Assistant Professor Gururaj Saileshwar.
Get to know Gururaj Saileshwar who joined the Department of Mathematical and Computational Sciences (University of Toronto Mississauga) and the tri-campus graduate Department of Computer Science as assistant professor in August 2023.
Saileshwar received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech in 2022.
His PhD dissertation, “Architecting Secure Processor Caches” received the “ACM SIGMICRO Outstanding Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention)” at MICRO-2023 “for developing principled state-of-the-art cache attacks and defenses by exploiting architectural insights,” according to the award citation. His dissertation was also previously awarded the IEEE HOST 2022 Best PhD Dissertation Award and ACM SIGARCH / IEEE TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award (Honorable Mention).
What attracted you to your specific area of research in computer science?
My research is on system security with a focus on computing hardware. My research addresses critical security vulnerabilities that have surfaced in computing hardware in recent years, like Spectre and Rowhammer, that impact billions of computers. As computing hardware initially designed for speed and efficiency now tries to prioritize security, I find the challenge of rethinking security for hardware to be very compelling.
At the same time, hardware can often inadvertently reveal more information than what is exposed through the software stack. While system designers commonly perceive hardware as a reliable black box, I find it exciting to explore ways in which hardware vulnerabilities can be exploited to breach the security of the entire system. This dynamic interplay of discovering and mitigating vulnerabilities forms a captivating cat-and-mouse game in computer security that I particularly enjoy.
Tell us about some of the key questions you’re looking to answer through your research in computer architecture and security and the possible practical applications of your work.
The goal of my research is to enhance system security through a foundation of trustworthy hardware. To that end, we address the following key questions:
1. In CPUs, addressing hardware vulnerabilities after commercial deployment is extremely difficult. So how can we uncover hardware vulnerabilities, earlier, at design-time automatically? We address this using techniques like fuzzing and formal methods.
2. Beyond CPUs, modern applications like machine learning leverage a broad array of hardware like GPUs, TPUs, and near-data computing. What new vulnerabilities lie undiscovered in these? We seek to discover and mitigate them.
3. With pervasive adoption of machine learning, privacy is a paramount concern. How can we develop systems using privacy-enhancing technologies like homomorphic-encryption and make them low-cost and scalable?
What’s one thing you hope students who study or work with you will come away with?
I aim for students working with me to grasp the significance of full-stack security. In today’s era, rather than viewing hardware and software in isolation, we need to move towards conceptualizing secure systems as a composition of both hardware and software techniques. My hope is that students will cultivate a cross-layer mindset to security and systems building.
What drew you to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto?
DCS is the best computer science department in Canada and among the top in North America. As a result, I found it attracts a very talented pool of students, making this a great place to do cutting-edge research. At the same time, I found the department to be very diverse and welcoming of faculty and students from all races and backgrounds. This continues to give me the feeling that this is a great place to lead a happy and fulfilling academic career.
How are you finding life in Toronto so far and what are you looking forward to doing or experiencing in the city?
I am enjoying Toronto’s cultural diversity. I find Toronto’s culture to be a unique blend of American, Asian and European culture, so there is something for everyone! I look forward to exploring the city's vibrant food scene, and taking up snow sports this winter.
What do you enjoy doing outside of your work as a computer scientist?
I enjoy exploring new restaurants, breweries, and coffee shops. I particularly enjoy specialty coffee and you can often find me trying to sample the best cup of espresso among the many coffee shops around campus and in Toronto.
This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.