Tim Pierson

About

I'm currently a Research Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Dartmouth College. I earned my Ph. D. from Dartmouth in 2018, working with Professor David Kotz. My research interests are in privacy and security, the Internet of Things (IoT), and applied machine learning. My work has been featured in over 200 newspaper, radio and television stations, including NPR and the Washington Post.

Most days you can find me in office 222 of the Engineering and Computer Science Center (ECSC) or you can email me at timothy.j.pierson@dartmouth.edu.

Education

• Ph. D., Computer Science, Dartmouth College, 2018.
• M.B.A., Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 2000.
• B.S., Computer Science, Michigan Technological University, 1990.

Selected publications

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1. Shreyans Jain, Yash Bhisikar, Surjya Ghosh, Timothy J. Pierson, and Sougata Sen. SandDune: Single ANtenna Device for Detecting User’s Natural Eating Habits, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom) Work in Progress Session. IEEE, March 2025. Runner Up Best WIP Paper Paper Award.
2. Wondimu K. Zegeye, Ravindra Mangar, Jingyu Qian, Vinton Morris, Kevin Kornegay, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Comparing smart home devices that use the Matter protocol, in Proceedings of the International Workshop on Intelligent Communication Network Technologies (ICNET). IEEE, January 2025.
3. Chixiang Wang, Weijia He, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Moat: Adaptive Inside/Outside Detection System for Smart Homes, in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), pages 1—31. ACM, November 2024.
4. Ravindra Mangar, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. A framework for evaluating the security and privacy of smart-home devices, and its application to common platforms, in Pervasive Computing, Volume 23, Number 03, pages 7—19. IEEE, July—September 2024.
5. Weijia He, Nathan Reitinger, Atheer Almogbilm Yi-Shyuan, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Contextualizing Interpersonal Data Sharing in Smart Homes, in Proceedings of the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS), pages 295—312. PETS, July 2024.
6. Timothy J. Pierson, Cesar Arguello, Beatrice Perez, Wondimu Zegeye, Kevin Kornegay, Carl A. Gunter, and David Kotz. We need a “building inspector for IoT” when smart homes are sold, in IEEE Security & Privacy, pages 2—11. IEEE, May 2024.
7. Cesar Arguello, Beatrice Perez, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Detecting Battery Cells with Harmonic Radar, in Proceedings of the Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), pages 231—236. ACM, May 2024.
8. Mounib Khanafer, Logan Kostick, Chixiang Wang, Wondimu Zegeye, Weijia He, Berkay Kaplan, Nurzaman Ahmed, Kevin Kornegay, David Kotz, and Timothy J. Pierson. Device Discovery in the Smart Home Environment, in Proceedings of the Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P Oakland) Workshop on the Internet of Safe Things (SafeThings). IEEE, May 2024.
9. Tushar Jois, Tina Pavlovich, Brigid McCarron, David Kotz, and Timothy Pierson. Smart Use of Smart Devices in Your Home: A Smart Home Security and Privacy Workshop for the General Public, in Proceedings of Special Interest Group Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), pages 611—617. ACM, March 2024.
10. Chixiang Wang, Liam Cassidy, Weijia He, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Challenges and opportunities in onboarding smart-home devices, in Proceedings of the Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications (HotMobile), pages 60–65. ACM, February, 2024.
11. Ravindra Mangar, Jingyu Qian, Wondimu Zegeye, Abdulrahman AlRabah, Ben Civjan, Shalni Sundram, Sam Yuan, Carl A. Gunter, Mounib Khanafer, Kevin Kornegay, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Designing and Evaluating a Testbed for the Matter Protocol: Insights into User Experience, in Proceedings on Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) Workshop on Security and Privacy in Standardized IoT (SDIoTSec). Internet Society, February 2024. Winner of Distinguished Paper Award.
12. Beatrice Perez, Cesar Arguello Martinez, Timothy J. Pierson, Gregory Mazzaro, and David Kotz. Evaluating the Practical Range of Harmonic Radar to Detect Smart Electronics, in Proceedings of the Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), pages 528–535. IEEE, October 2023.
13. Beatrice Perez, Timothy J. Pierson, Gregory Mazzaro, and David Kotz. Identification and Classification of Electronic Devices Using Harmonic Radar, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT). pages 248–255. IEEE, June 2023.
14. Gregory Mazzaro, Kyle Gallagher, Kelly Sherbondy, Alex Bouvy, Beatrice Perez, Timothy Pierson, and David Kotz. Harmonic response vs. target orientation: a preliminary study of the effect of polarization on nonlinear junction detection, in Proceedings of the SPIE Radar Sensor Technology XXVI, volume 12108, article 1210803, 21 pages. Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, May 2022.
15. Beatrice Perez, Gregory Mazzaro, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Detecting the Presence of Electronic Devices in Smart Homes Using Harmonic Radar Technology, in Remote Sensing, volume 14, number 2, article 327, 18 pages. MDPI, January 2022.
16. Travis Peters, Timothy J. Pierson, Sougata Sen, José Camacho, and David Kotz. Recurring Verification of Interaction Authenticity Within Wireless Networks, in Proceedings of the Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks (WiSec), pages 192–203. ACM, June 2021.
17. Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Proximity detection with single-antenna IoT devices, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (Mobicom), pages 1–15. ACM, October 2019.
18. Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. CloseTalker: Secure, Short-Range Ad Hoc Wireless Communication, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), pages 340–352. ACM, June 2019.
19. Timothy J. Pierson, Travis Peters, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Poster: Proximity detection with single-antenna IoT devices, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (Mobicom), pages 663–665. ACM, October 2018. Winner of Best Poster Award.
20. Timothy J. Pierson. Secure Short-Range Communications. PhD thesis. Available as Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Report TR2018-845, Dartmouth Computer Science, June 2018.
21. Reza Rawassizadeh, Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. NoCloud: Exploring Network Disconnection through On-Device Data Analysis, in Pervasive Computing, vol. 17, no. 1, pages 64–74. IEEE, January-March 2018.
22. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Secure Information Transfer Between Nearby Wireless Devices, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (Mobicom) Workshop on Wireless S³, pages 11–13. ACM Press, October 2017.
23. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Demo: Wanda, securely introducing mobile devices, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), page 113. ACM Press, June 2016.
24. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Wanda: securely introducing mobile devices, in International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), pages 1–9. IEEE, April 2016. Winner of Best-In-Session Presentation Award.
25. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Wanda: securely introducing mobile devices – extended version. Technical Report TR2016-789, Dartmouth Computer Science, February 2016.

Selected patents

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1. [In application] Beatrice Perez, Timothy J. Pierson, Gregory Mazzaro, and David Kotz. Harmonic Radar Scanner for Electronics. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2024/0426974 A1, United States Patent and Trademark Office. December 26, 2024.
2. [In application] Cesar Arguello, Beatrice Perez, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. Harmonic radar for battery detection. U.S. Provisional Patent Application 63/651,278, United States Patent and Trademark Office. Filed May 23, 2024.
3. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,894,920 B2; continuation of U.S. Patent 11,153,026 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. February 6, 2024.
4. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. System and Method for Proximity Detection with Single-Antenna Device. U.S. Patent 11,871,233 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. January 9, 2024.
5. Timothy J. Pierson and Jonathan Alter. Methods and Software for Pairing Wireless Devices Using Dynamic Multipath Signal Matching, and Wireless Devices Implementing the Same. U.S. Patent 11,856,408 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. December 26, 2023.
6. [In application] Adam Vandenbussche, David Kotz, and Timothy J. Pierson. Onion Routing Network For Smart Homes. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2023/0370425 A1, United States Patent and Trademark Office. Filed November 16, 2023.
7. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. Apparatus for securely configuring a target device. U.S. Patent 11,683,071 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. June 20, 2023.
8. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. U.S. Patent 11,153,026 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. October 19, 2021.
9. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatus for Securely Configuring a Target Device. Published as US2020/0169295A1; continuation of U.S. Patent 10,574,298 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. May 28, 2020.
10. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David Kotz. Apparatus for Securely Configuring a Target Device and Associated Methods. U.S. Patent 10,574,298 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. February 25, 2020.
11. Dean Feldman and Timothy J. Pierson. Area and Property Monitoring System. U.S. Patent 10,559,177 B2, United States Patent and Trademark Office. February 11, 2020.
12. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. System and Methods for Proximity Detection with Single-Antenna Device. International Patent WO 2019/210201 A1, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). October 31, 2019.
13. Timothy J. Pierson, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. Apparatuses, Methods, and Software for Secure Short-Range Wireless Communication. International Patent WO 2019/051079 A1, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). March 14, 2019.
14. Timothy J. Pierson, Xiaohui Liang, Ronald Peterson, and David F. Kotz. Apparatus for Securely Configuring a Target Device and Associated Methods. International Patent WO 2016/210125 A1, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). December 29, 2016.

Prior experience

• Start up Chief Technology Officer

  Developed and patented multiple sensor technologies that detect and wirelessly communicate the presence of automobiles in parking spaces. This information can be used to guide drivers directly to empty parking spaces. Deployed 11,000 sensors on the street in San Francisco; at the time it was the world's largest deployment of its type.

• Hedge fund Chief Technology Officer

  Chief Technology Officer at one of the oldest and largest hedge funds in the world. Oversaw teams in New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. The firm grew by more than 5X during my tenure.

• Strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company

  Advised Fortune 500 firms on matters of central importance to senior management. Helped craft the long-term strategic vision for companies in financial services, supply chain, energy, aviation, telecom, and retailing.

• Assistant Security Manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

  Helped supervise 500 security officers who protect the Museum’s priceless art collection and ensure public safety. Project manager for several multi-million dollar projects.

• U.S. Air Force Special Operations Aviator

  Conducted unconventional warfare operations around the globe. Had the same number of takeoffs as landings...