How to collaborate
Applications for SPRING 2026 ARE OPEN.
We are excited to announce the list of collaboration opportunities in our Mon(IoT)r IoT lab. These can be interesting opportunities to get exposed to cutting-edge IoT technologies and understand how they work.
If you are interested in any of these projects, you are a current active undergraduate or graduate student at Northeastern University, and you satisfy the prerequisites for the project you are interested in, please send an email using the contact information of the project of your choice with subject “Spring 2026 Mon(IoT)r Lab collaboration PROJECT NAME” (mandatory to receive an answer!) and a recent resume attached (with GPA), specifying the following:
- What project you are interested in, specifying (a) why you are interested in that particular project, (b) why you are a fit for that project, (c) how you plan to use your existing experience to contribute to that project, (d) how collaborating to the project aligns with your career goals. If you are interested in more than one project, please rank them starting from the one you are interested the most.
- The preferred start date and end date for the collaboration, and the total number of average hours you plan to spend per week on this project;
- Your expected course load for the semester (list of classes and credits);
- Any other time commitments you have during the semester, for example TA, RA, a co-op, side jobs, on campus / off campus activities, clubs, both paid and unpaid;
- Your availability for a volunteer (unpaid) position. Note that we do not currently have any available paid or for-credits positions;
- The Northeastern University campus location you are based on and the possibility or preference to work on site in Boston, remotely, or both.
Please note that, in general, we have a preference for projects that are on-site, that last a whole semester (15 weeks), and for a minimum of 10 hours per week.
We will start reviewing applications for Spring 2025 as soon as we receive them and will be back to you within two weeks, so please be patient if you do not hear back by then. Also, for some projects, we may give you a take-home exercise related to the project before starting working with us.
If you are interested in applying for a later term (e.g., Fall 2026), we cannot guarantee that this list of projects will still be valid. Therefore, we suggest waiting for the projects to be updated before applying, which typically happens within two weeks after the Spring or Fall semester starts. We are not currently offering summer projects.
Spring 2026 projects
Project “IoT/SPHERE”: IoT Analysis From Network Traffic Using SPHERE
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasingly found in homes, providing useful functionality for devices such as TVs, smart speakers, and video doorbells. Along with their benefits come potential risks, since these devices can communicate information (audio recordings, video recordings, television viewing habits) about their users to other parties over the Internet. However, understanding these risks is difficult due to heterogeneity in devices’ online behaviors. For example, smart speakers responding to voice commands send very different network traffic than a smart power plug that is activated via a companion app.
The goals of this project are to: (1) get familiar and help us test and troubleshoot our SPHERE IoT testbed (the SPHERE IoT testbed allows remote interaction with more than 100 IoT devices), (2) use the SPHERE testbed to measure what our IoT devices are doing, simply based on the network traffic they generate. For example, we would like to know if a smart speaker is recording audio from users when it should not.
This project will have several outcomes, including published source code and data, published research papers in academic venues, and press articles about our findings through our journalist partners.
In the Spring 2026 semester, this project will focus primarily on SPHERE testbed testing, evaluating its usefulness as a research tool, and using it to reproduce the results we obtained in our previous papers.
This research can be performed on site and/or remotely.
Prerequisites:
- Availability to do a take home exercise before joining the project.
- Familiarity with the most important Internet and networking protocols and measurement tools (e.g., TLS, DNS, Wireshark/tshark, port scanning)
- Extensive programming experience (python recommended)
- Strong interest in cybersecurity, privacy, and IoT.
Contact information: Daniel Dubois (d.dubois@northeastern.edu), specifying “Spring 2026 Mon(IoT)r Lab collaboration IoT/SPHERE” in the subject line.