Faculty Directory

Jakub Szefer

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

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Departments

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research Interests

Jakub Szefer is an Associate Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northwestern University where he leads the Computer Architecture and Security Lab (CASLAB). His research and teaching focuses on security attacks and defenses at the computer architecture and hardware levels of computer systems. His research encompasses security of processor architectures, reconfigurable logic, post-quantum cryptographic accelerators, and today's emergent quantum computing systems.

Selected Publications

Theodoros Trochatos, Christopher Kang, Andrew Wang, Frederic T Chong, and Jakub Szefer, TraceQ: Trace-Based Reconstruction of Quantum Circuit Dataflow in Surface-Code Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing", in International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), 2026.

Chuanqi Xu, Jamie Sikora, and Jakub Szefer, "Securing Quantum Computer Reset with One-Time Pads", in Quantum Security and Privacy Workshop (QSec), 2025.

Ferhat Erata, Chuanqi Xu, Ruzica Piskac, and Jakub Szefer, "Quantum Circuit Reconstruction from Power Side-Channel Attacks on Quantum Computer Controllers", in Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES), 2024.

Theodoros Trochatos, Sanjay Deshpande, Chuanqi Xu, Yao Lu, Yongshan Ding, and Jakub Szefer, "Dynamic Pulse Switching for Protection of Quantum Computation on Untrusted Clouds", in International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), May 2024.

Chuanqi Xu, Jessie Chen, Allen Mi, and Jakub Szefer, "Securing NISQ Quantum Computer Reset Operations Against Higher Energy State Attacks", in Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), November 2023.