Professor Noah Spahn

Associate Professor of Computer Science

Noah Spahn is an Associate Professor of Computer Science with expertise in cybersecurity, vulnerability remediation, and open source software security. His research focuses on developing practical solutions for identifying, analyzing, and remediating vulnerabilities in software systems, with particular emphasis on open source ecosystems. Professor Spahn has extensive experience bridging the gap between academic research and real-world applications, having worked on significant projects for organizations including DARPA, NSF, ONR, and various industry partners.

Professor Spahn has over 15 years of experience in software engineering, systems administration, and cybersecurity research. His extensive enterprise systems experience includes designing automation for the North Hall Data Center at UCSB, managing the campus Enterprise Resource Planning tool through multiple financial system transitions, contributing to the development of the campus central identity system, and leading the migration of on-premise email systems to the cloud.

Professor Spahn is passionate about integrating cybersecurity education into undergraduate curricula and has been instrumental in developing innovative approaches to teach security concepts to both computer science and non-CS majors.

Education

  • Ph.D., Software Engineering (in progress, expected 2027), The Open University
  • M.S., Software Engineering, California State University, Fullerton
  • B.S., Fine Arts & Theology, Biola University

Courses Taught

  • Data Structures in C++ and Lab - CSC 2052/L
  • Data Structures and Algorithms and Lab - CSC 2054/L
  • Computational Tools - CSC 3021

Experience in Field

  • Associate Professor of Computer Science, Point Loma Nazarene University (2025-Present)
  • Research Mentoring in the Early Research Scholars Program (ERSP) at UC Santa Barbara (2022-2023, 2023-2024)
  • Summer Program Leadership in the ACTION Internship summer program, leading teams in developing cybersecurity skills within cloud-based cyber ranges (2024)
  • Workshop Instruction in Software Carpentries workshops focusing on Git/Bash (2019)
  • Adjunct Faculty, Westmont College Department of Computer Science (2019-2021)

Professional and Community Involvement

  • NSF Panel Service: Invited panelist for National Science Foundation review panel (2025)
  • Active Participant: OpenSSF (Open Source Software Foundation), Python Hardening Group
  • Former Member: ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
  • Former Member: IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
  • Research Collaborator: SecLab at UC Santa Barbara, Action Institute
  • Industry Experience: CTO and Contract Software Engineer at Sieben Design (2003-2008)

Awards and Honors

  • Google Fellowship through CAHSI (California Hispanic Serving Institutions) for curriculum development and cybersecurity education integration
  • Academic Honors: Master of Science in Software Engineering, California State University, Fullerton
  • Academic Honors: Bachelor of Science, Biola University

Dissertations, Presentations, and Publications

Dissertations

  • Ph.D. Dissertation: "Vulnerability Remediation" (In Progress, expected 2027), The Open University
  • Master's Thesis: "Maintenance, Modernization and Migration of Enterprise Legacy Software Systems", California State University, Fullerton

Presentations/Talks

  • "GATE (Introduction to Cloud-based Cyber-ranges)" - ACTION Internship Summer Program, 2024
  • "Reproducible CVEs in Docker" - Early Research Scholars Program, UC Santa Barbara, 2023-2024
  • "Container Orchestration Honeypot: Observing Attacks in the Wild" - RAID Conference, Hong Kong, 2023
  • "Building a Honeypot" - Early Research Scholars Program, UC Santa Barbara, 2022-2023
  • "Planning for the Maintenance & Modernization of Legacy Systems" - UCCSC, UC Davis, 2018
  • "Maintain, Modernize, or Migrate?" - UCCSC, UC Santa Cruz, 2016
  • "The Importance of the End-user" - Security Symposium, UC Davis, 2015
  • "Open-source Inventory Management" - UCCSC, UC Davis, 2009

Publications

  • Spahn, N. "Container Orchestration Honeypot: Observing Attacks in the Wild." 26th International Symposium on Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID '23), October 2023. 
  • Dresel, L., Spahn, N., et al. "POPKORN: Popping Windows Kernel Drivers At Scale." Proceedings of the 38th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2022.
  • van Ede, T., Spahn, N., et al. "DeepCASE: Semi-Supervised Contextual Analysis of Security Events." Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), August 2022.
  • McLaughlin, N., Spahn, N., et al. "Regulator: Dynamic Analysis to Detect ReDoS." 31st USENIX Security Symposium, August 2022.
  • Redini, N., Spahn, N., et al. "DIANE: Identifying Fuzzing Triggers in Apps to Generate Under-constrained Inputs for IoT Devices." Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy (S&P), May 2021.