Associate Professor | ASCEND Fellow
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Office: 334J WEB
Jeyavijayan “JV” Rajendran
Ph.D. Students
Zhaokun Han
Zhaokun Han received her Bachelor of Science degree in Microelectronics from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China in 2018. She joined the hardware security lab SETH as a doctoral student in Fall 2018. Now, her interests in research include logic locking, hardware security, and logic synthesis.
Vasudev Gohil
Vasudev Gohil is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and hardware security. He has a keen interest in examining and developing IP protection techniques and applying reinforcement learning techniques for security. He has developed efficient and effective reinforcement learning solutions to improve the security of embedded systems, such as detecting hardware Trojans and identifying fault injection vulnerabilities. He interned with the DSO.ai team at Synopsys Inc., USA, in the summer of 2022, where he worked on improving their AI-based tool for design-space exploration of integrated circuits. Prior to his doctoral studies, Vasudev received a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering with minors in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar.
Rahul Kande
Rahul Kande received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering with a minor in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India in 2017. He worked then at Samsung Research Institute-Delhi, India as an engineer in the RTL Design and Verification Team for one year. He joined the Hardware Security lab in the ECEN department of Texas A&M University in Fall 2018 as a Master’s student and converted to Ph.D. program in Summer 2019. His research interests include RTL Design and Verification in the field of Hardware Security and Computer Architecture.
Chen Chen
Chen Chen received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 2018 and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI, in 2020. He is pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. His current research interests include Hardware Security, Fuzzing, Formal Verification, Statistics, etc.
Saichand Samudrala
Saichand Samudrala received his B.Eng in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Osmania University in 2017. He worked at NCR Corporation, Hyderabad, India as a software engineer for a couple of years. He received an M.Tech. in Microelectronics and VLSI Design from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 2021. He worked in Nvidia, Hyderabad, India as an ASIC engineer for a year. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering at the SETH lab, Texas A&M University, College Station, USA. His research interests include Hardware security, Computer Architecture, and Cryptography.
Jiawen Wu
Jiawen received his Bachelor of Science degree in Integrated Circuit Design from Tianjin University, China, in 2023. He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. His current research interests fall into the fields of VLSI Design and Computer Architecture, especially Hardware Accelerator, Hardware Security, and their intersections.
Nicholas Heinrich-Barna
Nicholas Heinrich-Barna is a double major in Petroleum and Computer Engineering with a minor in Cyber Security. He is interested in a wide array of topics including machine learning and hardware security but is currently focusing on fuzzing.
Master Students
Matthew DeLorenzo
Matthew DeLorenzo received his B.S. in Computer Engineering with minors in Mathematics and Cybersecurity from Texas A&M University in Spring 2023 and is currently pursuing his M.S. in Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is interested in cyber/hardware security and machine learning topics. He joined the SETH lab in Fall 2023 for research relating to the security of 3D heterogeneous integration.
Undergraduate Students
Jack Letsinger
Jack Letsinger is an undergraduate student at Texas A&M University studying Computer Engineering and minoring in Mathematics (graduating Spring 2024). His hobbies include robotics, tinkering with Arduino, and automating tasks with python scripts. His current research interests include hardware security, computer architecture, and embedded systems. He joined the SETH Lab in Summer 2022. He is currently working on hardware fuzzing projects, specifically TheHuzz. He will be going to Cambridge in the Summer to work as a cybersecurity intern for Draper.
Eddie Phillips
Eddie Phillips is an undergraduate student studying Electrical Engineering (graduating Fall 2024). His interests include computer architecture, compilers, and adjacent topics (e.g., parallelism, GPGPU, etc.). In his free time, he enjoys photography and contributing to/using LLVM. He joined the SETH lab in Spring 2023.
Kyle Minihan
Kyle Minihan is an undergraduate student in Computer Engineering (graduating Spring 2025). His interests include cybersecurity and computer architecture, and he is currently focused on hardware fuzzing. He joined SETH lab in Spring 2023.
Tyler Finkbeiner
Tyler Finkbeiner is a Computer Science undergraduate student projected to graduate Fall 2024. His research interests are in computer security or computer optimization/performance. Tyler is also preferably open to distributed systems and computer networking topics. He joined the SETH lab in Spring 2023.
Isidora Wright
Isidora Wright is a Computer Engineering student, graduating in Spring 2024 and minoring in cybersecurity. Her interests are cybersecurity, computer architecture, and hardware security. She joined the SETH Lab in Summer 2023 and is working on hardware fuzzing.
Alumni
Muhammad Yasin
Postdoctoral researcher
Current Affiliation – Professor at the National University of Sciences & Technology, Pakistan
Muhammad Yasin is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at New York University in 2018; an MS in Microsystems Engineering from Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, UAE in 2013; and a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore, Pakistan in 2007. His research interests include Hardware Security, Design for Trust, and Logic Locking.
Satwik Patnaik
Postdoctoral researcher
Satwik Patnaik is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical engineering from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, in September 2020; M.Tech. Degree in computer science and engineering with a specialization in VLSI design from the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, India, and a B.E. in electronics and telecommunications from the University of Pune, India.
He is currently exploring the application of reinforcement learning techniques to develop scalable and efficient attacks and defenses for different domain problems in hardware security. Further, his research delves into developing efficient, secure, and practical computer-aided design (CAD) frameworks integrated with industry-standard tools for designing secure chips. He has extensive experience in protection techniques to secure the IC supply chain, such as logic locking, layout camouflaging, and split manufacturing. Furthermore, his research delves into exploring the usage of graph neural networks for developing efficient attacks, leveraging the 3D paradigm for enhancing hardware security, exploring the security properties of emerging and up-and-coming devices (e.g., spintronics, NCFETs, RFETs), and side-channel evaluation. Personal webpage
Nithyashankari G. Jayasankaran
Nithyashankari G. Jayasankaran has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Anna University, Chennai, India in 2010 and a master’s degree in Microelectronics from Birla Institute of Science and Technology, Pilani, India in 2013. She has worked in the semiconductor industry on FPGA design/verification and prototyping of ASICs using FPGAs for clients such as Nokia Siemens Networks, ATOS (formerly Bull), and Qualcomm. She received her Ph.D. in computer engineering at Texas A&M University in 2021. Her research interest lies in securing analog circuits and finding the loopholes in the existing analog security schemes.
Aneesh Dixit
Aneesh Dixit received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India in 2020. He worked on a variety of topics such as digital design, 5G networks, and natural language processing while working at places such as Texas Instruments and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His research interests include logic locking and logic synthesis
Hao Guo
Hao Guo received her B. Eng in Electrical Engineering and Automation from Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China in 2017 and Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 2019. She worked then at Qualcomm (Shanghai) R&D department as a DFT engineer. She joined the Texas A&M Hardware Security Lab as a Ph.D. student in the spring of 2020. Her research focuses on the hardware security of FPGA and logic locking.
Georges Alsankary
Georges Alsankary received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from The University of Notre Dame. He joined the Hardware Security Lab in Fall 2020 and received his M.S. degree in Spring 2022.
Nathan Nguyen
Nathan Nguyen is an undergraduate student pursuing a double major in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Texas A&M University. He has a history of working with NASA and Evernym as a software engineer, with an emphasis on rigorous software testing and performance optimization. He joined the Hardware Security lab in Fall 2021 as an undergraduate researcher. His current research interests include hardware security, concolic execution, and concurrent algorithms. He joined Raytheon after graduation.
Saini Ye
Saini is a undergraduate student pursuing a major in Computer Engineering – Electrical Track and will be graduating in May 2023. Her interests are in digital circuit design and hardware security on FPGA. She joined the SETH Lab in Summer 2022 and will join Microsoft as a Hardware Engineer after graduation.
Addison Crump
Current Affliation: Ph.D. in CISPA
Addison Crump is an undergraduate student studying Computer Science and minoring in Cybersecurity at Texas A&M University (graduating Fall 2021). He has worked with multiple government contractors and state and federal agencies in defensive cyber, offensive cyber, and incident response roles, most notably in the Texas ransomware incident of August 2019. Addison leads the TAMUctf development team, works in the TAMUS Security Operations Center as an analyst, and does graph-based static analysis research in his own time. He joined the Hardware Security lab in Fall 2019 as a vulnerability researcher and currently works on formal methods and processor exploitation.
Brody Jordan
Brody Jordan is an undergraduate student pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Mathematics at Texas A&M University. He is currently interested in learning more about hardware security, RF systems, and signal processing. He joined the SETH Lab in Summer 2022 and is currently researching machine learning applications in hardware security.
Arjun Muralidharan
Arjun Muralidharan received his B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree from PES Institute of Technology, India. He then worked for an Agricultural IoT startup in Bangalore, India for a year as a Systems Engineer. He is currently pursuing his Master of Science Degree and joined the Hardware Security Lab in January 2019.
Now, he is working in Arm.
Garrett Persyn
Current Affiliation: Boeing
Garrett Persyn graduated from Texas A&M in 2020 with a Masters degree and in 2018 with a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering. He joined the Texas A&M Hardware Security Lab in the Summer of 2018. His interests include Hardware Security, Verification, and Computer Architecture. His research focuses on the detection of hardware security bugs.
Now he works in Boeing.
Eswar Deep Pitchika
Current Affiliation: Qualcomm
Eswar Deep Pitchika graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology in 2019 with a Bachelor’s in Electronics and Communication Engineering and a minor in VLSI systems. He is currently pursuing his Masters of Science in Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. He joined the Hardware security lab in Fall 2019, and his interests lie in Hardware Security, Design for Trust methodologies, and emerging Computer Architectures. He is currently working on Logic locking techniques specific to Sequential circuits.
Kevin Sipple
Kevin Sipple is an undergraduate student studying Electrical Engineering and minoring in Mathematics at Texas A&M University (graduating Spring 2022). He joined the Hardware Security lab in Fall 2019 as an undergraduate researcher. He is working on split manufacturing of computer chips. His interests reside in: Hardware Security, Power Systems, and Sustainability.
Mark Tressler
Current Affiliation: AMD
Mark Tressler is an undergraduate student studying Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University (graduating Spring 2022). He is currently working on split manufacturing of computer chips.