- George Mason University‘s SECSAT Lab is using Theta EdgeCloud Hybrid to boost research in security and privacy.
- The collaboration supports research in extended reality, decentralized finance, and memory-safe coding.
- Prof. Xiaokuan Zhang highlighted Theta’s affordable GPU power for scaling AI and blockchain research.
- GMU joins a global network of 22 universities leveraging EdgeCloud Hybrid’s decentralized GPU resources.
- The lab’s focus areas include XR vulnerabilities, DeFi security, safe coding in Rust, and data privacy.
The Security of Emerging Computer Systems And Technologies (SECSAT) Lab at George Mason University (GMU) has started using Theta EdgeCloud Hybrid to advance work in system security and privacy. The lab, led by Assistant Professor Xiaokuan Zhang, Ph.D, selected the platform to accelerate research on new technology risks and solutions.
Prof. Zhang leads research on the security of areas including extended reality (XR), decentralized finance (DeFi/Web3), and memory-safe programming languages like Rust. The SECSAT Lab will use Theta’s platform, which combines decentralized community-run GPUs with high-performance options, to scale up analysis and testing without high costs.
“Theta’s hybrid GPU platform uniquely enables us to scale our security research,” said Prof. Zhang. “The combination of Theta’s cost-effective NVIDIA 3000- and 4000-series GPUs and high-performance A100s and H100s allows us to explore advanced projects in AI-driven security testing and blockchain infrastructure analysis. We can do this at scale without large incremental costs.”
According to Mitch Liu, CEO and Co-Founder of Theta Labs, this move reflects a trend among researchers choosing decentralized solutions over traditional cloud providers because of lower costs and faster access. “Like other recent customers, Prof Zhang from George Mason University and his security research lab selected EdgeCloud Hybrid because of Theta’s decentralized infrastructure of tens of thousands of community run GPUs,” Liu said. He also noted the system’s growing adoption among universities and sports organizations.
GMU now joins a lineup of 22 global universities—including Stanford, KAIST, Seoul National University, NTU Singapore, and Hongik University—using EdgeCloud Hybrid for research and data analysis. Sports partners using the platform include NBA, NHL, and MLS teams, as well as top esports organizations.
The SECSAT Lab’s projects include investigating XR system vulnerabilities, analyzing cross-chain (multi-blockchain) connections in DeFi security, and improving safety in Rust coding. Other work includes mobile security, preventing data leaks, and studying side-channel attacks, which are security risks from unintended information leaks in computing systems.
George Mason University is Virginia’s largest public research institution and achieved a top 20 ranking in security by CSRankings as of June 2025. The school is recognized for its leading faculty in computer science and regularly hosts major security conferences, including the NSF Workshop on Networking and Systems Challenges in Immersive Computing. For more information, visit the George Mason University Computer Science department or learn about Prof. Zhang’s work here.
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