The ECE Department is hosting a seminar on June 2nd at 11am: "High-Level Approaches to Hardware and Embedded Systems" with Prof. Ramesh Karri from New York University. Hosted by Prof. Hai Zhou.

Abstract: As designers increasingly rely on third-party intellectual property (IP) cores and outsourcing in the integrated circuit (IC) design and manufacturing process, security vulnerabilities have been on the rise. This has forced both IC designers and end users to re- evaluate their trust in ICs, as unprotected ICs are susceptible to reverse engineering, IP piracy, and the insertion of malicious circuits and backdoors. In this talk, I will present High-Level Design for Trust techniques that my group has developed to address these threats: Locking of Designs and Secure Sourcing of IPs for High-Level Integration. Implementing built-in locking mechanisms aims to prevent reverse engineering. Secure Sourcing thwarts Trojan insertion in third-party IPs. I will wrap up the presentation by emphasizing the importance of hardware security from economic, security, and safety standpoints, and share my vision for the exciting field of hardware cybersecurity.

Bio: Prof. Ramesh Karri is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New York University. He co-directs the NYU Center for Cyber Security (http://cyber.nyu.edu). He co-founded the Trust-Hub (http://trust-hub.org) and founded/organizes the Embedded Systems Challenge (https://csaw.engineering.nyu.edu/esc), the annual red team blue team event. Ramesh Karri holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California at San Diego, and a B.E in ECE from Andhra University. With a focus on hardware cybersecurity, his research and educational endeavors encompass trustworthy ICs, processors, and cyber-physical systems; security-aware computer-aided design, test, verification, validation, and reliability; nano meets security; hardware security competitions, benchmarks, and metrics; biochip security; and additive manufacturing security. Ramesh has published over 300 articles in prestigious journals and conferences. A Fellow of IEEE, Ramesh's work on hardware cybersecurity has earned numerous best paper award nominations (ICCD 2015 and DFTS 2015) and awards (ITC 2014, CCS 2013, DFTS 2013, VLSI Design 2012, ACM Student Research Competition at DAC 2012, ICCAD 2013, DAC 2014, ACM Grand Finals 2013, Kaspersky Challenge, and Embedded Security Challenge). He has also received the Humboldt Fellowship and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Currently, Ramesh serves as the Editor in Chief of the ACM Journal of Emerging Computing Technologies and Associate Editor of IEEE and ACM journals and transactions. He has held leadership roles in conferences, including IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), IEEE Symposium on Hardware- Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), IEEE Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerant Nano VLSI Systems (DFTS), NANOARCH, RFIDSEC, and WISEC. Additionally, he has served on numerous program committees (DAC, ICCAD, HOST, ITC, VTS, ETS, ICCD, DTIS, WIFS) and as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor (2013-2015). Ramesh contributed to the Executive Committee of the IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference, leading the Security@DAC initiative (2014-2017), and has delivered invited keynotes, talks, and tutorials on Hardware Security and Trust at various events (ESRF, DAC, DATE, VTS, ITC, ICCD, NATW, LATW, COSADE, CROSSING, MICRO).