08/31/2026
Congratulations to Aydin Aysu, ECE associate professor, on receiving the 2026 DAC Under-40 Innovators Award!
The award honors up to five researchers each year. They're pushing the boundaries of electronic design and automation. Aysu earned his spot for making hardware security a built-in part of chip design instead of an afterthought.
His lab, HECTOR, tackles the physical side of cybersecurity. It shows how attackers could steal an AI model just by reading a chip's power signature. Then it builds the defenses to stop it. That work is shaping how we protect AI accelerators and post-quantum cryptographic hardware for years to come.
Congrats again, Aydin!