Yuheng Yang
PhD Student at MIT
Email: yuhengy@mit.edu
Bio
I am a 5th-year PhD student at MIT EECS advised by Prof. Mengjia Yan.
I work on formal verification of hardware designs, with a focus of proving security related properties.
My research builds on standard model-checking techniques and develops customized strategies to scale verification to larger designs with minimal manual effort.
Before starting PhD, I received a BEng degree from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Research Insterests
Formal Verification, Hardware Security, Computer Architecture
Publications & Presentations (Thesis works are marked with ★)
Information Flow Analysis
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Compass: Navigating the Design Space of Taint Schemes for RTL Security Verification, ASPLOS 2026.
Yuheng Yang*, Qinhan Tan*, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan
Code,
Slides (ASPLOS),
Poster
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Interplay of Efficient Model Checking and Secure Processor Design: A Case Study on Secure Speculation, S&P 2026.
Tingzhen Dong, Kunpeng Wang, Yuheng Yang, Yu-Wei Fan, Qinhan Tan, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan
Verifying Secure Speculation
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RTL Verification for Secure Speculation Using Contract Shadow Logic, ASPLOS 2025.
Qinhan Tan*, Yuheng Yang*, Thomas Bourgeat, Sharad Malik, Mengjia Yan
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Pensieve: Microarchitectural Modeling for Security Evaluation, ISCA 2023.
Yuheng Yang, Thomas Bourgeat, Stella Lau, Mengjia Yan
MIT EECS William A. Martin Master Thesis Award,
Best Poster Award (NEHWS Workshop)
Talk Recording (ISCA Lightning),
Code,
Slides (ISCA, Intel RARE Workshop, FCCM Workshop, NEHWS Workshop),
Poster
Side Channel Analysis
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DAGguise: Mitigating Memory Timing Side Channels, ASPLOS 2022.
Peter W. Deutsch*, Yuheng Yang*, Thomas Bourgeat, Jules Drean, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan
Talk Recording (ASPLOS),
Slides (ASPLOS),
Poster
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CaSA: End-to-end Quantitative Security Analysis of Randomly Mapped Caches, MICRO 2020.
Thomas Bourgeat, Jules Drean, Yuheng Yang, Lillian Tsai, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan
Intel Hardware Security Academic Award 2022 Finalist,
Top Picks Honorable Mention (Top Picks Workshop at ICCAD)
Slides (Top Picks Workshop at ICCAD)
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CaSA: End-to-end Quantitative Security Analysis of Randomly Mapped Caches (Top Picks Version), IEEE Design & Test 2024.
Thomas Bourgeat, Jules Drean, Yuheng Yang, Lillian Tsai, Joel Emer, Mengjia Yan
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Collapsing Towers for Side-Channel Security (Short Paper), PEPM Workshop at POPL 2025.
Cameron Wong, Muhammad Abdullah, Yuheng Yang, Mengjia Yan, Adam Chlipala, Nada Amin
Trusted Execution Environments