
NSF Org: |
ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | August 4, 2021 |
Latest Amendment Date: | September 7, 2022 |
Award Number: | 2117349 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Jenshan Lin
jenlin@nsf.gov (703)292-7360 ECCS Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems ENG Directorate for Engineering |
Start Date: | August 15, 2021 |
End Date: | July 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $360,608.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $360,608.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
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History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
100 INSTITUTE RD WORCESTER MA US 01609-2280 (508)831-5000 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
100 Institute Road Worcester MA US 01609-2280 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | Major Research Instrumentation |
Primary Program Source: |
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Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
This MRI acquisition project will allow the purchase of a high-resolution Photon Emission/Laser Fault Injection microscope and high-performance computers. This setup will provide a platform for research, teaching, and hands-on experience for students and industry professionals. The research this instrumentation will enable focuses on the performance and security analyses of electronic devices and systems at different stages of their lifetime which will address a critical issue, securing the integrated circuit (IC) supply chain. The project has the potential to secure large number of devices used across sensitive applications, such as in healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI), finance, transportation, and defense. With a user-friendly interface, the instrument is expected to maximize the accessibility for on-site and off-campus students and researchers. The data collected from this setup will be further made available as benchmarks to researchers in the field of AI and cybersecurity. The instrument will bring unique capabilities to the PIs? institution and surrounding areas to conduct research, education, and outreach activities on IC security. The PIs plan to educate and train students through online and on-site courses, as well as seminars and workshops. The PIs plan to promote broadening the participation in this research area, especially recruitment of female students.
The MRI instrument is expected to facilitate research geared to the needs of the semiconductor industry, especially with the focus on security and reliability of ICs, including three interdisciplinary topics, IC tampering and counterfeiting detection, security testing and design for security, and security evaluation using AI. The common factor among these themes is the requirement for an advanced optical mechanism to interact with an integrated circuit at the scale of a single or a handful of transistors in a non-destructive fashion. While the first topic addresses the attacks that can be mounted during the pre- and post-fabrication, the second topic aims to provide a framework for testing and certifying a chip after manufacturing and designing a more secure chip. To achieve the goals defined in these themes, in the third topic, AI acts as an enabler since its essential role is to help analyze the data more efficiently and extract more in-depth and comprehensive information to back methodologies in the prior topics.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Two categories of objectives achieved in this project are (1) technical and (2) workforce development.
In this first category, during the course of the project, 5 journal papers and 2 conference papers were published, which are deposited and made available in the NSF Public Access Repository (PAR). These papers present some of the very first results related to the security of semiconductor chips and users' privacy. For instance, assessment of security and practical feasibility of secure and private circuit implementation, e.g., AI accelerators (the picture is taken from the paper: 1/0 Shades of UC: Photonic Side-Channel Analysis of Universal Circuits, https://doi.org/10.46586/tches.v2024.i3.574-602).
When it comes to workforce development, the project’s objectives, as detailed below, have been fulfilled successfully.
1. Workforce development through defining new curricula that include the research results done in this project's context.
2. Conducting research with a focus on research opportunities for under/graduate students.
3. Organization of New England Hardware Security Day workshops in 2022, 2023, and 2024 (NEHWS 2024: https://nehws.org) organized by WPI, NEU, UMass Amherst, MIT, and Yale. This event brought together researchers and hardware security practitioners from universities in the New England area, including BU, MIT, NEU, UMass Amherst, UConn, UNH, WPI, Yale, and industry and governmental labs, including DRAPER, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, MITRE, Raytheon Technology, Analog Devices, IBM, and MIT Lincoln Lab. The total number of attendees during the course of this project was (approximately) 400 people.
Last Modified: 11/02/2024
Modified by: Fatemeh Ganji
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