Research Interest

I am focusing on Hardware Security, improving Resilience, Trustworthiness, and Security of Chips via:

• AI for Chip Design and Security

• Autonomous Vulnerability Detection, Localization, and Remediation

Publications

14. DATE'26 Focus Session: What the Fuzz! Pushing Beyond Randomness in Hardware Security with Generative AI [accepted]

Nikhilesh Singh, Mohamadreza Rostami, Lichao Wu, Chen Chen, Stephen Muttathil, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

13. DAC'26 AttackonCTF: Defending Hardware Security Competition Benchmarks in the Age of LLMs [accepted]

    Mohamadreza Rostami, Nikhilesh Singh, Stephen Muttathil, Lichao Wu, Chen Chen, Huimin Li,  Jeyavijayan Rajendran, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

12. DATE'26 Focus Session: Advanced Hybrid Hardware Fuzzing [accepted]

    Chen Chen, Stephen Muttathil, Mohamadreza Rostami, Nikhilesh Singh, Lichao Wu, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

11. NDSS'26 ReFuzz: Reusing Tests for Processor Fuzzing with Contextual Bandits [accepted]
    Chen Chen, Zaiyan Xu, Mohamadreza Rostami, David Liu, Dileep Kalathil, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

10. COINS'25 Watermarking LLMs: Challenges and Opportunities in Electronic Design Automation

    Matthew DeLorenzo, Phat Tieu, Chen Chen, Vasudev Gohil, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

9. IISWC'24 Performance Analysis of Zero-Knowledge Proofs [paper]
    Saichand Samudrala, Jiawen Wu, Chen Chen, Haoxuan Shan, Jonathan Ku, Yiran Chen, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

8. DAC'24 Lost and Found in Speculation: Hybrid Speculative Vulnerability Detection [paper]

Mohamadreza Rostami, Shaza Zeitouni, Rahul Kande, Chen Chen, Pouya Mahmoody, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

7. IEEE S&P'24 Fuzzerfly Effect: Hardware Fuzzing for Memory Safety [paper]

Mohamadreza Rostami, Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Huimin Li, Jeyavijayan Rajendran, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

6. USENIX SEC'24 WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities in Processors [paper] (Distinguished Paper Award)

Pallavi Borkar*, Chen Chen*, Mohamadreza Rostami, Nikhilesh Singh, Rahul Kande, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Chester Rebeiro, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

5. DATE'24 MABFuzz: Multi-Armed Bandit Algorithms for Fuzzing Processors [paper]

Vasudev Gohil, Rahul Kande, Chen Chen, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

4. ICCAD'23 PSOFuzz: Fuzzing Processors with Particle Swarm Optimization [paper]

Chen Chen*, Vasudev Gohil*, Rahul Kande, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

3. USENIX SEC'23 HyPFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing [paper][website]

Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Nathan Nguyen, Flemming Andersen, Aakash Tyagi, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

New CVEs: CVE-2022-33021, CVE-2022-33023

2. DAC'22 Trusting the Trust Anchor: Towards Detecting Cross-Layer Vulnerabilities with Hardware Fuzzing [paper]

Chen Chen, Rahul Kande, Pouya Mahmoody, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, and Jeyavijayan Rajendran

1. NOC'20 Bufferless NoCs with Scheduled Deflection Routing [paper]

Chen Chen, Zirui Tao, and Joshua San Miguel

Honors and Awards

• Distinguished Paper Award, USENIX Security 2024

• Distinguished Artifact Evaluation Reviewer Award, USENIX Security 2024

• 3rd Place Hardware Hacking Competition, HOST 2025

• ACM Student Research Competition Nominee, ICCAD 2023

• DAC Young Fellowship, 2021–2023

• Best Research Video, DAC Young Fellow 2021

• 1st Place Poster and Presentation, ECEN Department, Texas A&M University, 2021

• ACM Student Research Competition Nominee, ICCAD 2020

• ECEN Department Graduate Merit Fellowship, Texas A&M University, 2020

• Dean’s List & Semester Honors, Purdue University, 2016–2018

Mentorship

• Nathan Nguyen (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: Raytheon)

• Jack Letsinger (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: AMD)

• Eddie Phillips (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: Google)

• Kyle Minihan (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: M.S. at CMU)

• Isidora Wright (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: Los Alamos National Lab)

• David Liu (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: M.S. at TAMU)

• Stephen Muttathil (Undergrad. at TAMU, First position after graduation: Ph.D. at TAMU)

• Annie Li (Undergrad. at TAMU)

• Jayden Koh (Undergrad. at TAMU)

Invited Talks

• “Hardware Fuzzing: Why, What, and How,” Intel Academic Security Conference, 2025.

• “Hardware Fuzzing to Secure Modern Hardware,” TECHCON, 2025.

• “Hardware Fuzzing: Why, What, and How,” Prof.Yan’s Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024.

• “Hardware Fuzzing: Why, What, and How,” ECE, University of Central Florida, 2024.

• “HypFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing,” Advanced Metrology for Emerging Semiconductors, 2024.

• “HypFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing,” Global Cyber Research Institute (GCRI) Summit, 2024.

• “WhisperFuzz: White-Box Fuzzing for Detecting and Locating Timing Vulnerabilities in Processors,” Intel Assurance Workshop, 2024.

• “HypFuzz: Formal-Assisted Processor Fuzzing,” Intel Assurance Workshop, 2023.

Workshop

• 1st Texas A&M Cohort for Hardware Security (TACHs), 2025.

• 14th HacktheSilicon at the Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems Conference (Hack@CHES), 2025.

• 13th HacktheSilicon at IEEE Design Automation Conference (Hack@DAC), 2025.

• 12th HacktheSilicon at the Design, Automation, and Test in Europe Conference (Hack@DATE), 2025.

• 7th Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security workshop at the IEEE International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (IEEE ICCAD), 2024.

• Sustainable Hardware Security (SUSHI’24) at the IEEE International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (IEEE ICCAD), 2024.

• 11th HacktheSilicon at IEEE Design Automation Conference (Hack@DAC), 2024.

• Sustainable Hardware Security (SUSHI’23) at the IEEE International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (IEEE ICCAD), 2023.

• 10th HacktheSilicon at IEEE Design Automation Conference (Hack@DAC), 2023.

• 9th HacktheSilicon at USENIX Security Symposium (Hack@SEC), 2022.

• 8th HacktheSilicon at IEEE Design Automation Conference (Hack@DAC), 2022.

• 7th HacktheSilicon at Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (Hack@CHES), 2021.

• 6th HacktheSilicon at USENIX Security Symposium (Hack@SEC), 2021.

• 5th HacktheSilicon at IEEE Design Automation Conference (Hack@DAC) 2021.

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, USA (2020--Present)

• M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin--Madison, USA (2018--2020)

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, USA (2014--2018)

Teaching

Texas A&M University

• Teaching Assistant, ECEN 426 "Security of Embedded Systems" (100+ students).

• Co-developed lab module on Program Analysis, Cache Time Side-Channel Attack, Hardware Performance Counter-Based Malware Detection, Detection of Hidden Instruction, and Hardware Fuzzing.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Speculative Vulnerabilities", 2024.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Power Analysis for Side-Channel Attacks", 2023.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Hacking a CoffeeMaker Using the Buffer Overflow Vulnerability", 2023.

• Guest Instructor, ECEN 426 lecture on "Hacking a CoffeeMaker Using the Buffer Overflow Vulnerability", 2022.

University of Wisconsin--Madison

• Teaching Assistant, CS 552 "Introduction to Computer Architecture" (100+ students).

Purdue University

• Teaching Assistant, ECE 270 "Introduction to Digital System Design" (200+ students).

Services

• TODAES, TCAD, 2024.

• USENIX Security Artifact Evaluation, 2024.

• CCS Artifact Evaluation, 2024.

Life

I enjoy reading, working out, and playing board games. I love playing Blood on the Clocktower with my friends.

Last Updated: March 21, 2026