About Me

Ph.D. in Computer Science (advised by Prof. Chris Fletcher)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL

B.S in Computer Engineering

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

B.S in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

Research Assistant

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL

• Design hardware-based defenses for micro-architectural side-channel attacks with provable security
• Reverse-engineer recent Intel and Apple processors (such as Apple M1) and develop new side-channel attacks
• Build secure system infrastructures using existing hardware-based security mechanisms (such as Intel SGX)

Graduate Technical Intern

Intel Labs, Hillsboro, OR

• Designed, implemented and evaluated new hardware-based Spectre V1 attack mitigation for future Intel processors
• The hardware mitigation was directly inspired by my previous publication

Research Intern

Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA

• Built an anti-piracy framework for protecting unmodified proprietary software applications using Intel SGX
• The internship project was later published in SEED 2022

Graduate Research Intern

Intel Labs, Hillsboro, OR

• Analyzed existing speculative side-channel attacks and defenses
• Modeled and evaluated multiple speculative side-channel defense approaches using a production CPU simulator
• Identified a new type of speculative side-channel attack and patented the defense mechanism for the attack

• Intel Hardware Security Academic Award, 1st place
• W.J. Poppelbaum Scholarship at UIUC

• Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship
• 2x IEEE Micro Top Picks
• CACM Highlight

• Best Paper Award - MICRO'19
• Distinguished Paper Award Honorable Mentions - NDSS'19
• CSAW'19 Applied Research Finalist