Mengjia Yan

Assistant Professor, MIT EECS
The Stata Center, 32G-840
32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139
mengjiay [at] mit [dot] edu

I’m an assistant professor at MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. My research interest lies in the areas of computer architecture and security, with a focus on side channel attacks and defenses. My group works on exploiting new micro-architectural vulnerabilities and designing comprehensive and efficient defense mechanisms.

Before joining MIT, I earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where I worked with Professor Josep Torrellas. I received a B.S. degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University, China.

I'm looking for highly-motivated PhD, MEng, and UROP students. If you are interested in working together, please read below.
  • PhD: If you are a current MIT student, feel free to email me to schedule a meeting. For others, I would like to suggest following the normal PhD application process and indicate my name as a preferred reader when submitting your application.
  • MEng and UROP: If you are a current MIT student, I would recommend taking 6.5950/6.5951 Secure Hardware Design (was 6.888, 6.S983) or 6.5900 Computer System Architecture (was 6.823). I usually take on students from these courses. If you could not take these courses, I would suggest filling out this form to help me understand your background. For students interested in summer internship positions, please send me an email with your CV and a statement describing your past project highlights.

Students

Postdocs: PhDs: MEngs: UROPs:
  • Spencer Pogorzelski
  • Andy Zheng
Alumni:
  • PostDoc
    • Mengyuan Li (PostDoc'22-24 → Assistant Professor, USC)
  • UROP/MEng
    • Jan Strzeszynski (MEng'26 → Stanford PhD)
    • Kelly Xu (MEng'26)
    • David Choi (MEng'26)
    • William Liu (UROP Award, Outstanding TA Award, MEng Outstanding Thesis Award, MEng'25 → NVIDIA)
    • Shih-Yu (Leo) Wang (MEng'25)
    • Kosi Nwabueze (BS'25 → MIT MEng)
    • Jonah Romero (BS'25 → D.E. Shaw)
    • Natalie Muradyan (MEng'24 → D. E. Shaw)
    • Shashvat Srivastava (MEng'23 → Voleon)
    • Miguel Gomez-Garcia (Co-advised with Srini Devadas, MEng'23 → Multiply Labs)
    • Georgia E Shay (MEng'23 → AMD)
    • Jay Lang (BS'22 → Apple)
    • Jack Cook (UROP Award, Rhodes Scholar, NSF Fellowship, BS'22 → University of Oxford)
    • Brandon John (MEng'22 → Lincoln Lab)
    • Miles Dai (Outstanding TA Award, MEng'21 → Google OpenTitan)
  • Visiting Undergrads
    • Kunpeng Wang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University → MIT PhD)
    • David Langus Rodriguez (MIT Lincoln Lab → Cornell PhD)
    • Alec Petridis (UCSB)
    • Tingzhen (Roger) Dong (BS'24 SUSTech → MIT PhD)
    • Yi Chen (BS'23 Zhejiang University → University of Michigan PhD)
    • Boru Chen (BS'22 Zhejiang University → UIUC PhD)
    • Yuheng Yang (BS'21 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences → MIT PhD)

Teaching

Publications

  • Interplay of Efficient Model Checking and Secure Processor Design: A Case Study on Secure Speculation; Tingzhen Dong*, Kunpeng Wang*, Yuheng Yang, Yu-Wei Fan, Qinhan Tan, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan. S&P, 2026.
    paper   slides   code  
  • INSIGHT: Automatic Generation of Explanations for Efficient Identification of Hardware Bugs and Underspecifications; Vincent Ulitzsch, Alessandro Bertani, Peter Deutsch, David Langus Rodriguez, Kelly Xu, Aarti Gupta, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan. S&P, 2026.
    paper   slides   code  
  • Fractal: An Operating System Designed for Microarchitecture Reverse Engineering; Joseph Ravichandran, Mengjia Yan. S&P, 2026.
    paper   slides   code  
  • Defeating Transient Execution Attacks by Limiting Secret Reachability through Register Hiding and ShadowCFI; Daniël Trujillo, Jagadish Kotra, David Kaplan, Mengjia Yan. S&P, 2026.
    paper   slides   code  
  • Compass: Navigating the Design Space of Taint Schemes for RTL Security Verification; Yuheng Yang*, Qinhan Tan*, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan. ASPLOS, 2026.
    paper   slides   code  
  • Securing Cryptographic Software via Typed Assembly Language; Shixin Song*, Tingzhen Dong*, Kosi Nwabueze, Julian Zanders, Andres Erbsen, Adam Chlipala, Mengjia Yan. CCS, 2025.
    paper   paper (extended version)   slides   code  
  • RTL Verification for Secure Speculation Using Contract Shadow Logic; Qinhan Tan*, Yuheng Yang*, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan; ASPLOS, 2025.
    paper   slides   code  
  • Oreo: Protecting ASLR Against Microarchitectural Attacks; Shixin Song, Joseph Zhang, Mengjia Yan; NDSS, 2025.
    paper   paper (extended version)   slides   code  
  • DelayAVF: Calculating Architectural Vulnerability Factors for Delay Faults; Peter Deutsch*, Vincent Ulitzsch*, Sudhanva Gurumurthi, Vilas Sridharan, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan; MICRO, 2024.
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks Honorable Mention
    paper   slides   code  
  • SecureLoop: Design Space Exploration of Secure DNN Accelerators; Kyungmi Lee, Mengjia Yan, Joel Emer, Anantha Chandrakasan; MICRO, 2023.
    paper   slides   code   MIT News
  • EntryBleed: A Universal KASLR Bypass against KPTI on Linux; William Liu, Joseph Ravichandran, Mengjia Yan; HASP (with MICRO), 2023.
    HASP Best Paper Award
    paper   slides   blog post
  • Pensieve: Microarchitectural Modeling for Security Evaluation; Yuheng Yang, Thomas Bourgeat, Stella Lau, Mengjia Yan; ISCA, 2023.
    paper   slides   code   ISCA Lightning Talk
  • Metior: A Comprehensive Model to Evaluate Obfuscating Side-Channel Defense Schemes; Peter W. Deutsch, Weon Taek Na, Thomas Bourgeat, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan; ISCA, 2023.
    paper   slides   code   ISCA Lightning Talk   MIT News
  • PACMAN: Attacking ARM Pointer Authentication with Speculative Execution; Joseph Ravichandran*, Weon Taek Na*, Jay Lang, Mengjia Yan; ISCA, 2022.
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks   IEEE Micro article
    paper   slides   video (ISCA Talk)   DEFCON talk  
    pacmanattack.com   ARM Security Article
    PACMAN 2.0:   code (including Rust PoC, PacmanKit, PacmanPatcher)  
    Media Coverage: [IEEE Spectrum] [TechCrunch] [MIT News] [The Register] [Dark Reading] [机器之心] [Macworld] [Cryotweaks] [Tom's Hardware] [New York Daily Paper] [VentureBeat] [phoronix] [channel969] [9To5Mac] [CHAROPF] [The Hacker News] [Security Affairs]
  • There's Always a Bigger Fish: A Clarifying Analysis of a Machine-Learning-Assisted Side-Channel Attack; Jack Cook, Jules Drean, Jonathan Behrens, Mengjia Yan; ISCA, 2022.
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks   IEEE Micro article
    Intel Hardware Security Academic Award 2024 First Place Winner  
    paper   slides   video (polished version)   open-source release   demo   MIT News
  • Don’t Mesh Around: Side-Channel Attacks and Mitigations on Mesh Interconnects; Miles Dai*, Riccardo Paccagnella*, Miguel Gomez-Garcia, John McCalpin, Mengjia Yan; USENIX Security, 2022.
    paper   slides   video   open-source release   MIT News
  • DAGguise: Mitigating Memory Timing Side Channels; Peter W. Deutsch*, Yuheng Yang*, Thomas Bourgeat, Jules Drean, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan; ASPLOS, 2022.
    paper   slides   video   open-source release   MIT News   NSF Research News
  • SpecTaint: Speculative Taint Analysis for Discovering Spectre Gadgets; Zhenxiao Qi, Qian Feng, Yueqiang Cheng, Mengjia Yan, Peng Li, Heng Yin, Tao Wei; NDSS, 2021.
    paper  
  • CaSA: End-to-end Quantitative Security Analysis of Randomly Mapped Caches; Thomas Bourgeat*, Jules Drean*, Yuheng Yang, Lillian Tsai, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan; MICRO, 2020.
    Intel Hardware Security Academic Award 2022 Finalist
    Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security Honorable Mention
    paper   slides   talk video  
  • Speculation Invariance (InvarSpec): Faster Safe Execution Through Program Analysis; Zirui Zhao, Houxiang Ji, Mengjia Yan, Jiyong Yu, Christopher W. Fletcher, Adam Morrison, Darko Marinov, Josep Torrellas; MICRO, 2020.
    paper   slides  
  • Cache Telepathy: Leveraging Shared Resource Attacks to Learn DNN Architectures; Mengjia Yan, Christopher W. Fletcher, Josep Torrellas; USENIX Security, 2020.
    paper  
  • Speculative Taint Tracking (STT): A Comprehensive Protection for Speculatively Accessed Data; Jiyong Yu, Mengjia Yan, Artem Khyzha, Adam Morrison, Josep Torrellas, Christopher W. Fletcher; MICRO, 2019.
    Best Paper Award
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks
    Communications of the ACM Research Highlight (CACM)
    paper   formal analysis/security proof  
  • SecDir: A Secure Directory to Defeat Directory Side-Channel Attacks; Mengjia Yan, Jen-Yang Wen, Christopher Fletcher, Josep Torrellas; ISCA, 2019.
    paper   slides  
  • MicroScope: Enabling Microarchitectural Replay Attacks; Dimitrios Skarlatos, Mengjia Yan, Bhargava Gopireddy, Read Sprabery, Josep Torrellas, Christopher Fletcher; ISCA, 2019.
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks
    paper   slides   open-source release  
  • Attack Directories, Not Caches: Side Channel Attacks in a Non-Inclusive World; Mengjia Yan, Read Sprabery, Bhargava Gopireddy, Christopher W. Fletcher, Roy Campbell, Josep Torrellas; S&P, 2019.
    paper   slides   talk video  
  • InvisiSpec: Making Speculative Execution Invisible in the Cache Hierarchy; Mengjia Yan, Jiho Choi, Dimitrios Skarlatos, Adam Morrison, Christopher W. Fletcher, Josep Torrellas; MICRO, 2018.
    IEEE Micro's Top Picks Honorable Mention
    paper   slides   open-source release  
  • UCNN: Exploiting Computational Reuse in Deep Neural Networks via Weight Repetition; Kartik Hegde, Jiyong Yu, Rohit Agrawal, Mengjia Yan, Michael Pellauer, Christopher W. Fletcher; ISCA, 2018.
    paper  
  • Record-Replay Architecture as a General Security Framework; Yasser Shalabi, Mengjia Yan, Nima Honarmand, Ruby B Lee, Josep Torrellas; HPCA, 2018.
    paper  
  • Secure Hierarchy-Aware Cache Replacement Policy (SHARP): Defending Against Cache-Based Side Channel Attacks; Mengjia Yan, Bhargava Gopireddy, Thomas Shull, Josep Torrellas; ISCA, 2017.
    paper   slides  
  • ReplayConfusion: Detecting Cache-based Covert Channel Attacks Using Record and Replay; Mengjia Yan, Yasser Shalabi, Josep Torrellas; MICRO, 2016.
    paper   slides  
  • Cache-based Side Channels: Modern Attacks and Defenses; Mengjia Yan; Ph.D. Thesis, 2019.
    2020 ACM SIGARCH/IEEE CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award Honorable Mention
    UIUC David J. Kuck Outstanding PhD Thesis Award
    thesis

Awards

  • Louis D. Smullin (’39) Award for Excellence in Teaching, MIT EECS.
  • Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow.
  • IEEE Micro Top Pick Honorable Mention. 2025
  • Intel Hardware Security Academic Award First Place Winner.
  • IEEE TCCA Young Computer Architect Award.
  • ITT Career Development Professorship. 2024 -- 2027
  • Google Research Scholar Award.
  • Two IEEE Micro Top Picks. 2023
  • Intel Rising Star Faculty Award.
  • NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award.
  • ACM Research Highlight (CACM).
  • Homer A. Burnell Career Development Professorship. 2020 -- 2023
  • ACM SIGARCH/IEEE CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award Honorable Mention.
  • Two IEEE Micro Top Picks. 2020
  • David J. Kuck Outstanding PhD Thesis Award, Computer Science, UIUC.
  • Best Paper Award at MICRO. 2019
  • IEEE Micro Top Pick Honorable Mention. 2019
  • Mavis Future Faculty Fellow, College of Engineering, UIUC.
  • W.J. Poppelbaum Memorial Award, Department of Computer Science, UIUC.

Service

Program Committee:
  • 2026: CCS
  • 2025: ASPLOS, CCS (Hardware Security Track Co-chair)
  • 2024: ASPLOS, ISCA, Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security (TPC Co-chair)
  • 2023: ISCA, S&P, Micro Top Picks
  • 2022: ISCA, MICRO, ASPLOS, HPCA
  • 2021: ISCA (ERC), MICRO, ASPLOS, HPCA, Micro Top Picks
  • 2020: ISCA, MICRO, ASPLOS (ERC)
  • 2019: MICRO
Organizer/Co-chair: Others:
  • Publicity Co-chair for ISCA 2023
  • Publicity Co-chair for ASPLOS 2023
  • Area Vice-chair for the Computer Architecture area in IPDPS 2021
  • Publication Chair for MICRO 2021
  • Registration Chair for ISPASS 2020