 2025
Presents SmartCookie at Cal Poly SLO Computer Networks Course
Invited lecture on "SmartCookie: A Split-Proxy Defense on Programmable Data Planes"
for CSC 564, Department of Computer Science, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo (Virtual).
Award
Mar 2025
TANGO Wins the IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize at IETF 122
TANGO was awarded the
IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize
— one of the most prestigious recognitions in the networking community,
given to research with outstanding real-world Internet impact. Mentee Benjamin Herber
is a co-author.
2024
Talk
Nov 2024
Presents 5G Fronthaul Work at Princeton NextG Research Seminar
Invited talk on "On the Criticality of Integrity Protection in 5G Fronthaul Networks"
at the NextG Student Research Lunch Seminar Series, Princeton University (November 2024).
Talk
Oct 2024
Presents SmartCookie at M3AAWG DDoS Industry Forum
Invited to the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) DDoS SIG —
a leading industry practitioner forum — to present SmartCookie to cloud providers and
security vendors (Virtual, October 2024).
Service
Fall 2024
Reviewer — Computer Networks Journal
Reviewing full research articles for Computer Networks, the leading Elsevier journal in networking.
Publication
Aug 2024
SmartCookie Published at USENIX Security 2024
Split-proxy SYN flood defense on P4 programmable data planes, delivering
line-rate protection beyond the reach of any server-side defense.
NSF GRFP funded; patent pending.
Paper →
Publication
Aug 2024
5G Fronthaul Security Research Published at USENIX Security 2024
First systematic study of integrity vulnerabilities in 5G fronthaul, with Microsoft Research.
Practical attacks and a call for stronger protections in upcoming cellular standards.
Patent pending.
Paper →
Patent
Aug 2024
SmartCookie Split-Proxy Defense Patent Application Filed
Patent pending for the SmartCookie split-proxy mechanism. Co-invented with Xiaoqi Chen and Jennifer Rexford.
Talk
Jul 2024
Delivers Invited Talk on TANGO at Princeton ECE/Intel REU
"TANGO: Secure Collaborative Route Control across the Public Internet."
Princeton ECE/Intel Research Experience for Undergraduates Seminar (July 2024).
Patent
Jun 2024
5G Fronthaul Security Patent Filed with Microsoft Research
US Patent Application No. 18/743,792. Joint application with Jiarong Xing, Xenofon Foukas, and Daehyeok Kim (Microsoft Research), filed June 2024.
Award
May 2024
Receives Princeton ECE Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Service
Recognized by Princeton's ECE department for outstanding service to the graduate
community, including co-founding the ECE Graduate Social Committee and representing
~700 graduate students and families as Lakeside Housing External Relations Delegate.
Service
May 2024
External Reviewer and Shepherd — IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2024
Reviewing and shepherding accepted papers at IEEE S&P — one of the top four venues in computer security research.
Mentoring
Spring 2024
Mentee Benjamin Herber's Senior Thesis Leads to NSDI Paper — and Later the IRTF Prize
Mentored Benjamin through his Princeton senior thesis and master's research on TANGO,
resulting in a co-authored paper at NSDI 2024, later awarded the 2025 IRTF Applied
Networking Research Prize (co-advised with Maria Apostolaki).
Publication
Apr 2024
TANGO Published at NSDI 2024
Secure collaborative route control across the public Internet — edge networks collectively
discover and select safer BGP paths using only existing routing mechanisms.
Paper →
Talk
Jan 2024
Invited to Address Princeton ECE Faculty at Annual Retreat
"Getting Out of My Box: Towards Social and Intellectual Department Cohesion."
Invited to speak to Princeton ECE faculty and leadership at the department's annual retreat (January 2024).
2023
Publication
Fall 2023
Sieve Published at ONF P4 Workshop 2023
A principled framework for layered in-network defenses that generalizes SmartCookie's
split-proxy design to a broader class of volumetric attacks.
Paper →
Industry
Summer 2023
Research Internship at Microsoft Research Uncovers Novel 5G Attack Vectors
Studied vulnerabilities in emerging 5G cellular infrastructure, discovering new
DoS attack vectors in O-RAN fronthaul and designing countermeasures on programmable
data planes — work that directly led to a USENIX Security 2024 paper and a patent
application with Microsoft Research.
Service
Summer 2023
External Reviewer — USENIX Security 2023
Reviewing submissions for the USENIX Security Symposium, one of the top academic security venues.
2022
Service
Fall 2022
Co-Founds Princeton ECE Graduate Social Committee
Proposed and established the inaugural ECE Graduate Social Committee to strengthen
department-wide community and inclusion. Ran weekly events for ECE graduate students
and postdocs through 2024.
Degree
Jun 2022
Master of Arts Conferred by Princeton University ECE
Committee: Jennifer Rexford (advisor), Prateek Mittal, Ravi Netravali.
Mentoring
Jun 2022
Mentees Kenneth Poor and Esha Bhatia Complete Princeton/Intel REU on Programmable-Switch DDoS Defenses
Supervised Kenneth Poor (Princeton) and Esha Bhatia (MIT) through the Princeton/Intel
Research Experience for Undergraduates program on network security and in-network defenses
(co-mentored with Jennifer Rexford).
Talk
Jun 2022
Presents SmartCookie at Princeton/Intel REU Seminar
"SmartCookie: Distributed In-Network SYN Flooding Mitigation."
Princeton ECE/Intel Research Experience for Undergraduates Seminar (June 2022).
Award
May 2022
Receives Pramod Subramanian '17 Early Career Graduate Award at Princeton ECE
Competitive department award recognizing exceptional early-career graduate research achievement, given to two ECE students annually.
Award
Apr 2022
Receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
One of the most competitive early-career fellowships in science and engineering,
awarded in recognition of outstanding research potential. Supported SmartCookie
and related work through 2026 (award DGE-2039656).
Award
Apr 2022
SmartCookie Poster Wins Princeton Research Day Innovation Award
Recognized for Distributed In-Network SYN Flooding Mitigation,
selected for its translational impact and entrepreneurial framing. Awarded to one graduate student annually.
Poster →
2021
Mentoring
Fall 2021
Begins Mentoring Underrepresented PhD Applicants Through Princeton PASP
Mentored prospective PhD applicants from underrepresented backgrounds through
Princeton's Pre-Application Support Program — guiding personal statements,
application strategy, and research narratives over two years (2021–2023).
Publication
Aug 2021
Secure Keyed Hashing on Programmable Switches Published at ACM SIGCOMM SPIN
Demonstrates cryptographic-strength SipHash at programmable switch line rate by
unrolling the round function across P4 match-action pipeline stages.
Paper →
Talk
Jul 2021
Delivers Grad School Career Talk for Princeton/Intel REU Undergraduates
"Grad School: What, Why, and How?" — sharing insights on navigating PhD applications
and graduate school for undergraduate researchers in the Princeton/Intel REU program (July 2021).
2020
Industry
Summer 2020
Interns at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Earth Science Mission
Developed a C-based emulator and flight-software tooling for the Multi-Angle Imager
for Aerosols (MAIA) mission. Tested command and telemetry processing across
distributed flight-electronics infrastructure at JPL.