Nader Sehatbakhsh


Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Office: Boelter Hall, 6731-G
Email: nsehat [at] ucla [dot] edu
Lab Webpage

I'm always looking for highly-motivated students (Undergraduate, MS, Ph.D., and Postdoc students). To find out how you can join our team, or if you are a UCLA student and want to do research, please see this page.

About Me

I run the Secure Systems and Architectures (SsysArch) research lab at UCLA. My research interest is in the broad area of Security and Privacy with emphasis on hardware support for security and privacy. Specifically, my research has been focused on improving the system security of cyber-physical, embedded, and resource-constrained systems. I'm affiliated with the Computer Engineering Lab in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at UCLA.
    Prior to joining to UCLA, I was a PhD student at the School of Computer Science in Georgia Tech working with Professor Milos Prvulovic and Professor Alenka Zajic where I worked on Securing Computing Systems by Mitigating and Leveraging Side-Channels. I earned my PhD in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2020. Before that, I earned my B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tehran in 2013. I joined UCLA since July 2020.


Recent Publications

For the complete list, please visit my Google Scholar page and our research lab's Publications page. Here, I list more recent (3-5 years) works.


Active Projects

For the complete list of current and past projects, please visit our research lab's Projects page.

  • Secure, Trustworthy, and Efficient Collaborative Computing at Planetary Scale.
  • Trustworthy Computing for Robotic and Autonomous Systems.
  • Secure and Private AI for Edge-Cloud Systems.
  • Side-Channel Analysis for Embedded Systems: the Good, the Bad, and the Model!
  • Architecting the Next Generation of Secure Chiplet-Based Systems.

Selected Awards

  • DARPA Pitch Day Award, 2025.
  • NDSS Best Reviewer Award.
  • NSF CAREER Award, 2024.
  • Cisco Research Award, 2022.
  • UCLA Samueli Jumior Faculty Fellow Award, 2021.
  • Best Paper Nominee, HPCA, 2020.
  • Best Paper Award, MICRO, 2016.

Teaching

Full list can be found here.

  • ECE M116C/CS 151B: Computer Architecture (F25, F24, F23, F22, F21).
  • ECE 202C: IoT Security (S26, W25, W24, S23, W22, S21).
  • ECE M117/CS M138: Secure Computer Systems (W23, S22).
  • ECE 209AS: Secure and Advanced Computer Architecture (S25, S24).
  • ECE 115C: Digital Electronic Circuits (W26).

Service

I actively contribute to the research community through conference leadership, program committee service, journal reviewing, NSF review panels, and IEEE student mentoring activities.

Conference Leadership
  • Track Program Co-Chair, IEEE/ACM ICCAD, 2026.
  • Associate Program Chair, NDSS, 2025.
  • General Co-Chair, IEEE SafeThings, 2025.
  • Poster Co-Chair, ACM SenSys, 2025.
  • Lightning Talks Chair, ASPLOS, 2024.
Program Committee Member
  • IEEE Security & Privacy (Oakland), 2025–2026.
  • NDSS, 2024–2026.
  • IEEE HPCA, 2025–2027.
  • IEEE/ACM ISCA, 2021–2022, 2025–2026.
  • IEEE/ACM MICRO, 2022, 2024–2026.
  • IEEE/ACM ICCAD, 2023–2026.
  • ACM CCS, 2024.
  • ACM SenSys, 2023, 2025.
Journal Reviewer
  • IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security (TIFS), 2022–Present.
  • IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), 2022–2024.
  • IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems (TVLSI), 2024–Present.
  • IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), 2024–Present.
  • IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoTJ), 2023–Present.
  • IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC), 2024–Present.
  • IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), 2025–Present.
  • IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (TCPMT), 2025–Present.
NSF Review Panels
  • NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC), Panel Reviewer (2 panels).
  • NSF Computer Systems Research (CSR), Panel Reviewer (2 panels).
IEEE and Student Service
  • Faculty Advisor, UCLA IEEE Student Branch, 2022–Present.

Students

For the complete list of my current and past students and postdocs, please visit our research lab's People page.

Following is the current list of my PhD advisees.

  • Justin Feng (2021- )
  • Fatemeh Arkannezhad (2022- )
  • Hossein Khalili (2023- )
  • Fan Zhang (2024- )
  • Dao Xian (Samuel) Ding (2024- )
  • Sneha Swaroopa (2025- )
  • Seongbin Park (2025- )
  • Edward Almaraz (2026- )

Student Awards and Recognition

  • UC LEADS Fellowship, awarded to Edward Almaraz (2026).
  • Amazon AI Ph.D. Fellowship, awarded to Hossein Khalili (2025).
  • Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, awarded to Seongbin Park (2025).
  • UCLA Graduate Division Student Award (GDSA), awarded to Sneha Swaroopa (2025).
  • DAC Young Fellow, awarded to four members of the SsysArch Lab: Fatemeh Arkannezhad, Sneha Swaroopa, Dao Xian (Samuel) Ding, and Edward Almaraz (2025–2026).
  • ECE Department Dissertation Year Award (DYA), awarded to Justin Feng (2024).

Miscellaneous

Link to some recent presentations.