Dr. Palvi Aggarwal is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Texas, El Paso. Prior to that, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. She earned her Ph.D. in cybersecurity from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, India, and a master’s in Information Security from Thapar University, India.

• Young Alumni Achiever Award (Academic Excellence) - IIT Mandi, India (03/01/2022-03/31/2022)
• Conference Best Paper Award - 2020 Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (10/01/2020-10/31/2020)
• Conference Paper Award - HICSS 2020: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (01/01/2020-01/31/2020)
• Best Teaching Assistant Award, - Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, India (02/01/2017-02/28/2017)

• Ph D in Cybersecurity, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (2018)
• MS in Information Security, Thapar University (2014)
• B.Eng. in Computer Science, Punjab Technical University (2012)

• Discovering Cognitive Biases in Cyber Attackers' Network Exploitation Activities: A Case Study 15th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2024) (in press), Palvi Aggarwal.
• What do transfer students have to say? An Analysis of the Experience of Transfer Students through Topic Modeling 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (in press), Claire MacDonald, Palvi Aggarwal.
• Evidence of Cognitive Biases in Cyber Attackers from An Empirical Study. 57th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2024), Palvi Aggarwal, Nowmi S. Rubaiyet .
• Does subnetting and port hardening influence human adversarial decisions? An investigation via a HackIT tool. Frontiers in Big Data (2023), Palvi Aggarwal.
• A Preliminary Factor Analysis on the Success of Computing Major Transfer Students. 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition (2023), Palvi Aggarwal.
• Cognitive elements of learning and discriminability in anti-phishing training Computers & Security 127 (2023), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Prashanth Rajivan, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• How People Make Decisions Based on Prior Experience: Formulas of Instance-Based Learning Theory (ILBT) Follow from Scale Invariance Proceedings of the 2023 Annual Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society NAFIPS'2023, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 31 - June 2, 2023 (2023), Palvi Aggarwal, Martine C. Ceberio, Olga M. Kosheleva, Vladik Y. Kreinovich.
• How well does GPT phish people? An investigation involving cognitive biases and feedback 2023 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW) (2023), Megha Sharma, Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Varun Dutt.
• Designing effective masking strategies for cyberdefense through human experimentation and cognitive models Computers \& Security 117 (2022), Palvi Aggarwal, Omkar Thakoor, Shahin Jabbari, Edward A. Cranford, Christian Lebiere, Milind Tambe, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Diversifying Deception: Game-Theoretic Models for Two-Sided Deception and Initial Human Studies Springer (2022), Mohammad S. Miah, Palvi Aggarwal, Marcus Gutierrez, Omkar Thakoor, Yinuo Du, Oscar Veliz, Kuldeep Singh, Christopher Kiekintveld, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Influence of probing action costs on adversarial decision-making in a deception game (2022), Harsh Katakwar, Palvi Aggarwal, Zahid Maqbool, Varun Dutt.
• Learning about the effects of alert uncertainty in attack and defend decisions via cognitive modeling Human Factors 64 2 (2022), Palvi Aggarwal, Frederic Moisan, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Varun Dutt.
• Modeling the effects of network size in a deception game involving honeypots Academic Press (2022), Harsh Katakwar, Shashank Uttrani, Palvi Aggarwal, Varun Dutt.
• Truth-Telling in a Sender--Receiver Game: Social Value Orientation and Incentives Symmetry 14 8 (2022), Hanshu Zhang, Frederic Moisan, Palvi Aggarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Sequential Decisions from Sampling: Inductive Generation of Stopping Decisions Using Instance-Based Learning Theory (2021), Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal.
• Decoys in Cybersecurity: An Exploratory Study to Test the Effectiveness of 2-sided Deception arXiv e-prints (2021), Palvi Aggarwal, Yinuo Du, Kuldeep Singh, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• A Social Dilemma for Cybersecurity: Sharing information among defenders https://www.dropbox.com/s/n1gaqjteniesnw (2021), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Decoys in Cybersecurity: An Exploratory Study to Test the Effectiveness of 2-sided Deception arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.11037 (2021), Palvi Aggarwal, Yinuo Du, Kuldeep Singh, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Evaluating Adaptive Deception Strategies for Cyber Defense with Human Adversaries Game Theory and Machine Learning for Cyber Security (2021), Palvi Aggarwal, Marcus Gutierrez, Christopher Kiekintveld, Bo\vsansk\`y, Branislav, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Modeling phishing susceptibility as decisions from experience. 19 (2021), EA Cranford, Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, C Lebiere, C Gonzalez.
• Towards a Cognitive Theory of Cyber Deception Cognitive Science 45 7 (2021), Edward A. Cranford, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal, Milind Tambe, Sarah Cooney, Christian Lebiere.
• What makes phishing emails hard for humans to detect? 64 1 (2021), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Prashanth Rajivan, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• An exploratory study of a masking strategy of cyberdeception using cybervan Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 64 1 (2020), Palvi Aggarwal, Omkar Thakoor, Aditya Mate, Milind Tambe, Edward A. Cranford, Christian Lebiere, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• What Attackers Know and What They Have to Lose: Framing Effects on Cyber-attacker Decision Making Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 64 1 (2020), Edward A. Cranford, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal, Milind Tambe, Christian Lebiere.
• Computational cognitive modeling and validation of Dp140 induced alteration of working memory in Duchenne muscular dystrophy Scientific reports 10 1 (2020), Rahul Tyagi, Palvi Aggarwal, Manju Mohanty, Varun Dutt, Akshay Anand.
• Computational cognitive modeling and validation of Dp140 induced alteration of working memory in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group) 10 1 (2020), Tyagi Rahul, Aggarwal Palvi, Mohanty Manju, Dutt Varun, Anand Akshay.
• Cyber Security: Effects of Penalizing Defenders in Cyber-Security Games via Experimentation and Computational Modeling Frontiers in psychology 11 (2020), Zahid Maqbool, Palvi Aggarwal, VS Pammi, Varun Dutt.
• Design of Dynamic and Personalized Deception: A Research Framework and New Insights Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 53 (2020), Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal, Christian Lebiere, Edward Cranford.
• Exploiting Bounded Rationality in Risk-based Cyber Camouflage Games International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security (2020), Omkar Thakoor, Shahin Jabbari, Palvi Aggarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Milind Tambe, Phebe Vayanos.
• HackIt: a real-time simulation tool for studying real-world cyberattacks in the laboratory Springer, Cham (2020), Palvi Aggarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Varun Dutt.
• Influence of network size on adversarial decisions in a deception game involving honeypots Frontiers in psychology 11 (2020), Harsh Katakwar, Palvi Aggarwal, Zahid Maqbool, Varun Dutt.
• Learning About the Effects of Alert Uncertainty in Attack and Defend Decisions via Cognitive Modeling Human Factors (2020), Palvi Aggarwal, Frederic Moisan, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Varun Dutt.
• The role of information about opponent’s actions and intrusion-detection alerts on cyber decisions in cyber security games Cyber Security: A Peer-Reviewed Journal 3 4 (2020), Palvi Aggarwal, Varun Dutt.
• Toward Personalized Deceptive Signaling for Cyber Defense Using Cognitive Models Topics in Cognitive Science 12 3 (2020), Edward A. Cranford, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal, Sarah Cooney, Milind Tambe, Christian Lebiere.
• What makes phishing emails hard for humans to detect? Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 64 1 (2020), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Prashanth Rajivan, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Adaptive cyber deception: Cognitively informed signaling for cyber defense Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (2020), Edward Cranford, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Palvi Aggarwal, Sarah Cooney, Milind Tambe, Christian Lebiere.
• Hackit: a human-in-the-loop simulation tool for realistic cyber deception experiments (2019), Palvi Aggarwal, Aksh Gautam, Vaibhav Agarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez, Varun Dutt.
• Modeling Cognitive Dynamics in End-User Response to Phishing Emails (2019), Edward A. Cranford, Christian Lebiere, Prashanth Rajivan, Palvi Aggarwal, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Training to detect phishing emails: Effects of the frequency of experienced phishing emails 63 1 (2019), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Prashanth Rajivan, Cleotilde Gonzalez.
• Training to Detect Phishing Emails: Effects of the Frequency of Experienced Phishing Emails 63 1 (2019), Kuldeep Singh, Palvi Aggarwal, Prashanth Rajivan, Cleotilde Gonzalez.

• Designing effective masking strategies for cyberdefense through human experimentation and cognitive models (2022), Volume Genoa, Italy, Palvi Aggarwal.
• Supply Chain Cyber Defense (2021), Palvi Aggarwal.
• Behavioral Cyber Deception: Human Experimentation and Cognitive Modeling Approach for Developing Adaptive and Personalized Defense (2021), Volume Tempe, AZ, Palvi Aggarwal.
• The Art of Cyber Deception: Moving Towards Dynamic and Personalized Defense (2021), Volume Pittsburgh, PA, Palvi Aggarwal.
• Transforming Cybersecurity from a Disabler to an Enabler (2020), Volume Pittsburgh, PA, Palvi Aggarwal.
• An Exploratory Study of a Masking Strategy of Cyber Deception Using CyberVAN (2020), Volume Pittsburgh, PA, Palvi Aggarwal.
• The Art of Cyber Deception: Moving Towards Dynamic and Personalized Defense (2020), Volume India, Palvi Aggarwal.
• The Role of Deception in Attack Decisions Using Cyber-Security Scenarios (2019), Volume Pittsburgh, PA, Palvi Aggarwal, .

• PsyCCDef: Psychologically-inspired Cognitive Cyber Defenses
• Exploiting Cognitive Biases to Disrupt Attacker’s Decision Making