Adv-TGD: Adversarial Text-Guided Diffusion for Face Recognition
O. Ahmadeih, N. Karimian
NDSS 2027, Seoul, Korea (Under Review)
Assistant Professor · University of South Florida
Nima Karimian, Ph.D.
Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing
I work on trustworthy AI, Multimodal Large Language Model, Biometrics, cybersecurity, and AI for healthcare, with a focus on secure and privacy-aware intelligent systems for real-world deployment.
$1.7M+External Funding
NSF CAREER2024 Awardee
Top 2%Scientists List
70+Publications
Updates
🔥 News
- 2026.08🎤 Invited to serve as an NSF panelist for proposal review at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) (Oct. 2026).
- 2026.09🎤 Presenting our accepted DiffAttack paper at the IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB) in Rome, Italy (Sept. 2026).
- 2026.08🎤 Invited to serve as a panelist at the USF-hosted NSF CAREER Workshop (December 2026).
- 2026.07🏛️ Appointed Vice President of the Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Institute (SVCSI).
- 2026.07🎉 One paper accepted at IJCB 2026 — "DiffAttack: Evasion Attacks Against Face Recognition via Latent Diffusion Models."
- 2026.06🎉 One paper accepted at ICMLA 2026 — "Segment-Level ECG Classification for Hyperglycemia Detection."
- 2026.04💰 NSF CISE REU project funded for Summer 2026.
- 2025.08🏫 Joined the University of South Florida as Assistant Professor, Bellini College of AI, Cybersecurity and Computing.
- 2025.06🏆 Best Paper Award, IEEE Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference.
- 2025.04🎙️ Distinguished Speaker Webinar, hosted by Centers for Cyber Security and AI Research at UND.
- 2025.01🎙️ Rising Star Seminar Talk, hosted by Bellini College of AI, Cybersecurity and Computing, USF.
- 2024.07🏆 Received the NSF CAREER Award on fairness, bias, security, and privacy enhancement in AI systems.
- 2023.12🌟 Recognized in the World's Top 2% Scientists list (Stanford University & Elsevier).
- 2022.04🏆 Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering, SJSU.
- 2017.09🏆 Best Paper Award, IEEE IJCB.
- 2017.03🥈 Best Poster Award, Florida Institute of Cybersecurity.
- 2017.01🏆 Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design.
Selected Work
Publications
CON-MTKD: A Contrastive Framework for Multi-Teacher Knowledge Distillation
N. Najafzadeh, A. Devkotaa, R Chatautc, N. Karimian, J. Dawsona and P. Gyawalia
IEEE ACCESS, (Under Review)
Robust Spoofed Speech Detection via Temporal Pyramid Modeling
M. Masoudi, S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian
IEEE ICASSP 2026, Vancouver (Under Review)
DiffAttack: Evasion Attacks Against Face Recognition via Latent Diffusion Models
O. Ahmadeih, N. Karimian
IEEE IJCB 2026, Italy (accepted)
Segment-Level ECG Classification for Hyperglycemia Detection: A Hybrid CNN–Transformer Feasibility Study
A. Ogunjembola, N. Karimian
IEEE ICMLA 2026
rECG: A Guided Diffusion Framework for Remote Electrocardiography Reconstruction from Facial Video
B. Adami, N. Karimian, J. Dawson
IEEE IJCB 2025
GRU-AUNet: A Domain Adaptation Framework for Contactless Fingerprint Presentation Attack Detection
B. Adami, N. Karimian
IEEE SVCC 2025
Poster: A Deep-Learning Approach for ECG-Based Cryptographic Key Generation
L. M. Romero, N. Karimian, S. Tehranipoor
IEEE SVCC 2025
rPPG-SysDiaGAN: Systolic-Diastolic Feature Localization in rPPG Using GAN with Multi-domain Discriminator
B. Adami, N. Karimian
ECCV 2024
Face Liveness Detection Competition (LivDet-Face) - 2024
L. Igene et al.
IEEE IJCB 2024
Contactless Fingerprint Biometric Anti-Spoofing: An Unsupervised Deep Learning Approach
B. Adami, M. Hosseinzadehketilateh, N. Karimian
IEEE IJCB 2024
Advancements in Continuous Glucose Monitoring: Integrating Deep Learning and ECG Signal
M. Hosseinzadehketilateh, B. Adami, N. Karimian
IEEE EMBC 2024
Human-to-Device (H2D) Authentication Using Biometrics
M. Hosseinzadehketilateh, S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian
IEEE SVCC 2024
Combating Deepfakes: A Novel Hybrid Hardware-Software Approach
K. Hasan, N. Karimian, S. Tehranipoor
IEEE SVCC 2024
NAND Flash-Based Digital Fingerprinting for Robust and Secure Hardware Authentication
K. Hasan, S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian, S. Vasudeva
ISQED 2024
A Universal Anti-Spoofing Approach for Contactless Fingerprint Biometric Systems
B. Adami, S. Tehranipoor, N. Nasrabadi, N. Karimian
IEEE IJCB 2023
Breaking AES-128: Machine Learning-Based SCA Under Different Scenarios and Devices
S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian, J. Edmonds
IEEE CSR 2023
Never Lose Your ECG: A Novel Key Generation and Authentication Scheme for Implantable Medical Devices
N. Karimian, G. Saldamli, Y. Park, V. Lui
IEEE Access 2023
Never Lose Your ECG: A Novel Key Generation and Authentication Scheme for Implantable Medical Devices
N. Karimian, G. Saldamli, Y. Park, V. Lui
IEEE Access, 2023
A Universal Anti-Spoofing Approach for Contactless Fingerprint Biometric Systems
B. Adami, S. Tehranipoor, N. Nasrabadi, N. Karimian
IEEE IJCB 2023
Breaking AES-128: Machine Learning-Based SCA Under Different Scenarios and Devices
S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian, J. Edmonds
IEEE CSR 2023
Hyperglycemia Identification using ECG in Deep Learning Era
R. Cordeiro, N. Karimian, Y. Park
Sensors, 2021
Leveraging Deep CNN and Transfer Learning for Side-channel Attack
A. Garg, N. Karimian
ISQED 2021
A New Foe in GPUs: Power Side-Channel Attacks on Neural Network
H. Jeon, N. Karimian, T. Lehman
ISQED 2021
Leveraging Timing Side-Channel Information and Machine Learning for IoT Security
K. Sahu, R. Kshirsagar, S. Vasudeva, T. Alzahrani, N. Karimian
IEEE ICCE 2021
ECG Biometric Using 2D Deep Convolutional Neural Network
S. Thentu, R. Cordeiro, Y. Park, N. Karimian
IEEE ICCE 2021
ECG Biometric Spoofing Using Adversarial Machine Learning
A. Garg, N. Karimian
IEEE ICCE 2021
ECG-Based Authentication Using Timing-Aware Domain-Specific Architecture
R. Cordeiro, D. Gajaria, A. Limaye, T. Adegbija, N. Karimian, F. Tehranipoor
IEEE TCAD, 2020
ECG Biometric Authentication: A Comparative Analysis
M. Ingale, R. Cordeiro, S. Thentu, Y. Park, N. Karimian
IEEE Access, 2020
ECG Biometric: Spoofing and Countermeasures
N. Karimian, D. Woodard, D. Forte
IEEE TBIOM, 2020
Deep RNN-Oriented Paradigm Shift through BOCANet: Broken Obfuscated Circuit Attack
S. Tehranipoor, N. Karimian, M. Mozaffari-Kermani, M. Mahmoodi
GLSVLSI 2019
On the Vulnerability of ECG Verification to Online Presentation Attacks
N. Karimian, D. Woodard, D. Forte
IEEE IJCB 2017 (Best Student Paper Award)
Human Recognition from Photoplethysmography (PPG) Based on Non-Fiducial Features
N. Karimian, Z. Guo, M. Tehranipoor, D. Forte
IEEE ICASSP 2017
Non-fiducial PPG-based Authentication for Healthcare Application
N. Karimian, M. Tehranipoor, D. Forte
IEEE BHI 2017
Highly Reliable Key Generation From Electrocardiogram (ECG)
N. Karimian, Z. Guo, M. Tehranipoor, D. Forte
IEEE TBME 2017
Funded Research
Projects
Advancing Fairness and Bias in AI Systems
Security and privacy enhancement for AI systems with bias-aware and trustworthy.
Robust Deep Learning Computing on GPUs
Collaborative research on robustness and security of deep learning computation on GPU platforms.
X-ray Cargo Inspection Using Machine Learning
Machine-learning methods for anomaly detection and automated cargo security inspection.
Adverserial Machine Learning Attack
A Multimodal framework for adverserial machine learning and Defense Mechanism.
Mentorship
Students
Omid Ahmadieh
Ph.D. student · Chair and major advisor
Ananta Raha
Ph.D. student · Chair and major advisor
Sushmoy Barua
Ph.D. student · Chair and major advisor
Mahtab Masoudi Nezhad
M.S. student · Chair and major advisor
Srinija Pagidyala
M.S. student · Chair and major advisor
Esteban Quintero Gonzalez
M.S. student · Chair and major advisor
Omar Yousef
NSF REU Student Advisor
Avery Chen
High school student, summer camp mentor
Adarsh Sudheer
High school student, summer camp mentor
Tibet Saldamli
High school student, summer camp mentor
Courses
Teaching
Generative AI
CIS 6930 / CIS 4930 · USF · Fall 2025, Fall 2026
GANs, VAEs, diffusion models, Flow Matching, Transformer. LLMs, RAG, and Multimodal model
Computer Logic & Design
CDA 3201 · USF · Spring 2026
Boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, Quine-McCluskey, combinational and sequential logic.
Application of Neural Networks
CPE 520. WVU · 2024–2025
OpenCV, CNN, Sequence Models (RNN, LSTM, GRU), Optimization and Regularizationm Transfer Learning, Contrastive Learning.
Advanced Data Mining
CS 573. WVU · 2023–2025
Data Preprocessing and Feature Engineering, Dimention Reduction, Advanced Clusteringm supervised and unsupervised classificationm and Anomaly Detection.
Biometric Fundamentals
SJSU · Spring 2020
Face, fingerprint, iris, biometric security, template protection, and fuzzy extractors.
Microprocessor Systems Design
CPE 310. WVU · 2022-2025
GPIO, ARM Cortex-M architecture, Interrupts and Exceptionsm, Processor Interfacing, Communication Protocol.
Leadership
Professional Service
Leadership & Editorial
- NSF Reviewer and Panelist
- General Chair, SVCC 2024
- Program Chair, SVCC 2023
- Associate Editor, IEEE TCAS-I
Program Committees
- DAC
- ACM CCS Poster and Demo
- HOST
- iSES
- SVCC
- ISQED
Reviewer
- IEEE TIFS
- IEEE T-BIOM
- IEEE TBME
- IEEE TPAMI
- NDSS, CCS, DAC, ICASSP, ICLR, CVPR, ICML, IJCB, BTAS
Recognition
Awards
NSF CAREER Award
NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program Award, 2024.
World’s Top 2% Scientists
Stanford University and Elsevier list, 2023–2024.
Best Paper Awards
SVCC 2025, IJCB 2017, IEEE VLSI Design 2017.
Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship
Charles W. Davidson College of Engineering, SJSU, 2021.
Impact
Google Scholar Metrics
0
Citations
0
h-index
0
i10-index
Audience
Visitors Around the World
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Contact
Get in Touch
Office: 4220 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33620
Email: nkarimian at usf dot edu
Website:
karimiannima.github.io