Athina Markopoulou

Athina Markopoulou

Professor, EECS Dept
Director, CalIT2@UCI

Lead PI: ProperData, Eng+Society Institute on AI
Samueli School of Engineering
University of California, Irvine
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Bio. Athina Markopoulou is a Professor in the EECS Department at UCI Irvine. Her research interests are broadly in the broad area of networking, with current focus on privacy and data transparency. She received a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 1996, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1998 and 2003, respectively. She joined UCI in 2006, where is affiliated with the EECS dept (where she was the Department Chair 2019-2022), the CS dept (joint appointment), the Networked Systems program (where she previously served as Program Director). She currently serves as the Director of Calit2@UCI, and as the lead PI for two center-scale research projects: (i) ProperData – an NSF SaTC Frontiers center on “Protecting Personal Data on the Internet”, and (ii) the Samueli’s School Eng+Society Institute on AI. From 2022 to 2025, she also served as the Associate Dean for Graduate and Professional Studies for the Samueli School of Engineering. Prior to joining UCI, she held short-term positions at SprintLabs, Arista Networks, and IT University of Copenhagen. She has co-founded Shoelace Wireless (2012-16). She has received the NSF CAREER award in 2008, the SSoE Faculty Mid Career Research Award in 2014, a UCI Chancellor’s Fellowship 2019-2022, the N2Women’s Start Award in 2022, the N. & S. Alexopoulos EECS Chair at UC Irvine, 2019-2022, and the SSoE Senior Faculty Excellence-in-Research Award in 2023. She has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and for ACM Computer Communications Review, as the General Co-Chair for ACM CoNEXT 2016, as TPC Co-Chair for ACM SIGMETRICS 2020 and NetCod 2012, on the ACM SIGMETRICS Board 2023-2025, the ACM SIGCOMM Vice-Chair 2025+, and on numerous committees for top ACM and IEEE conferences. She has published over 100 papers, several of which with distinctions, and has graduated over 20 Ph.D. students and postdocs. She is an IEEE Fellow and a Distinguished Member of the ACM.

Research

My background is in computer networks and network measurement, which I currently apply on problems at the intersection of information technology and society. Current interests include: privacy and data transparency, tech policy, AI safety, algorithmic auditing, social networks, and emerging platforms such as virtual and augmented reality, voice assistants and LLM-powered services.

Current center-scale projects:

Sample results:

For up-to-date information, please check ProperData and my group’s publications.

Teaching

Contact

Summer 2025: By appointment only. For a faster response regarding ProperData matters, please CC properata at uci.edu.

If you are writing for matters related to graduate student affairs in the school of engineering, please note that, as of July 1st 2025, I have stepped down from my role as Associate Dean. Please contact: gradengr at uci.edu (if you are student), or ssoe-adgps at uci.edu (otherwise).

Openings

  • I am always looking for talented PhD students, postdocs, and visitors for my group and the ProperData project.
  • If you are a prospective PhD student applying for F2026, please apply to UCI to the PhD programs I am affiliated with (i.e., Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Networked Systems, Computer Science), and indicate in your application that you are interested in working with me.
  • If you are a graduate or undergraduate student already at UCI, at any program (including but not limited to EECS, CS, NetSys), please come to my office hours.

Selected Press