Portrait of Sen Chen

Sen Chen

Professor, College of Cryptology and Cyber Science, Nankai University, China

Software supply chain security · Program analysis · Malware analysis

Office: Room 563, College of Cryptology and Cyber Science Building, Jinnan Campus Email: senchen@nankai.edu.cn

About

I am a full professor at Nankai University and lead NKSSecLab. I am also a member of the research group led by Prof. Zheli Liu. I was an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, working with Prof. Yang Liu.

My research focuses on Software Security and Software Supply Chain Security, securing multi-source heterogeneous components across evolving software ecosystems. I have published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in leading cybersecurity and software engineering venues. I received the ACM SIGSOFT Early Career Researcher Award in 2026 and 7 Distinguished Paper Awards (ICSE × 4, ASE × 2, FSE × 1) at top-tier conferences.

Research

Securing software supply chains through component analysis, vulnerability discovery, and behavior understanding.

  1. First-party component security

    Program analysis, Static Application Security Testing (SAST), and vulnerability detection.

  2. Third-party component security

    Software Composition Analysis (SCA), dependency vulnerability propagation, and compatible remediation.

  3. Malicious component analysis

    Malware detection, behavior understanding, and explanation.

Exploring LLM-assisted vulnerability PoC generation and security validation. Related preprint →

Research overview

Software supply chain security research: first-party, third-party, and malicious component security
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Selected Publications

Journal years use publication years where available.View all publications →

News

March 2026: Received one Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2026).
December 2025: Received the ACM SIGSOFT Early Career Researcher Award (2026) for outstanding contributions to advancing software supply chain security through pioneering techniques and tools in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and Static Application Security Testing (SAST).
July 2025: One paper accepted at CCS 2025.

Prospective students & collaboration

For questions about study and research opportunities in software supply chain security, program analysis, or malware analysis, please get in touch by email. Availability and arrangements can be discussed directly.

For student inquiries, include a CV, research interests, and relevant project or paper links. For collaboration, outline the research question, existing work, and proposed collaboration.

senchen@nankai.edu.cn · NKSSecLab

Awards

  • ACM SIGSOFT Early Career Researcher Award, 2026
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2026)
  • Stanford World’s Top 2% Scientists, 2025
  • CAIE Young Talent Promotion Program, 2025
  • National Cybersecurity Outstanding Talent, 2024
  • Distinguished Paper Award (FSE 2024)
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ASE 2023)
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2023)
  • Rising Star Award (ACM China Council Tianjin Chapter), 2022
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ASE 2022)
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2021)
  • Distinguished Paper Award (ICSE 2018)

Service

  • Probationary Young Assistant Editor, Frontiers of Computer Science (FCS), May 2026–May 2029
  • Young Editorial Board Member, Digital Communications and Networks (DCN), June 2026–June 2029
  • 2027 Program Committee: USENIX Security, ICSE
  • 2026 Program Committee: USENIX Security
  • 2025 Program Committee: USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, CCS, ISSTA, OOPSLA
  • 2024 Program Committee: USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, CCS, ISSTA, OOPSLA
  • 2023 Program Committee: FSE, ASE
  • 2022 Program Committee: ASE