Prof. Michael Orshansky and Prof. Sriram Vishwanath of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering have received a research grant as part of the Secure, Trustworthy, Assured and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS) program. STARSS is a joint program created by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Semiconductor Research Coporation (SRC). According to STARSS, the awards "support research at the circuit, architecture and system levels on new strategies, methods and tools to decrease the likelihood of unintended behavior or access; increase resistance and resilience to tampering; and improve the ability to provide authentication throughout the supply chain and in the field."

In a project titled “Hardware authentication through high-capacity, physical unclonable functions (PUF)-based secret key generation and lattice coding” the University of Texas at Austin researchers will develop strong machine-learning resistant PUFs, capable of producing high-entropy outputs, and a new lattice-based stability algorithm for high-capacity secret key generation.

Orshansky and Vishwanath are one of nine groups that received an award which total nearly $4 million collectively.