Stony Brook University Electrical and Computer Engineering

Prof. Emre Salman and doctoral candidate Ivan Miketic recently published a unique obfuscation technique to make digital computer chips more resistant to reverse engineering.  Why is this important?  One of the key security issues for chip design companies is reverse engineering. Reverse engineering involves several physical attacks to the chip to regenerate the circuit netlist.  The “netlist” is the description of a circuit including the gates, inputs, outputs and their interconnections.  Once the netlist is obtained, counterfeit designs that are not authentic can be fabricated. This is typically referred to as Intellectual Property (IP) theft. Reverse engineering poses a significant economic risk to the semiconductor industry due to lost profits and reputation. It also presents a considerable risk to consumers and private data. The research community has actually developed several obfuscation techniques to protect circuits against reverse engineering or make reverse engineering attacks more difficult. These techniques, however, typically introduce significant overhead such as additional chip area and power consumption. In their work, Salman and Miketic leverage adiabatic circuits and some of their unique characteristics to develop a novel circuit obfuscation technique. The protected circuit is highly resistant against reverse engineering attacks with minimal overhead.   Indeed, attackers can come up with advanced formal techniques to diminish the efficacy of circuit obfuscation techniques. Thus, the main objective of the research community is to make these attacks increasingly more difficult. Since the Stony Brook’s team approach relies on adiabatic operation, most of these advanced formal attack methods do not yet exist for these kinds of circuits.  Salman and Miketic believe that their recent paper will contribute to the emergence of new research topics at the intersection of adiabatic circuits and reverse engineering.The Stony Brook University team’s method is lightweight, meaning that it has much less overhead than conventional obfuscation techniques, while still achieving a high degree of protection against reverse engineering. The proposed technique is also more resistant to some of the advanced attacks since it is based on adiabatic circuits. These kinds of circuits are different than conventional approaches as they rely on certain phase differences among the gates for correct operation. Salman and Miketic use those phase differences in their technique to their advantage to obfuscate the circuit netlist. Thus, even though a reverse engineer uses sophisticated techniques to obtain the layout of the chip, they cannot figure out the real netlist without knowing what the true phase differences are.  How would the approach be used in practice?  First, the digital circuit needs to be designed based on adiabatic principles rather than conventional static CMOS. There is limited design automation capability for such circuits. However, not the entire chip needs to be adiabatic, only the parts of the chip that need the most protection. It can even be possible to have these blocks ready as hard IP (i.e. already designed so it can be ‘inserted’ into the chip). Since Prof. Salman has had industry sponsorship for this research, he already sees some interest in adapting this idea for the security layer of the chip. Prior to this project, Salman and Miketic had already been working on adiabatic circuits. As part of another project, they developed a method to use adiabatic circuits in RF-powered applications to achieve an order of magnitude reduction in power consumption. As they gained a deeper understanding of the operating principles of adiabatic circuits, they intuitively thought that it would bring some interesting advantages in the field of hardware security. When Prof. Salman and Ivan Miketic first had the idea, they were excited about it as it was a very different approach than existing techniques and had the promise to deliver good results.  As they started working on it, they faced several difficult issues to overcome, which they didn’t anticipate at the beginning. The research infrastructure Prof. Salman has in his lab as well as close communication with his students helped facilitate this research. The Salman and Miketic paper was published at IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems in May 2021 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9440196 .  This research was co-funded by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF).

Continually increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have already led to changes in the climate as well as the acidification of the oceans. This increased acidity of the oceans is analogous to a slow motion “spill” of acid. And just like we clean up after oil spills, we need to clean up this acid spill as well. Professor Matthew Eisaman The approach of ECE’s Prof. Matthew Eisaman and a team of researchers, called  SEA MATE, which stands for Safe Elevation of Alkalinity for the Mitigation of Acidification Through Electrochemistry, uses carbon-free electricity and electrochemistry to effectively pump this excess acid out of the ocean and then sells the acid for useful purposes. This acid removal restores the ocean chemistry such that the remaining ions in the ocean react with atmospheric carbon dioxide, safely locking it up for 10,000 – 200,000 years as oceanic bicarbonate. So the net effect of SEA MATE is the reversal of ocean acidification along with the net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is very likely that early deployments will be in partnership with existing marine industries such as seawater desalination, aquaculture, maritime transport, and offshore wind. As an example, performing the SEA MATE process on the waste effluent from desalination plants would provide value to the desal plants by reducing its environmental impact, while also mitigating ocean acidification and decreasing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. For SEA MATE to make a significant impact at a global scale, it needs to be low-cost and have no negative environmental impacts. SEA MATE aims to achieve this by simplifying the process to its bare essentials and focusing on restoring, not changing, ocean chemistry. The research and testing over the next year is designed to verify SEA MATE’s electrochemical performance, its safety for marine life, and its cost.  If all goes well, commercialization will likely start in around a year from now. SEA MATE is led by Prof. Eisaman at Stony Brook University, and the Stony Brook group is responsible for the technology development and testing. His colleague Dr. Brendan Carter at the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is leading the modeling effort. Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (SoMAS) Ph.D. student Nathan Hirtle is a research assistant on the project helping with experiments to quantify the seawater chemistry of the process. The team is also in the process of hiring one postdoc at Stony Brook and another at the University of Washington. In addition, the team has contracted with a wide array of organizations to help with topics such as the techno-economic analysis, life cycle analysis, and integration with existing marine industries, among others. PhD student Nathan Hirtle at Flax Pond Marine Lab. This project is made possible by the vision and support of the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. Importantly, through a partnership between the Grantham Foundation and Ocean Visions, Inc., SEA MATE has been paired with a world-class team of technical advisors who are providing critical feedback and really allowing the team to turbocharge their research and development process. Prof. Eisaman’s training is in physics and he is a professor in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS). Part of the project will take place using facilities and students from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS). As mentioned, Prof. Eisaman is hiring a postdoc who ideally has experience with both engineering and oceanography.  Prof. Eisaman’s personality and research interests have always been very interdisciplinary, as is the SEA MATE project itself. Stony Brook has certainly accommodated this approach. Prof. Eisaman been working on research related to this topic for about ten years. He thinks we are now at the point where the technology readiness and the societal need make the deployment of processes like SEA MATE feasible.  This is indeed excellent environmental news.

Talk to anyone connected to Stony Brook University’s new power electronics program, and it’s clear, they’re amped.  SUNY Empire Innovation Associate Professor Fang Luo is charged up about launching the new interdisciplinary program and research lab at one of the country’s most collaboration-friendly campuses. Second-year doctoral student Anusha Gopagani raves about her power electronics classes and how Professor Luo pushes her to think bigger about the impact of her research on electromagnetic interference. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chair Petar Djurić lights up about how the program is luring students like Anusha from around the country to get the hands-on experiential training that will give them a competitive edge for internships, graduate school, high-paying jobs and purposeful careers.  And Spellman High Voltage Electronics Corporation CEO Dr. Loren Skeist is eager to help create a locally trained pipeline of power electronics professionals. So eager that his Long-Island-based company has pledged five years of funding for a new high voltage power electronics training and research lab at the University.  While medium voltage to low voltage power conversion is a much larger market – e.g., low voltage power is used by all consumer electronics, computers, cell phones – it is high voltage power (1,000 – 500,000 volts) that is required for the systems manufactured by Spellman’s clients in medical imaging, security screening, industrial quality control, food inspection, semiconductor manufacturing, underwater data transmission, nanotechnology, analytical instrumentation and many other applications.   “High voltage power enables so many advanced technologies,” said Dr. Skeist, “But it’s invisible to most people.” The increasingly demanding performance requirements, highly customized designs, low volumes, and high mix of products help explain why there are so few high voltage power electronics companies active in diverse markets and even fewer college programs to train the power electronics professionals of tomorrow. That, and the often prohibitively high costs associated with power electronics academic programs.  “In power electronics, students need not only theoretical training but real-world experiences in a lab,” said Professor Luo, who is also the Lab director. “In the new Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory, our students will learn how to safely work on controlling electrical power — and not just reducing the 120-480 volt power from the grid down to 3.3 volts to charge or run consumer electronics, but increasing it to hundreds of thousands of volts.”     People Powered Innovation Given vital hands-on training in Stony Brook’s power electronics curriculum, Stony Brook graduates will attract attention from a broad range of employers, including Spellman. After all, said Dr. Skeist, it’s people who power the innovations his customers need for creative solutions that continually advance technology.   For instance, Spellman’s highly-skilled workers were behind the high voltage converters used to separate DNA segments, which led to the sequencing of the human genome. They’ve been involved in early-stage research in nanotechnology and designing high voltage converters that enable the efficient transmission of data across underwater fiber optic cables that power the Internet.  As big and as broad as its reach across dozens of industries and countries worldwide, Spellman — voted a “Top Long Island Workplace” in 2020 for the third year in a row — continues to be, at its heart, a family business. When Dr. Skeist’s mechanical engineer father neared retirement, he convinced his psychotherapy-trained son to take over.  Turns out, Dr. Skeist’s 20-year experience treating patients and training psychiatry residents has been valuable in his leadership role. As he assumed the helm at Spellman, it became clear that Dr. Skeist’s main task was to sustain the client-centric, team-based environment his father had cultivated and to prize one skill above all else: helping people communicate and work effectively together.   “To partner effectively and build long-term relationships with our customers’ complex organizations, we have to develop a broad and deep understanding of what they value and need today, and what they will need tomorrow, in order to develop products for current systems and be ready with the technology for new markets and applications.” Stony Brook’s commitment to collaborate with the private sector on new technology helps explain why Stony Brook is an even more attractive partner to Spellman. Collaborating with Professor Luo and others across Stony Brook’s campus will further energize the company’s own research efforts, help train the power electronics pioneers of tomorrow and provide Spellman’s engineers greater exposure to the latest developments in closely allied electronics fields. One challenge his company faces, admits Dr. Skeist, is the underrepresentation of women and many minority groups in its technical workforce and leadership staff. “As a global company committed to supporting innovative technology companies around the world, we need to recruit diverse teams of the most talented people and provide career paths in a stimulating and inclusive environment,” he said.   “We believe that by partnering with Stony Brook, we can develop unique opportunities for people with a solid grounding in electronics, related technical and business fields, to learn about and explore a variety of career paths while gaining experience working with international clients.” Collaborations Fuel Discovery Anusha Gopagani, PhD Student in the College of Engineering and Applied Science While the Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Lab isn’t due to come online until Fall 2021, Professor Luo, his postdocs and student research assistants are still powering through, chipping away at creating real-world applications that will have real-world benefits, such as alternative energy and power conversion systems for wind power generators and aircraft propulsion systems.  One day, Luo says his research could help power the “Tesla of the Skies.” “The commercial airline of the future will be powered fundamentally just like an electric Tesla car, he said. “Except it will transport over 300 people around the world, with more than 20 percent less carbon dioxide and save airlines up to 20 percent in operating and maintenance costs, with enhanced safety and reliability.”   Luo will be working with scientists at Stony Brook’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center and with Dr. Esther Takeuchi, the William and Jane Knapp Chair in Energy and the Environment, a leading authority on energy storage who has a joint appointment with The College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Brookhaven National Lab.   He’s also connecting with colleagues on the same wavelength in computer science, materials science, civil engineering, and even the social sciences, as progress in the renewable energy field depends largely on social and political policy changes.   “At Stony Brook, we are encouraged to reach out to professors from different specialties to test out ideas or help answer questions,” Luo said. “It’s a very inspirational culture for discovery and innovations.”  The new Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory will also accelerate fellow SUNY Empire Innovation Associate Professor Peng Zhang’s work in developing artificially intelligent grids to improve the day-to-day reliability of power grids.  After Storm Isaias slammed into Long Island last August, it took weeks for parts of the Island’s electrical grid to come back online. “A smarter grid with smarter power converters will mitigate outages much faster and restore power in hours or a day instead of weeks,” said Luo.    Stony Brook’s Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Fotis Sotiropoulos says the power electronics program and the Spellman High Voltage Power Electronics Laboratory have the potential to dramatically boost Stony Brook’s bandwidth for cross-disciplinary research in renewable energy, including his own work in offshore wind energy and the public/private national consortium he’s leading.     Already, Dean Sotiropoulos has engaged Professor Luo’s team in new projects seeking to maximize the efficiency of large wind farms and tidal turbine arrays in the ocean.  These advances and industry partnerships with companies like Spellman are grabbing headlines and attracting more public funding. Just recently, Stony Brook was awarded $20 million to partner with Farmingdale State College on a new training institute to prepare New York’s work for the upcoming development of 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035. “Partnerships like this are critical to the success of our academic programs as they integrate our commitment to experiential learning with real-time industry initiatives, standards and goals,” said Dean Sotiropoulos. “We are grateful to Spellman for an outstanding new collaboration that will provide valuable insight into current trends and research while offering our students and faculty a state-of-the-art facility.” Together, we go far beyond. Learn more at stonybrook.edu/giving. -Betsy Craz

Prof. Petar Djuric, colleagues, and students have been looking at two health related topics with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.  Here we look at two very interdisciplinary projects.   Professor Petar Djuric The first is “Rethinking Electronic Fetal Monitoring to Improve Perinatal Outcomes and Reduce Frequency of Operative Vaginal and Cesarean Deliveries.” The main objective of the research is to use recent breakthroughs in machine learning to develop predictive analytics to support and improve the interpretation of electronic fetal monitoring data in the last couple of hours before delivery. The challenge is to accomplish this under real world conditions and in real time where clinicians must make timely decisions about interventions to prevent adverse outcomes. The applications are somewhat obvious. In the first project, one would like to see that the team’s methods find a place in practice, and contribute to significantly decrease the use of operative vaginal and cesarean delivery, while at the same time defining more precisely if the fetus is at risk for developing metabolic acidosis and long-term neurologic injury. In the second project, besides contributing to understanding consciousness better, Petar and collaborators aim at developing approaches that will restore normal thalamic dynamics in the human brain via external electrical stimulation, which in turn will facilitate recovery from coma in patients with disorders of consciousness.The second project is “In Search for the Interactions that Create Consciousness.” In this research, Petar and collaborators are looking for the physical footprints of consciousness. They are seeking answers to many questions about its origin and nature. What parts of the brain give rise to consciousness? What are the minimal neuronal mechanisms that are sufficient to generate consciousness? In seeking answers, a consideration is to keep clear of any philosophical discussions on consciousness. Instead, Petar and collaborators are interested in the fundamental problem of understanding what causes the emergence of consciousness. To that end, the team works with advanced nonparametric Bayesian methods for machine learning to describe three main features of neural activity: complexity, temporal dynamics, and  causal interactions. There are two major areas of impact of this research. One is on the advancing the theory of machine learning and the other on solving real word problems with it’s methods. The methods are quite general and based on principles that allow for their application on quite a wide range of tasks. There are many colleagues involved in these projects coming from Computer Science; Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine; Neurosurgery; Psychology; Neurobiology and Behavior; and Mechanical Engineering. Their roles are defined by their expertise. Many of Petar Djuric’s PhD students have been playing an important role in the project including Marzieh Ajirak, Kurt Butler, Tong Chen, Chen Cui, Lingqin Gan, Yuanqing Song, Hechuan Wang, and Liu Yang, as well as former students Shishir Dash, Guanchao Feng, Asher Hensley, Cagla Tasdemir, and Kezi Yu. Most of their efforts have been related to researching novel machine learning methods and applying them to problems of great interest to colleagues from applied sciences. This work is very interdisciplinary in nature. Stony Brook University has been promoting interdisciplinary research and has put in place various mechanisms that facilitate research projects of faculty with diverse backgrounds. Petar personally enjoys very much working with colleagues with different expertise. He has also collaborated with colleagues from overseas including professors and students from Spain, Italy, Austria, Serbia, France, Great Britain, and China. He is very happy that he has engaged all his PhD students to work with scientists with knowledge in domains different from machine learning. Petar feels that the experience they are gaining while working on this type of research is invaluable for their future growth.  Prof. Djuric’s research has been funded by NSF and NIH. Maps representing crosscorrelations of activities between different parts of a monkey’s brain during an experiment.  The abscissa and ordinate denote the channels where the brain signals were measured, and the color quantifies the strength of the crosscorrelations.

Stony Brook researchers, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts Lowell, will be investigating ways to make energy generation, storage and system operation more efficient, reliable and resilient, particularly in microgrid settings such as shore-based environments, under a new program funded by the United States Navy Office of Naval Research. The Navy grant, totaling $7.36 million and shared equally between the two institutions, will run through Fall 2022. Each institution will conduct nine multidisciplinary projects to achieve the research goals, complementing each other’s efforts in areas including grid control, security and infrastructure monitoring; energy storage, materials and grid management; and zero-carbon fuels. Both will collaborate to develop new training approaches, an area in which the domain knowledge and experience of National Grid and the Long Island Power Authority will be valuable assets. “Efficient energy is vital to the security and economic stability of our region and nation. Stony Brook University will continue to play an important role in advancing energy research innovation for our society,” said Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis. “We are thrilled to partner with the University of Massachusetts Lowell and industry in this initiative — to together discover new ways to ensure energy resiliency for the future.” Stony Brook’s two New York State Centers of Excellence — the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AEC) and the Center of Excellence for Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT) — will assist University researchers involved in the program. Both Centers of Excellence are funded through the Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), which fosters industry R&D collaboration to promote economic growth. Utility and industry connections are also a key external resource. Essential partners in the collaborative project include the DOE Office of Science-funded Energy Frontier Research Center for Mesoscale Transport Properties (m2m) and the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Integrated Electric Energy Systems (CIEES) — both located in the AEC. CIEES industry partners Bren-Tronics (Commack, NY) and Ioxus (Oneonta, NY) and AEC incubator tenant StorEn will contribute storage hardware and expertise to the initiative. “This research program comes as the energy industry is experiencing greater technological change than at any time in the last century,” said Yacov Shamash, Principal Investigator and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony Brook University. “That’s why the Stony Brook and UMass Lowell projects leverage deep energy research experience with academic knowledge and long-time institutional collaborations with utilities in their states.”