William J. Tolley

Professional Overview

I am an Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science at Hampden-Sydney College and President of Breakpointing Bad, a nonprofit research organization focused on technical security problems involving privacy, censorship, surveillance, and Internet freedom.

My research is broadly in systems and network security, with a particular interest in the places where technologies intended to provide privacy or security fail in practice. My recent work has examined VPN security, encrypted communications, mobile trust infrastructure, censorship and surveillance, and what information remains exposed even when network traffic is encrypted.

Building Computer Science at H-SC

At Hampden-Sydney, I am helping build out the College's computer science program, including the development of new computer science major and minor curricula, new courses, and research opportunities for students. I also advise the College's esports program and am developing a shielded research space for experiments involving radio-frequency signals, wireless systems, privacy, and security.

Research & Collaboration

A major part of what I enjoy about working at a liberal arts college is involving undergraduates directly in technical research. I am always interested in working with students and collaborators on problems in security, privacy, censorship measurement, networking, and related areas—especially projects where we can build something, break something, measure something that is difficult to observe, or figure out why a system does not behave the way everyone assumes it does.