I joined Worcester Polytechnic Institute in January 2020. Before that, I was a faculty member at Virginia Tech, a graduate student at UCLA, and a researcher at IMEC in Belgium. My research interests are in hardware security related topics, a field that gained enormous traction over the past two decades. I work on challenges in cryptographic engineering, and on making systems secure and tamper resistant. My students have built numerous demonstrators, including the FAME and FAME -V2 microprocessors (180 nm), which has driven my research in attacks and countermeasures against faults and side-channel analysis. In addition to research in tamper-resistant design, I also work on the conception, design and implementation of efficient realizations of secure hardware and software.
I also love teaching, and I like to spend time thinking about how to explain complex topics clearly. My favorite topic is hardware/software codesign, which involves the mapping of computer engineering problems into hybrid hardware/software targets. I wrote a text book on the topic called "Practical Introduction to Hardware/Software Codesign". Computer engineering is a quickly evolving topic, and students face an ever increasing stack of technologies to conquer, from transistors to software. Hence, it is an exciting topic with numerous challenges and, at the same time, big rewards. I am excited about the project-based learning at WPI and I am honored to work with the undergraduate and graduate students on challenging research problems.
News
Media Coverage
Patrick Schaumont, professor of electrical and computer engineering, was included in The Boston Globe regarding a story about COVID-19 contact tracing apps. The story explores the larger picture of contact tracing apps being developed nationally. Reporter Hiawatha Bray wrote: “WPI said it’s developed a way to track location and time, while still concealing the identity of the infected person.” (The WPI community can also access the story here.)
Patrick Schaumont, professor of electrical and computer engineering, was featured in a story on Spectrum News 1 discussing his research on a COVID-19 contact tracing app. “When you have been diagnosed as COVID-positive, you will have the ability to share your data with the health agency,” he says in the interview.