We are delighted to announce that our PhD Graduate, Dr LI Zihao, supervised by Prof. LUO Xiapu Daniel has been awarded the prestigious 2025 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertations Award by the Chinese Institute of Communications (CIC). Established to promote technological advancement and nurture young academic talent in China’s information and communications field, the annual award recognises top doctoral graduates nationwide for innovative contributions. Among 58 nominations across the country, 10 dissertations were selected after rigorous review. Dr Li is the only awardee in the domain of blockchain, underscoring the originality and impact of his research.
Dissertation Summary:
Dr Li’s thesis delivers a comprehensive, layer-by-layer security assessment of blockchain systems—spanning applications, smart contracts, state storage and scalability—introducing practical tools and findings that expose real-world risks and strengthen defences. His work includes automated discovery of DeFi MEV behaviours (ActLifter/ActCluster), source-free recovery of smart contract function signatures (SigRec), the first demonstrated DoS attack on blockchain state storage (NURGLE), and behaviour-guided fuzzing to detect finalisation failures in zkRollups (fAmulet), offering actionable methodologies for more secure blockchain infrastructure and applications.
About CIC:
The Chinese Institute of Communications (CIC) is a major national academic organisation and a tier-1 society in China’s information and communications field. Established in 1964 under the supervision of the China Association for Science and Technology, CIC has 54 subordinate branches and over 68,000 members, fostering deep collaboration between academia and industry through high-level conferences, scientific exchanges, standards development and technical consulting.
