Ahmet Kurt
I’m a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at East Texas A&M University (RELLIS campus). I work at the intersection of blockchains and their cybersecurity applications, and most of my research revolves around Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.
Recent news
- Sep 2026 paper Our paper Customizable Interactive Textbooks for Teaching Programming to Information Systems Students: Classroom Evidence and an AI-Era Roadmap was accepted to the ISCAP 2026 conference, which will be held in Asheville, NC, USA.
- Aug 2026 talk My student Thomas Bakaysa presented our paper LNTest: A Testbed for Evaluating Bitcoin Lightning Network-Based Botnets at the ARES 2026 conference in Linköping, Sweden (photo 1, photo 2). Great job, Thomas!
- Aug 2026 media ETAMU News interviewed me about my NSF-funded AI in Cybersecurity Education fellowship at The George Washington University.
- Aug 2026 event I will be attending the KNIT13 Workshop in Washington, DC on September 28. Thanks to NSF for the travel grant.
- Jul 2026 talk Gave a research talk on LNTest at the First Annual Bitcoin Education Institute Conference at The George Washington University (photo). Thanks to Korok Ray and his team for organizing and to Strategy for funding the event. We also had a fireside chat with Phong Le (photo).
- Jul 2026 paper Our workshop paper Agentic Cryptographic Agility for Post-Quantum Smart Grid Communications was accepted to the SmartGridComm 2026 conference, which will be held in College Station, TX, USA.
- Jun 2026 program I have been accepted to the AI in Cybersecurity Education Faculty Development Summer Institute funded by NSF. It is being held at The George Washington University from June 1 to July 10.
- May 2026 funding Awarded $5,000 in seed funding at the TEES Annual Research Conference (TARC) in College Station, TX. Pitched the proposal idea on the stage to the jury and the audience.
- May 2026 service Serving as a publicity chair for IEEE IPCCC 2026.
- May 2026 event Attended (virtually) the NSF CISE CAREER Workshop 2026.
- May 2026 paper Our paper LNTest: A Testbed for Evaluating Bitcoin Lightning Network-Based Botnets was accepted to the ARES 2026 conference, which will be held in Linköping, Sweden.
- May 2026 service Served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Proposal Review Panel for Graduate Education.
- May 2026 teaching My Spring 2026 capstone students wrapped up two projects: a junior CSCI 399 project on offline Lightning payments and a senior CSCI 499 project on agentic AI tooling for Lightning.
- Apr 2026 event Attended the L.E.A.P. 2026 conference at East Texas A&M University’s Dallas campus.
- Apr 2026 talk Invited to give a research talk at the First Annual Bitcoin Education Institute Conference, which will be held at The George Washington University on July 31, 2026.
- Mar 2026 paper Our paper AI-Enabled Cloud-Edge-IoT Continuum for Hyper-Distributed and Trustworthy Applications was accepted to the WOCC 2026 conference, which will be held in Newark, NJ, USA.
- Mar 2026 service Serving as a TPC member for IEEE LCN 2026.
- Feb 2026 service Served as a panelist for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Proposal Review Panel for Computer and Network Systems.
- Feb 2026 service Serving as a TPC member for SAFE-ML 2026.
- Dec 2025 teaching My Fall 2025 Senior Cyber Design (CSCI 499) students built a high-performance computing cluster from real server hardware, documented in their project website.
- Nov 2025 event Attended the IEEE IPCCC 2025 conference in Austin, TX.
- Aug 2025 service Serving as a TPC member for the IEEE IPCCC 2025 Workshop.
- Dec 2024 teaching My Fall 2024 Senior Cyber Design (CSCI 499) students built a botnet on Lightning, documented in their project website.
- Aug 2024 new position Started as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at East Texas A&M University (RELLIS Campus).