About Me

I am a PhD at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, supervised by Prof. Yushu Zhang. I am currently studying at the University of Milan as a visiting scholar, supervised by Prof. Pierangela Samarati (IEEE/ACM Fellow, the originator of k-anonymity) and Prof. Vincenzo Piuri (IEEE Fellow).

Email: wangtao21@nuaa.edu.cn; wangtao_dzgg@163.com; taow1776@gmail.com

Research Interests: Visual Privacy, Information Theoretical Privacy, Adversarial Perturbation, AIGC

News

Selected Publications

[1] Tao Wang, Yushu Zhang*, Xiangli Xiao, Kun Xu, Lin Yuan, Wenying Wen, and Yuming Fang. Make Identity Unextractable yet Perceptible: Synthesis-Based Privacy Protection for Subject Faces in Photos. arXiv, 2025. [code], [API], [TL;DR]

[2] Tao Wang, Yushu Zhang*, Zixuan Yang, Xiangli Xiao, Hua Zhang, and Zhongyun Hua. Seeing is not Believing: An Identity Hider for Human Vision Privacy Protection. IEEE Trans. Biometr., Behav., Identity Sci., 2025, 7(2): 170-181. JCR Q2, [code]

[3] Tao Wang, Wenying Weng*, Xiangli Xiao, Zhongyun Hua, Yushu Zhang, and Yuming Fang. Beyond Privacy: Generating Privacy-Preserving Faces Supporting Robust Image Authentication. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur., 2025, 20: 2564-2576. CCF A, JCR Q1, [code], [TL;DR]

[4] Tao Wang, Yushu Zhang*, Xiangli Xiao, Lin Yuan, Zhihua Xia, and Jian Weng. Make Privacy Renewable! Generating Privacy-Preserving Faces Supporting Cancelable Biometric Recognition. ACM Int. Conf. Multimedia, 2024: 10268-10276. CCF A, [code]

[5] Tao Wang, Yushu Zhang*, Shuren Qi, Ruoyu Zhao, Zhihua Xia, and Jian Weng. Security and Privacy on Generative Data in AIGC: A Survey. ACM Comput. Surv., 2024, 57(4): 1-34. IF 28, JCR Q1, 🏆 ESI Highly Cited Paper, [reading list]

[6] Wenying Wen, Zhouxin Wu, Yushu Zhang*, Tao Wang, Xiangli Xiao, and Yuming Fang. Medical Archive in an Image: Generating a High-Capacity Customizable Cover Image for Medical Privacy Protection. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secure Comput., 2025. CCF A, JCR Q1

[7] Yushu Zhang, Junhao Ji*, Tao Wang, Ruoyu Zhao, Wenying Wen, and Yong Xiang. Make Identity Indistinguishable: Utility-Preserving Face Dataset Publication with Provable Privacy Guarantees. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., 2025, 48(1): 127-139. CCF A, JCR Q1

[8] Yushu Zhang, Zixuan Yang, Tao Wang*, Zhongyun Hua, and Jian Weng. Tailor-made Face Privacy Protection via Class-wise Targeted Universal Adversarial Perturbations. IEEE Trans. Dependable Secure Comput., 2025, 20(5): 5108-5120. CCF A, JCR Q1

[9] Zixuan Yang, Yushu Zhang*, Tao Wang, Zhongyun Hua, Zhihua Xia, and Jian Weng. Once-for-all: Efficient Visual Face Privacy Protection via Person-specific Veils. ACM Int. Conf. Multimedia, 2024: 7705-7713. CCF A, 🏆 Honourable Mention Award, [TL;DR]

[10] Yushu Zhang, Tao Wang, Ruoyu Zhao*, Wenying Wen, and Youwen Zhu. RAPP: Reversible Privacy Preservation for Various Face Attributes. IEEE Trans. Inf. Forensics Secur., 2023, 18: 3074-3087. CCF A, JCR Q1, [TL;DR]

Honors

• CAST Young Sci-Tech Talent Cultivation Project (Doctoral Student Special Program), 2025
• Puxin Elite Scholarship, 2025
• CSC Scholarship of High-Level Postgraduate Program, 2025
• ACM MM Honorable Mention Award, 2024
• National Scholarships for Postgraduate Students, 2023
• Second Prize of the Fifth National Crypto-math Challenge at the National Level, 2020

Projects

• Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, Friendly Face Privacy Protection Based on AIGC, 2025-2026, PI

Educations

• 2025.09 - Now,     Visiting Scholar (CSC), University of Milan, Italy, supervised by Prof. Pierangela Samarati (IEEE/ACM Fellow).
• 2024.04 - Now,     Ph.D., Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Cyberspace Security, China, supervised by Prof. Yushu Zhang.
• 2021.09 - 2024.04, M.S., Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Cyberspace Security, China, supervised by Prof. Yushu Zhang.
• 2017.09 - 2021.06, B.E., Anhui Normal University, Computer Science and Technology, China, supervised by Prof. Liping Sun.

Services

• Journal Reviewer: IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering; IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing; IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology; IEEE Transactions on Biometrics, Behavior, and Identity Science; Knowledge-Based Systems; Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence; Expert Systems with Applications; Information Sciences; Neural Networks; International Journal of Information Security; Computers in Biology and Medicine
• Conference Reviewer: ICLR, SIGKDD, ACM MM