10/07/2026
🎉 Two LSU CSE assistant professors. Two papers published at one of the top AI conferences in the world.
We’re proud to celebrate Dr. James Ghawaly and Dr. D**g Lao, whose research is being published at NeurIPS 2026, an A*-ranked conference and one of the premier venues for AI and machine learning research.
Dr. D**g Lao is the first author of “Test-Time Defense Against Adversarial Attacks via Stochastic Resonance of Latent Ensembles,” alongside Yuxiang Zhang, Haniyeh Ehsani Oskouie, Yangchao Wu, Alex Wong, and Stefano Soatto.
Their research tackles adversarial attacks that can cause AI models to make incorrect predictions, introducing a new approach to make models more resilient at test time without requiring retraining.
Dr. James Ghawaly is a co-author of “Tesserae and MoDiCo: A Billion-Fragment Dataset and Multi-Branch Architecture for File Fragment Classification,” alongside Dr. Golden G. Richard III and LSU students Samuel Hildebrand and Joshua McCain.
And there’s another reason we’re especially proud of this one: Samuel is the lead author. Their work introduces a billion-fragment dataset and a new approach to file fragment classification, an important challenge in digital forensics and cybersecurity.
Having two of our assistant professors publishing at an A*-ranked conference is an exciting accomplishment. Seeing our students contributing to research at this level, and in Samuel’s case leading it, makes it even more meaningful.
We’re especially proud of the mentorship behind accomplishments like these. Our faculty are advancing research while creating opportunities for students to work alongside them, grow as researchers, and take the lead on work being recognized at the highest levels of the field. 💜💛
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Ghawaly, Dr. Lao, Dr. Richard, Samuel, Joshua, and all of their collaborators! 🎉
LSU College of Engineering LSU Graduate School LSU Research LSU Center for Computation & Technology
