Research

The Spark lab's mission is to build secure systems through novel architectures with help from operating systems and compilers.

Security work today is spread across the entire stack as well as across mobile devices and cloud servers. Increasingly sensitive programs will shortly run on shiny new hardware that promise to beat Dennard-scaling hurdles but have never met a threat model. All to say, this is a good time for computer architects and systems researchers to jump in.

Spark lab's current projects build a new security-plane for distributed applications. Our projects include building a new instruction-set (ISA) and micro-architecture that translates program-layer security properties into hardware implementations, and a container-orchestrator and compiler that maps distributed web- and micro-services on to our security-ISA. For example, one series of work has been to build hardware boxes that do not leak information, and then use this to put data into boxes instead of applications.

One near-term outcome of our research is to put users back in control of their own data, even if their data is computed on by untrusted applications and infrastructure. In the long term, we'll be on Mars and leave all non-secure computers here.

Awards

  • Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (North America) 2022
  • Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security, HSTTC 2021
  • Best Paper Nominee, HOST 2019
  • Qualcomm Faculty Award, 2018
  • Finalist, CSAW Applied Research Competition, 2018
  • Best Paper Runner-Up, HOST 2018
  • AMD Chair, Department of ECE, UT Austin, 2017-19
  • Qualcomm Faculty Award, 2017
  • Best Paper Award, ASPLOS 2015
  • NSF Career Award, January 2015
  • IEEE Micro Top Pick, Honorable Mention, January-February 2015
  • Google Faculty Research Award, 2013-14
  • Top 10 shortlist for NYU-Poly Best Applied Security Paper Award, 2013.

Publications

Group Members

Mohit Tiwari

I enjoy building new hardware-software systems that enforce well-defined security properties. Before joining UT, I received my PhD in UC Santa Barbara in 2011, and then worked as a post-doc at UC Berkeley.

Austin Harris

I am interested in designing secure processors and accelerators and prototyping them on a FPGA.

Team Member

Casen Hunger

I am interested in using machine learning and operating systems to build privacy-preserving systems.

Team Member

Prateek Sahu

I am interested in exploring the performance and security of modern cloud systems. I am eager to learn more about how hardware and software can interact to guarantee better data privacy.

Team Member

Sarbartha Banerjee

My research interests are secure accelerators, side channel defense, machine learning security.

Team Member

Mulong Luo

Mulong Luo is a postdoctoral fellow at the SPARK Lab, UT Austin. His recent research interests are machine learning for system security, and security of AI systems. He got his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2023.

Team Member

Ayush Roychowdhury

My research interests include language model security, data security, and explainable artificial intelligence for security.

Team Member

Former Members

Mikhail Kazdagli

PhD 2018
Next: Essential

Team Member

Aydin Aysu

Post-doc 2016-2018
Next: Assistant Professor at NC State

Team Member

Rohith Prakash

MS 2018
Next: Apple

Team Member

Ashay Rane

PhD 2019
Next: Groq

Team Member

Pranav Kumar

MS 2019
Next: Intel

Team Member

Antonio Espinoza

Post-doc 2018-2020
Next: Assistant Professor at Eastern Washington University

Team Member

Riley Wood

MS 2020
Next: Apple

Team Member

Yongye Zhu

B.S. 2022
Next: M.S.@UIUC

Team Member

Yang Hu

PhD 2024
Next: Amazon

Team Member

Shijia Wei

PhD 2024
Next: NVidia

Team Member

Willy Vasquez

PhD 2024
Next: Apple

Team Member