Faculty

Mehran Mozaffari Kermani

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Professor

ENB 338 | 813-974-2671

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Biography

Mehran Mozaffari Kermani is a professor in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. His research focuses on fault diagnosis and tolerance in cryptography, cryptographic engineering and computer arithmetic, with applications in security and cryptographic capabilities for accelerated processing. He also has served as co-director of the Center for Cryptographic Research, including the annual CodeBreakHERS outreach workshop for high school girls at USF, since 2020. He was director of Graduate Admissions/Programs with the Bellini College from 2024-2026 and is an associate director for the master's in cybersecurity at USF. Before joining USF, he was an assistant professor in the Electrical and Microelectronic Engineering Department at Rochester Institute of Technology. He was a senior ASIC/layout designer at Advanced Micro Devices, integrating sophisticated security and cryptographic capabilities into accelerated processing. Mozaffari Kermani has more than 140 publications, including 65 IEEE/ACM Transactions journal papers. He has served for several years as an associate editor for Transactions journals, editing more than 700 manuscripts for publications including IEEE TVLSI, IEEE TCAS I, IEEE TCAS II, IEEE TII, IEEE TCSVT and ACM TECS. He has guest edited special issues on cryptographic engineering and hardware security for IEEE TCBB, IEEE TETC and IEEE TDSC. He has served on technical committees for conferences on embedded systems security and reliability, including HOST, as publications chair; CCS, as publications chair; DAC; INFOCOM; DATE; FDTC; GLSVLSI; DFT; ISCAS; ISQED; RFIDSec; LightSec; and WAIFI. His honors include the prestigious Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, the Texas Instruments Faculty Award (Douglas Harvey), the outstanding research award from the College of Engineering at USF, the Nexus Initiative Global Award and the USF university-wide Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of the IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society and ACM.

Research Interests

  • Fault diagnosis and tolerance in cryptography
  • Post-quantum and efficient cryptographic engineering
  • Computer and finite-field arithmetic
  • Embedded systems security
  • Design for reliability and fault immunity
  • Machine-learning and data-mining security
  • Parallel, scalable architectures and low-power secure FPGA and ASIC design for cryptographic computation

Teaching Interests

  • Cryptographic engineering
  • Fault-tolerant computing
  • Computer arithmetic
  • Digital systems
  • VLSI testing

Education

  • Postdoctoral researcher, Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, 2013
  • Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, 2011
  • M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, 2007
  • B.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran, 2005

Honors and Awards

  • Best Paper Award IEEE S&P Workshop (2025)
  • Best Paper Award ICISC Conference (2022)
  • USF Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award (2020)
  • USF Nexus Initiative Global Award (2019)
  • USF College of Engineering's Outstanding Junior Research Achievement Award (2018)
  • Faculty Award for Exemplary Research Performance, RIT (Engineering) (2017, 2015)
  • Faculty Award for Engaging Graduate Students in Research, RIT (Engineering) (2017)
  • Elevated to a Senior Member of the IEEE (2016)
  • Featured Faculty in Research, RIT (2014)
  • Texas Instruments Faculty Award (Douglas Harvey) (2014) NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship (PDF) at Princeton University (this two-year award is one of the most prestigious postdoctoral awards in Canada, acceptance rate: 9% in 2011) (2012)
  • Princeton's supplement for postdoctoral fellowship award (2012)

Key Activities

  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II (TCAS II)
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (TCSVT)
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I (TCAS I)
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems (TVLSI)
  • Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)
  • Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics- CPS Security (TII)
  • Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC)
  • Guest Editor of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB)
  • Guest Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC) TPC and organizing committee member for HOST (Publications Chair), CCS (Publications chair), DAC, INFOCOM, DATE, ISQED, GLSVLSI, RFIDSec, LightSec, WAIFI, FDTC, and DFT