Bruno Rodrigues

Bruno Rodrigues

Trying to make sense of sensors

About

I am a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor for Embedded Sensing Systems and Industrial Networks at the Institute of Computer Science in Vorarlberg (ICV), School of Computer Science (SCS), University of St. Gallen (HSG).

My research sits at the intersection of network security, distributed systems, and the physical world. I design systems that can securely sense, interpret, and act on their environment.

Group

I lead the Sensing Group at ICV-HSG, working at the crossroads of theory and practice on sensors and their communication-related aspects in real-world applications, under the lens of performance, efficiency, and security, in close collaboration with industry partners in the Vorarlberg region. The group website has our people, publications, projects, open theses, and news.

Research

Passive & physical-layer sensing. Inferring activity and context from ambient signals: Wi-Fi/BLE/RF and acoustic sensing, embedded sensor systems, and multi-modal fusion.
Privacy in cyber-physical systems. Understanding and limiting what sensing reveals: privacy-preserving data fusion, RF-tracking risks, and security for IoT and industrial networks.
Network & systems security. Collaborative, cross-domain architectures for defending networks, from signaling-based DDoS mitigation to distributed coordination and trust.

Short bio

Before joining HSG, I received my doctoral degree from the University of Zurich (UZH) in 2020, where I also served as a postdoctoral researcher until 2024. My PhD focused on collaborative signaling systems and cross-domain architectures to mitigate Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. During my postdoc, I extended this work into the physical layer, exploring passive wireless sensing (Wi-Fi/BLE) and the privacy implications of RF-based tracking.

Prior to my PhD, I was a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, collaborating with Ericsson Research (2013–2016) on Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and resource orchestration in cloud environments. I hold an MSc in Computer Engineering from USP, where I optimized energy efficiency in virtualized networks, and a BSc from UDESC focused on cloud security and large-scale distributed systems.