Mobile/Cloud Computing and Cybersecurity

As computing has largely moved to mobile devices and the cloud, new challenges have arisen compared to stationary, local, and physically-secure, in-house servers. While some challenges stem from requirements imposed on computing reliability and energy efficiency, other challenges are related to data security and privacy, both in storage and transmission. Some of these challenges can be attacked at the hardware level, including the development of optical interconnects and integrated photonic devices, quantum communications and computing, green and high-performance computing, System-on-chip (SoC) VLSI security, and cyber/wireless security and privacy. Other challenges require software-based solutions, such as the detection and analysis of malware attacks, detection of clickjacking attacks, software obfuscation for software-hardware attack mitigation, etc. Activities in this area build on ECE’s strengths in computational and network science and connect us to the unique resources of the Massachusetts Open Cloud and the Hariri Institute to create a program centered on the challenges arising from the cloud and mobile computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), server farms, security, and privacy. We invite you to explore our research activities, meet our teams, and read about our success stories by visiting the faculty, lab and research center pages below.

Affiliated Faculty

Azer Bestavros, Richard Brower, Ayse Coskun, Mark Crovella, Manuel Egele, Roscoe Giles, Martin Herbordt, Ajay Joshi, Orran Krieger, Wenchao Li, Thomas Little, David Starobinski, Gianluca Stringhini, Ari Trachtenberg

Affiliated Labs

• Cloud Computing Initiative
• Computer Architecture and Automated Design
• Dependable Computing
• Integrated Circuits and Systems
• Multimedia Communications
• Networking and Information Systems
• Performance and Energy-Aware Computing

Affiliated Research Centers

• Center for Autonomous and Robotics Systems
• Center for Cloud Innovation
• Center for Computational Science
• Center for Information and Systems Engineering
• Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications NSF ERC
• Massachusetts Open Cloud
• Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering

In the news:

• June 27, 2024

  Coskun Lab Collaborates with Brown University Researchers on Breakthrough in Chip Thermal Simulation

  . [ More ]

• March 5, 2024

  Early Career Excellence: Professor Rabia Yazicigil Recognized By NSF and BU College of Engineering

  Professor Rabia Yazicigil’s outstanding contributions have been doubly recognized, with the recent conferral of a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Early Career Excellence in Research Award from the BU College of Engineering. [ More ]

• January 31, 2024

  High Performance From BU ECE At SC23

  BU ECE researchers, both faculty and students, made a major impact at SC23, the premier conference in high-performance computing. [ More ]

• January 18, 2024

  ECE CHIPS In: Minuscule Hardware, Maximum Impact

  In many ways, Professor Rabia Yazicigil is the very image of the kind of scientist and engineer called for by the CHIPS Act: productive, inventive, application-focused, collaborative- and service-minded, and an active mentor cultivating similar values and capabilities in a younger generation of innovators. [ More ]

• November 10, 2023

  ECE CHIPS In: Efficiently Secure Computing

  This article is the first part of a series highlighting BU ECE’s contributions to research and education under the umbrella of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, and our faculty’s collective investment in the national effort to build a robust and innovative semiconductor industry. [ More ]