Yunsi Fei

Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs,  Office of the Dean
Professor,  Electrical and Computer Engineering
Northeastern Site Lead,  CHEST

Contact

Social Media

Office

  • 415 ISEC
  • 617.373.2039

Research Focus

Hardware-oriented security, computer architecture, embedded systems, design automation, IoT and cyber physical systems

About

Yunsi Fei received her BS and MS degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University, China in 1997 and 1999, respectively, and her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 2004. She was a faculty member at University of Connecticut until Sept. 2011 when she joined the faculty of Northeastern University. She is presently a professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northeastern, and also serves as the NU site director of an NSF IUCRC Center for Hardware and Embedded System Security and Trust (CHEST). Her research and educational activities have been spanning hardware security and trust, secure computer architecture and systems, energy-efficient embedded system design and optimization,  adaptive networking for underwater sensor networks, etc. She was a recipient of NSF CAREER award.

Education

  • PhD, Princeton University, 2004. Joined Northeastern in 2011.

Honors & Awards

  • Distinguished paper award, ACM Asia Conference on Computer and Communication Security (AsiaCCS), 2023.
  • Best paper award, International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), 2017.
  • Invited attendee, The Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium 2016, National Academy of Engineering
  • 2015 COE Faculty Fellow
  • Best paper award, International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), 2015.
  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award

Research Overview

Hardware-oriented security, computer architecture, embedded systems, design automation, IoT and cyber physical systems

Energy Efficient and Secure Systems Lab

These projects are in the area of hardware security, and involve deep learning as both computation tools and security target.

Energy Efficient and Secure Systems Lab

Selected Research Projects

  • Analog Trojan Detection Circuits and Validation Methods
    • Co-Principal Investigator, CHEST Industry Fund

Selected Publications

  • Z. Zhang, A.A. Ding, Y. Fei, A Fast and Accurate Guessing Entropy Estimation Algorithm for Full-Key Recovery, IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES), 2, 2020
  • M. Sabbagh, Y. Fei, D. Kaeli, A Novel GPU Overdrive Fault Attack, ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf. (DAC), July 2020
  • C. Gongye, Y. Fei, T. Wahl, Reverse Engineering Deep Neural Networks Using Floating-Point Side Channel, ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf. (DAC), July 2020
  • C. Luo, Y. Fei, A. Ding, P. Clause, Comprehensive Side-Channel Power analysis of XTS- AES, IEEE Transactions on CAD (TCAD), 38, (12), 2019, 2191-2220
  • Z.H. Jiang, Y. Fei, D. Kaeli, Exploiting Bank Conflict based Side-Channel Timing Leakage of GPUs, ACM Transaction on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), 16(4), 2019

Faculty

Nov 13, 2023

ARL Grant to Improve Cybersecurity and Robustness in Additive Manufacturing

MIE Professor Sinan Müftü and Assistant Professor Ozan Özdemir were awarded a $1.5 million research grant by the Army Research Laboratories (ARL) to spearhead innovative initiatives in cybersecurity and enhancement of mechanical robustness in parts and coatings produced through Cold Spray Additive Manufacturing.

Faculty

Aug 03, 2023

Fei’s Group Receives ACM Distinguished Papers Award

Computer engineering graduate students Ruyi Ding, PhD’24, Cheng Gongye, PhD’23, Siyue Wang, PhD’22, Mathematics Professor A. Adam Ding, and ECE Professor Yunsi Fei were awarded a Distinguished Papers Award at the 18th ACM ASIA Conference on Computer and Communications Security for their paper on “EMShepherd: Detecting Adversarial Samples via Side-channel Leakage.”

Photo of Yunsi Fei

Faculty

Jul 06, 2022

Protecting Breaches from Side Channel Attacks

ECE Professor Yunsi Fei and Mathematics Associate Professor Aidong Ding were awarded a $300k NSF EAGER grant for “Side Channels Go Deep – Leveraging Deep Learning for Side-channel Analysis and Protection.”

Marvin Onabajo, Yunsi Fei, Aatmesh Shrivastava, and Francesco Restuccia.

Faculty

Apr 20, 2022

$1 Million NSF Award as Part of Resilient and Intelligent Next-Generation Systems Program for Spectrum-Agile IoT Networks

ECE Associate Professor Marvin Onabajo, Professor Yunsi Fei, Assistant Professor Aatmesh Shrivastava, and Assistant Professor Francesco Restuccia were awarded a $1M NSF grant for “RINGS: Internet of Things Resilience through Spectrum-Agile Circuits, Learning-Based Communications and Thermal Hardware Security.”

abstract cybersecurity graphic

Mar 12, 2020

Cybersecurity: Your Secrets Are Safe With Us

Northeastern researchers are at the forefront of cybersecurity research, protecting everything from the phone in your pocket to the city of the future.

Photo of Yunsi Fei

Faculty

Sep 12, 2019

Fei is Northeastern Lead for New Multi-University Research Center

ECE Professor Yunsi Fei has been awarded $750K five-year grant from the NSF as the Northeastern lead for a new multi-university research center, CHEST, or Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust.

Faculty

Jul 11, 2019

$1.2M NSF Grant to Secure Deep Neural Networks

ECE Professor Yunsi Fei, Assistant Professor Xue (Shelley) Lin, and Khoury Associate Professor Thomas Wahl were awarded a $1.2M NSF grant for “Protecting Confidentiality and Integrity of Deep Neural Networks against Side-Channel and Fault Attacks”.

Faculty

Nov 09, 2017

PhD Student Wins Best Paper at Computer Design Conference

ECE PhD student Mohammad Khavari-Tavana won the best paper award at the 35th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD).

Faculty

Jun 13, 2017

Biometric Boarding Pass

Associate Professors Andrews Gouldstone (MIE) and Yunsi Fei (ECE) weigh in on using biometrics such as facial recognition and fingerprint scans at airports.

Aug 16, 2016

The Security of Accelerators

ECE professor David Kaeli and associate professor Yunsi Fei were awarded a $450K grant from NSF and SRC for "Side-Channel Analysis and Resiliency Targeting Accelerators". Abstract Source: NSF Today's computing systems are becoming increasingly heterogeneous, providing new levels of computational horsepower and power efficiency. Hardware accelerators are a key element in this trend, allowing compute-oriented […]

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