The ASCS Laboratory is now part of the Secure, Trusted, and Assured Microelectronics (STAM) Center in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University
Michel A. Kinsy

Associate Professor
Director of the Secure, Trusted, and Assured Microelectronics (STAM) CenterSchool of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI)
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University
Short Bio
Received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013. In my doctoral work I was one of the first to develop algorithms and hardware techniques to emulate and control large-scale power systems at the microsecond resolution. This work has been continued by the MIT spin-off, Typhoon HIL, Inc. Before joining the ASU faculty, I was an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). I also held faculty positions at Boston University and University of Oregon. From 2013 to 2014, I was a fully-cleared Member of the Technical Staff at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. I am an MIT Presidential Fellow and an Inaugural Skip Ellis Career Award recipient.Research Interests
His research interests lie in the general area of computer architecture, with particular emphasis on (1) secure architectures, (2) quantum-proof crypto-systems design, (3) self-aware polymorphous architectures, and (4) compute acceleration engine architectures.Old Group Pictures
January 2019

December 2017

Former Graduate Students, Researchers, and Staff Affiliates

Mihailo Isakov
Undergraduate Degree:
B.S. in Electrical Engineering / Software Engineering, Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad, SerbiaResearch Interests
Mihailo's research focuses on investigating neuromorphic computing systems. In particular, he explores architectural support for machine learning algorithms prone to parallelization and efficient hardware implementation. Currently, he is investigating novel neural architectures and accelerating deep neural networks by constraining them to fast, low-power and highly parallelizable operations.
Alan Ehret
Undergraduate Degree:
B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Miami UniversityResearch Interests
Alan Ehret is from Dayton, Ohio. Alan’s research interest is computer architecture. He is currently examining adaptive and reconfigurable systems design, hardwware acceleration of agent-based model simulations, and RISC-V architecture design space exploration.
Miguel Mark
Undergraduate Degree:
B.S. in Computer Science, University of the Virgin IslandsResearch Interests
System-leve security, especially, software-hardware interfaces and secure Operating System kernel design for conventional and emerging hardware platforms.
Eliakin Del Rosario
Undergraduate Degree:
B.S. in Computer Science, University of the Virgin IslandsResearch Interests
Eliakin’s research interests lie in the design of adaptive-approximate computing systems. Specifically, architectures that are able to independently reason about the trade-off between the precision of results and the computational time, evaluate the hardware latency and bandwidth constraints against the program needs, and enforce execution security policies.
Kyungrak Choi
Graduate Degree:
M.E. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.Undergraduate Degree:
B.E. in Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea.Research Interests
Kyungrak's research interests include low-power and high-performance processor designs in advanced technologies. He is currently examing efficient circuit-level implementations Clifford algebra operations, e.g., Quaternions.
Shuyu Qiu
Degree:
B.S. from Northeastern University, ChinaResearch Interests
Shuyu's research interests is secure computer architecture, especially, exploring the mechanism to defend against cache side-channel attacks.Current Project
Adaptive Secure Caches
Mikaela Currier
Degree:
B.S. from Colorado State University/Lambda School CertificateResearch Interests
Mikaela focuses her research on system optimization, data visualization, software architecture, microservices, machine learning, and UX.
Dr. David H. Kebo
Short Bio
David is currently an Instructional Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Southern Methodist University in 2017, M.S. in Computer Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011, and B.S. in Computer Engineering from University of Evansville in 2008.Research Interests
David currently focuses his research on the application of formal methods (FM) and formal verification (FV) techniques to secure computing systems. He is concerned with building rigorous foundations that allow for the precise reasoning of security guarantees in computer systems.
Dr. Bryant W. York
Short Bio
Bryant earned the A.B. in Mathematics from Brandeis University (1967), the M.S. in Management from MIT (1971), the M.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1981) in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. He was a Research Staff Member at the IBM San Jose Research Labs (1979-1983), a Consulting Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Artificial Intelligence Center (1983-1986), associate professor of computer science at Boston University (1986 – 1991) and Northeastern University (1991 – 2001), and professor of computer science at Portland State University (2001 – 2019). He also served as a program officer at the National Science Foundation (1990-1991); served on the advisory committee to the Computer Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE) of NSF (1992-1998, 2002-2006); and served on the advisory committee to the Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) of NSF (2008 - 2014).Research Focus
Post-quantum cryptography, computational algebra, and crystallographic computations.
Katherine Alderman
Undergraduate Degree:
B.A. in Political Science, Simmons UniversityGraduate Degree:
M.S. in STEM Education, Tufts UniversityRemote Laboratory Assistant
Student Alumni

Lake Bu
First employment: Draper Laboratory[ 2019 ] Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University
Thesis: Design of Secure and Trustworthy System-on-Chip Architectures using Hardware-based Root-of-Trust Techniques

Sahan Bandara
[ 2019 ] M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston UniversityThesis: Investigating the viability of adaptive caches as a defense mechanism against cache side-channel attacks
[Update] Doctoral student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Donato Kava
First employment: MIT Lincoln Laboratory[ 2018 ] M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Shreeya Khadka
First employment: NVIDIA Corporation[ 2018 ] M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Hien Nguyen
First employment: JDA Software[ 2018 ] M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Rashmi Agrawal
First employment: Intel Corporation[ 2018 ] M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University
[Update] Doctoral student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston University

Karanraj Chauhan
[ 2019 ] B.S. Computer Engineering, Boston UniversityKaranraj was a BU Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program fellow.

Spencer Liu
[ 2019 ] B.S. Computer Engineering, Boston University
Byoungsul Lee
[ 2019 ] B.S. Computer Engineering, Boston UniversityResearch Fellows Alumni
Ahmad Patooghy
Short Bio
Ahmad Patooghy received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2005 and 2011, respectively. He was a research associate in the Adaptive and Secure Computing Systems (ASCS) Laboratory in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University from 2017 to 2018.Research Interests
His research interests include hardware design for security/test/reliability, architectural design of multi- and many-core chips, dependability and security evaluation of VLSI circuits, and analytical modeling.First Employment/Current Position
Assistant Professor at the University of Central Arkansas.
Nikola Hardi
Degree:
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad, SerbiaResearch Interests
Nikola's research interests are in computer architecture, compilers, programming language theory and security. His current research focuses on binary analysis, program diversification and obfuscation techniques.Current Position
Researcher at CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Shanshan Zhao
Degree:
M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Boston UniversityResearch Interests
Shanshan’s research focuses on hardware security, especially techniques for leveraging the built-in physical properties of systems for identification and security.Current Position
Virginia Tech - Doctoral Student.
Lin Ma
Degree:
B.S. in Computer Engineering, Boston University.Research Interests
Lin is actively developing and investigating large-scale distributed embedded systems and Internet of Things (IoT) Devices. She is particularly interested in technical challenges that arise at the intersection of reliability, security, and privacy in these systems.Current Position
Associate Software Engineer, iRobot
Yijun Mao
Degree
B.S. in Computer Science and Technology at the School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU).Research Interests
Yijun’s research interests are deep neural network algorithms and efficient hardware implementation. His current focus is to quantize neural network for devices with limited hardware resources.Current Position
Xi’an Jiaotong University (XJTU)
Cheng Hai
Short Bio
Dr. Hai is with the Department of Electrical and engineering at Heilongjiang University. He received his M.Sc. in Harbin Institute of Technology and Ph.D. in Heilongjiang University. He is currently a visiting scholar in the Adaptive and Secure Computing Systems (ASCS) Laboratory in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Boston University.Research Interests
His research interests include efficient hardware design for security algorithms and chaotic system applications.Current Position
Faculty member at Heilongjiang University
Ebadollah Taheri
Degree:
M.S. in Digital Electronics from Iran University of Science and Technology.Research Interests
Ebadollah’s research interests include interconnection networks, fault-tolerant multi/many core designs and thermal-aware 3D chips.