IMDEA Networks
Dr. Narseo VALLINA-RODRÍGUEZ
Research Associate Professor (Ramon y Cajal Fellow)
- Affiliation: IMDEA Networks Institute
- PhD: Computer Science - University of Cambridge. Cambridge, UK
- Former position: Research Staff. International Computer Science Institute (ICSI)
- Joining date: October 2016
- Email: narseo.vallinanetworks.imdea.org
- Phone: +34 91 481 6956
Biography
I am an Associate Research Professor at IMDEA Networks where I lead the Internet Analytics Group (IAG). I am a co-founder of AppCensus, a tech startup focused on the development of scalable solutions for testing and analysing the privacy risks of mobile applications. Before joining IMDEA, I was a research scientist at ICSI at Berkeley (USA) and I obtained my Ph.D in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Prof.Jon Crowcroft. I also worked at industry research labs such as Vodafone R&D, T-labs Berlin, and Telefonica Research.
My research focuses on (1) online privacy and security, bridging technical and regulatory perspectives, and (2) Internet measurement. With an h-index of 42, I have co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed publications in leading venues in security, privacy, and networking, including IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, ACM IMC, and ACM CoNEXT. My work has received best paper awards at the 2020 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), USENIX Security’19, ACM IMC’18, ACM HotMiddlebox’15, and ACM CoNEXT’14, as well as the ACM IMC 2018 Community Contribution Award.
I served as General Co-Chair of ACM IMC 2024 in Madrid and on the Technical Program Committees of leading conferences including IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, USENIX Security, WWW, ACM IMC, and ACM CoNEXT. In 2023, I received the USENIX Security 2023 Distinguished Reviewer Award. As Principal Investigator, I have secured over €3 million in competitive funding from national and EU research agencies.
The scientific and societal value of my research contributions has been recognized by European Data Protection Agencies and industry actors. I have been part of the European Data Protection Board Pool of Experts since 2022. My discoveries have led to policy changes in the Google Play Store, triggered class actions and regulatory investigations, contributed to standardization efforts, and resulted in security improvements in widely used platforms and software—including Android, Chrome, Firefox, and the Linux kernel. I am also the co-inventor of multiple patents.
For my research contributions and leadership, I was awarded Ramón y Cajal Fellowship by the Spanish Ministry of Science in 2021, elected ACM Senior Member in 2021, and received the Young Investigators Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain in 2023. I have also received multiple distinctions, including the AEPD Emilio Aced Award (2019, 2020, 2021), the CNIL-INRIA Privacy Protection Award (2019, 2021), the Caspar Bowden PETS Award (2020), the IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Award, and the Google Faculty Research Award (2018). My research has been featured by major international media outlets, including The New York Times, ArsTechnica, The Washington Post, The Guardian or El País.
A PDF version of my full CV is available here.
For an up-to-date and complete list of my research publications, you can visit my Google Scholar or my ORCID profiles.
I am always looking for motivated PostDocs, Ph.D., master’s and undergraduate students interested in exploring the general areas of network measurements, mobile security and privacy. If you are one of them, feel free to contact me at any time to explore potential opportunities.
- Medalla Jovenes Investigadores, Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain. 2023
- USENIX Security Symposium, Distinguished Reviewer Award
- ACM Senior Member 2021
- AEPD Emilio Aced Award 2021. Awarded Paper: 50 Ways to Leak Your Data: An Exploration of Apps’
Circumvention of the Android Permissions System (Published at USENIX Security’19) - 2020 Ramon y Cajal Fellow.
- 2020 Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. Awarded Paper: “Won’t somebody think of the children?” examining COPPA compliance at scale (Paper published at PETS’18)
- IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P) 2020. Best Practical Paper Award. Awarded Paper: An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software.
- AEPD Emilio Aced Award 2020. Awarded Paper: Angel or devil? a privacy study of mobile parental control apps (Published at PETS’20)
- INRIA-CNIL 2019 Privacy Protection Prize. Awarded Paper: An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software. (Paper published at IEEE Symposium on S&P 2020)
- AEPD Emilio Aced Award 2019. Awarded Paper: An Analysis of Pre-installed Android Software. (Paper published at IEEE Symposium on S&P 2020)
- USENIX Security Symposium 2019. Distinguished Paper Award. Awarded Paper: 50 ways to leak your data: An exploration of apps’ circumvention of the android permissions system.
- Google Faculty Research Awards 2018 (Privacy)
- ACM IMC 2018. Distinguished Paper Award. Awarded Paper: Coming of Age: A Longitudinal Study of TLS Deployment
- ACM IMC 2018. Community Contribution Award. Awarded Paper: A Long Way to the Top: Significance, Structure, and Stability of Internet Top Lists
- 2017 IETF/IRPF Applied Networking Research Prize. Awarded Paper: A multi-perspective analysis of carrier-grade NAT deploymentA multi-perspective analysis of carrier-grade NAT deployment, (Published at ACM IMC’16)
- 2016 Data Transparency Lab Grant
- 2015 ACM HotMiddlebox. Best-paper Award. Awarded paper: Header enrichment or ISP enrichment? Emerging privacy threats in mobile networks
- ACM CoNEXT 2014. Best short-paper award. Awarded Paper: A Tangled Mass: The Android Root Certificate Stores
- Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. 2012
Post-docs:
- Aniketh Girish (2025-Present)
Ph.D students:
- Pedro Maciá (2026-Present)
- Roi Sanchez (2026-Present)
- Vinuri Bandara (2022-Present, Google Ph.D. Fellow)
Graduated Ph.D. Students:
- Aniketh Girish (2025)
- Alvaro Feal (2022) (Now at Cisco-ThousandEyes)
- Julien Gamba (2022) (Now at Cisco-ThousandEyes)
- Abbas Razaghpanah (2019) (Co-supervised with P. Gill, Now at Cisco-ThousandEyes)
M.Sc. students & Visitors:
- Mickael Triboulet (Université Bretagne Sud, 2026)
- Tautvydas Jackevicius (U. Granada/U. Padova, 2026)
- Juan Manuel de Santa Olalla Gómez (Universidad de Granada, 2026)
Former post-docs:
- Srdjan Matic (2021), now a Researcher at IMDEA Software
- Marius Paraschiv (2019-2020), now a Post-Doc at the Data Transparency Group
- General Chair. ACM IMC 2024.
- PC chair. 1st ACM MobiSys Workshop on Mobile Data (MOBIDATA), 2016. Co-located with ACM Mobicom
- Demo co-chair at ACM Mobicom, 2020
- Jury: 2022-2026 CNIL-INRIA Privacy Award, 2020 ACM Mobicom Student Research Competition (SRC), 2019 ACM IMC Best Paper Award Committee.
- Workshop co-chair at ACM CoNEXT, 2018
- PC Member: USENIX Security (2025, 2023), The Web Conference (2025), ACM SIGSAC CCS (2021, 2020), ACM Internet Measurements Conference (IMC) (2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018), Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) (2021, 2020, 2019, 2018), IEEE Euro S&P (2025,2024) IEEE/IFIP TMA Conference (TMA) (2021, 2019, 2018), Passive and Active Measurements (PAM) (2019, 2018, 2017), ACM CoNEXT (2018, 2017), Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT) (2018), ACM HotMobile (2018), ACM CoNEXT Student Workshop (2016, 2015).
- Journal reviewer: SIGCOMM CCR, IEEE Transactions of Networking, IEEE Communication Letters,
IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Measuring and Troubleshooting the Internet, IEEE Internet Computing, IEEE Transactions of Mobile Computing. - Project reviewer for the Dutch Research Council (NWO), (2026) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (2026)
- Expert for the VII Plan Regional de Investigación Científica e Innovacion Tecnológica (PRICIT) of the Regional Gov. of Madrid.
Research projects
ODIO
Main researcher
The Open Digital Identity Observatory
More infoarrow_right_altSoftAuditor
Main researcher
Comprehensive data-driven software analysis for the 21st century
More infoarrow_right_altPARASITE
Main researcher
Methods and techniques to characterize supply chain threats in software
More infoarrow_right_altTRUST aWARE
Main researcher
Enhancing Digital Security, Privacy and TRUST in softWARE
More infoarrow_right_altCYBERACTIONING
Main researcher
Training Cybersecurity Skills through Advanced Higher Education Joint Programmes
More infoarrow_right_altSMOOTH
Main researcher
GDPR Compliance Cloud Platform for Micro Enterprises
More infoarrow_right_alt
News
- 18/2/2026. Android 17 now has a new permission to control access to localhost channels!
- 20/1/2026. The CR version of our USENIX'26 paper on localhost tracking is already out!
- 11/12/2025. I appeared before the Spanish Congress to talk about the localhost tracking abuse.
- 09/12/2025. Members of the US Congress have inquired Mark Zuckerberg on the use of localhost sockets for tracking purposes.
- 03/06/2025. Our research on localhost tracking was covered by ArsTechnica
- 03/06/2025. We uncovered a new abuse vector that enables bridging web and mobile tracking paradigms through localhost sockets on Android. It raises concerns about localhost trust models and unrestricted programmatic access to these capabilities.
- 01/01/2024. I will be co-chairing ACM IMC in Madrid with my colleague Guillermo Suarez-Tangil.
- 10/07/2021. I will be serving as jury member for the 8th CNIL-INRIA Privacy Award
- 01/12/2023. I will be co-organizing a Dagstuhl seminar on the technical and regulatory challenges that the new EU Cyber Resilience Act will open.
- 24/11/2023. I have been honored with one of the medals to "Young Investigators" awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy of Science.
- 10/03/2022. I have been interviewed at El Español's "Disruptores-Innovadores" section (in Spanish). I talked about my professional and research career.
- 01/11/2021. Talha will be presenting our work on the (in)correct use of TLS standards by IoT devices at the MAPGR meeting at the IETF-112
- 15/09/2021. Truly honoured for being invited to talk about online privacy and the tracking industry at Gijón conCiencia with Gemma Galdón.
- 15/08/2021. I have been selected as a Ramon y Cajal 2020 Fellow!
- 21/07/2021. ARCEP's "State of the Internet in France" 2021 report cited our paper "The Lockdown Effect: Implications of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Internet Traffic
- 14/07/2021. Our paper "Tracking the deployment of TLS 1.3 on the web: a story of experimentation and centralization" has been selected as "Best of ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR)".