Wenjun Fan Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Dr. Wenjun Fan received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Telematics Systems Engineering (i.e., DIT department, where the first generation of the national network of Spain was born) of ETSI Telecomunicación, Technical University of Madrid (i.e., UPM, which ranks 58th in the QS World University Rankings of Engineering and Technology in 2022), Spain in 2017. Afterwards, he worked with the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK in 2017 -2019, and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, US in 2019 - 2021, as a postdoc respectively. He also worked with Tsinghua University as a research assistant in 2009 - 2010. He is currently an assistant professor with the Department of Communications and Networking, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.

Dr. Wenjun Fan participated in several research projects supported by the National Science Foundation (United States) and one EU H2020 research project termed C3ISP supported by the European Commission. He has published 25+ papers as the 1st author (40+ papers in total with more than 600 citations with 11 h-index from Google Scholar) in remarkable venues such as IEEE TDSC (top journal in security), IEEE JSAC (top journal in communications and networking), IEEE ICDCS 2022 (IEEE prestigious international conference on distributed computing systems, 19.9% acceptance rate in 2022), IEEE CNS 2021 (IEEE new-prominent international conference on communications and network security), IEEE ICC 2021 (IEEE flagship conference on communications), and IEEE NetSoft 2017 (IEEE flagship conference on network softwarization).

The prospective Ph.D. students to him should have stress resistance (i.e., frustration tolerance with mental health), high motivation (i.e., doing research with a proper intention and attitude), and fair capability (eager to learn and can endure being defeated, cf. "Genius is eternal patience,"-- Leo Tolstoy). If you satisfy the above three merits and would like to pursue a Ph.D. degree, please send your CV and transcript to his email (Wenjun.Fan AT xjtlu.edu.cn).


Further, for any foreign/international applicants aiming for the CSC scholarship, it is recommended that the applicants can come up with their own research proposals.

Heads-up: any student before sending inquiry please check if you have the desirable English test score (IELTS 6.5 or TOEFL 90) or the exception of waiving the language requirement in terms of XJTLU's doctoral admission policy. In addition, anyone with GRE test score is preferred.


  • UKPFS PGCert in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, University of Liverpool - 2022
  • PhD, Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain - 2017


  • Assistant Professor - Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, P.R.China - 2021 to present
  • Research Associate - University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, United States - 2019 to 2021
  • Postdoc - University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom - 2017 to 2019
  • Research Assistant - Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R.China - 2009 to 2010


  • Distributed Systems
  • SDN-NFV
  • Cloud Computing
  • Blockchain
  • Machine Learning


  • Hsiang-Jen Hong , Wenjun Fan, Simeon Wuthier, Jinoh Kim, C. Edward Chow, Xiaobo Zhou, and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Robust P2P Networking Connectivity Estimation Engine for Permissionless Bitcoin Cryptocurrency," Computer Networks, Volume 219, 2022.
  • Jinoh Kim, Makiya Nakashima, Wenjun Fan, Simeon Wuthier, Xiaobo Zhou, Ikkyun Kim, and Sang-Yoon Chang, "A Machine Learning Approach to Anomaly Detection based on Traffic Monitoring for Secure Blockchain Networking," IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 2022.
  • Wenjun Fan, Hsiang-Jen Hong, Jinoh Kim, Simeon Wuthier, Makiya Nakashima, Xiaobo Zhou, Ching-Hua Chow, and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Lightweight and Identifier-Oblivious Engine for Cryptocurrency Networking Anomaly Detection," IEEE Transactions Dependable and Secure Computing, 2022.
  • David W Chadwick, Wenjun Fan, Gianpiero Costantino, Rogerio de Lemos, Francesco Di Cerbo, Ian Herwono, Mirko Manea, Paolo Mori, Ali Sajjad and Xiao-Si Wang, "A Cloud-Edge based Data Security Architecture for Sharing and Analysing Cyber Threat Information," Future Generation Computer Systems, Volume 102, Pages 710-722, 2020.
  • Wenjun Fan, Zhihui Du, Max Smith-Creasey and David Fernández, "HoneyDOC: An Efficient Honeypot Architecture Enabling All-Round Design," in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 683-697, March 2019.
  • Wenjun Fan, Zhihui Du, David Fernández and Victor. A. Villagrá, "Enabling an Anatomic View to Investigate Honeypot Systems: A Survey," in IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 3906-3919, Dec. 2018.
  • Wenjun Fan, Kevin Lwakatare and Rong Rong, "Social Engineering: I-E based Model of Human Weakness for Attack and Defense Investigations," International Journal of Computer Network and Information Security (IJCNIS), Vol.9, No.1, pp.1-11. Jan. 2017.
  • Wenjun Fan, David Fernández and Zhihui Du, "Versatile Virtual Honeynet Management Framework," IET Information Security, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 38-45, March 31st, 2016.
  • Zhihui Du, Wenjun Fan, Yunpeng Chai, and Yinong Chen, "Priori information and sliding window based prediction algorithm for energy-efficient storage systems in cloud," Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, vol. 39, pp. 3-19, 2013.


  • Yueyang Li, Wenjun Fan and Ruxue Luo, "Machine Learning-based Approach for Enhancing Multi-step Attack Prediction," 2023 24th Asia-Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS), Sejong, Korea, Republic of, pp. 48-53, Sept. 8th, 2023.
  • Zhenxu Gao, Wenjun Fan and Ruxue Luo, "QKD-based Secure Communication for UAV," 2023 24th Asia-Pacific Network Operations and Management Symposium (APNOMS), Sejong, Korea, Republic of, pp. 107-112, Sept. 8th, 2023.
  • Luyi Li, Yueyang Li, Ruxue Luo, Yuzhen Chen and Wenjun Fan, "Still Not Aware of the Loophole of Unintentional Access to Docker? A Proof of Concept," In 2023 28th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), pp. 1331-1334. IEEE, 2023.
  • Siyuan Wu and Wenjun Fan, "An SDN-NFV-enabled Honeypot for Manipulating Command & Control Shell TCP Connection," 36th IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), Miami, FL, USA, May 8th, 2023.
  • Wuyan Sun, Chuyang Yuan and Wenjun Fan, "A Measurement of Real-world Attack Connections toward Honeypots," 2022 6th IEEE International Symposium on Measurements & Networking (M&N), Padua, Italy, July 18 - 20, 2022.
  • Wenjun Fan, Simeon Wuthier, Hsiang-Jen Hong, Xiaobo Zhou, Yan Bai and Sang-Yoon Chang, "The Security Investigation of Ban Score and Misbehavior Tracking in Bitcoin Network," 42nd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Bologna, Italy, 2022.
  • Wenjun Fan, Sang-Yoon Chang, Xiaobo Zhou and Shouhuai Xu, "ConMan: A Connection Manipulation-based Attack Against Bitcoin Networking," 2021 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS), Oct. 4, 2021.
  • Wenjun Fan, Sang-Yoon Chang, Shubham Kumar, Xiaobo Zhou and Young Park, "Blockchain-based Secure Coordination for Distributed SDN Control Plane," 2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), pp. 253-257, 2021.
  • Hsiang-Jen Hong, Wenjun Fan, Simeon Wuthier, Jinoh Kim, Xiaobo Zhou, C Edward Chow and Sang-Yoon Chang "Robust P2P Connectivity Estimation for Permissionless Bitcoin Network," 2021 IEEE/ACM 29th International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQOS), pp. 1-6, 2021.
  • Wenjun Fan, Hsiang-Jen Hong, Xiaobo Zhou and Sang-Yoon Chang, "A Generic Blockchain Framework to Secure Decentralized Applications," ICC 2021 - IEEE International Conference on Communications, pp. 1-7, 2021.
  • Arijet Sarker, SangHyun Byun, Wenjun Fan and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Blockchain-based root of trust management in security credential management system for vehicular communications," In Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 223-231. 2021.
  • Wenjun Fan, Hsiang-Jen Hong, Simeon Wuthier, Xiaobo Zhou, Yan Bai and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Security Analyses of Misbehavior Tracking in Bitcoin Network," 2021 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC), pp. 1-3, 2021.
  • Wenjun Fan, Younghee Park, Xiaobo Zhou and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Blockchain-Enabled Collaborative Intrusion Detection in Software Defined Networks," 2020 19th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom), Guangzhou, China, Dec.29, 2020.
  • Wenjun Fan, Sang-Yoon Chang, Shawn Emery and Xiaobo Zhou, "Blockchain-based Distributed Banking for Permissioned and Accountable Financial Transaction Processing," 2020 29th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Honolulu, HI, USA, pp. 1-9, 2020.
  • Hsiang-Jen Hong, Wenjun Fan, C. Edward Chow, Xiaobo Zhou and Sang-Yoon Chang, "Optimizing Social Welfare for Task Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing," In 2020 IFIP Networking Conference (Networking), pp. 524-528. IEEE, 2020.
  • Wenjun Fan and David Fernández, "A novel SDN based stealthy TCP connection handover mechanism for hybrid honeypot systems," 3rd IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft), pp. 1-9, Bologna, Italy, July 3-7, 2017.
  • Wenjun Fan, Zhihui Du, David Fernández and Xinning Hui, "Dynamic Hybrid Honeypot System based Transparent Traffic Redirection Mechanism," 17th International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS 2015), Beijing, China, Dec. 10, 2015.
  • Zhihui Du, Wenjun Fan and Yunpeng Chai, "Three-state disk model for high quality and energy efficient streaming media servers," In 2013 IEEE Eleventh International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS), pp. 1-8. IEEE, 2013.
  • Wenjun Fan, Xudong Chen and Xuefeng Li, "Parallelization of RSA Algorithm based on Compute Unified Device Architecture," IEEE 9th International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing (GCC 2010), Nanjing, China, October, 2010.


  • Ph.D. Scholarship, PGRS FOSA2212015, Principal Supervisor, Investigation of Eclipse Attacks against Permissionless Blockchain P2P Networking, Open until the position is filled.
  • Ph.D. Scholarship, PGRS FOS2209JAE01, Principal Supervisor, Research on Architecture and Algorithm of Intrusion Detection System toward Intelligent Connected Vehicles. This project has been filled.
  • AIURC-2022-0004, Co-principal Investigator, Design and Optimization toward Next-generation Intelligent and high-performance UAV System - A Top-down Approach, 2023 - 2025.
  • RDF-21-02-012, Principal Investigator, Countermeasure Investigation against Security Threat towards Cryptocurrency P2P Networking, 2022 – 2025.
  • TDF21/22-R24-177, Principal Investigator, Virtualization-based Network Laboratory for Enhancing the Education of Computer Networking, 2022 - 2025.


  • International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), PC member, 2023 - present
  • International Conference on Network and System Security (NSS), PC member, 2023 - present
  • International Congress on Blockchain and Applications (BLOCKCHAIN), PC member, 2022 - present
  • ACM Systems and Network Telemetry and Analytics (SNTA), PC member, 2022 - present
  • Silicon Valley Cybersecurity Conference (SVCC), PC member, 2021 - present
  • IEEE MobileCloud, PC member, 2021
  • IEEE JSAC, reviewer
  • IEEE TDSC, reviewer
  • IEEE TNSM, reviewer
  • IEEE Systems Journal, reviewer
  • IEEE Access, reviewer
  • Elsevier FGCS, reviewer
  • Elsevier JISA, reviewer
  • IEEE Globecom, reviewer
  • ACM AsiaCCS, reviewer
  • IEEE Euro S&P, reviewer


  • CAN201 Introduction to Networking
  • CAN409 Information Security


  • IEEE Member
  • IET Member
  • Advance HE Fellowship
Wenjun Fan