Industry Advisory Board
The FICS Research Industry Advisory Board is a collaborative group of industry leaders, technical experts, and strategic partners who provide guidance on emerging trends, workforce needs, and applied research opportunities. The board supports FICS Research by strengthening connections between academia and industry, helping ensure that research initiatives remain innovative, relevant, and aligned with real-world challenges and technological advancements.
Sohrab Aftabjahani | Intel Corporation
Sohrab received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011. Since 2010, he has been with the Intel Corporation contributing to its state-of-art R&D projects in various roles including security expert, staff security researcher, senior DFT engineer, senior digital design and validation engineer, and graphics Integration validation engineer. He joined Intel after 9 years of experience working as software and hardware engineer for TRW and Computer Science Corporation, Telecommunications Research Center, and several electronic system design companies.
Sohrab
is specialized in security, computer-aided design, AI hardware, computer architecture, digital systems, design for test, semiconductor testing, embedded systems, telecommunication systems, software engineering, operating systems, compiler design, and information technology.
He is a senior IEEE/ACM member and serves as the chair of the IEEE Oregon section computer society and the chair of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Trustworthy and Secure Semiconductors and Systems (T3S) Technical Advisory Board (TAB). He has served as a TAB for the SRC T3S and Computer-Aided Design and Test (CADT) since 2014. He was a 3-time recipient of the SRC Mahboob Khan outstanding liaison award in 2016, 2019, and 2024.
He has 40 publications, white papers, technical reports, and book chapters. He has participated actively in scholarly actives (program chair of IEEE IVSW, security track chair of MTV workshop, co-organizer of [Intel] Pacific Northwest hardware security workshop) and has reviewed many papers for conferences (DAC, ITC, VTS, AsianHost, TAU, Intel DTTC/SWPC, ICCIT, ICIS, NCM, INC) and journals (TCAD, Proc. of the IEEE, TODAES, TETC) as well as NSF proposals related to security and design for test. His research interests include the security-related aspects of design, validation, testing, performance analysis of SoCs, making CAD tools security-aware and creating tools to facilitate design for security and security assurance of systems.
Douglas Gardner | Chief Technologist
Douglas Gardner is the Chief Technologist in Analog Device’s Security Products & Technology Business Unit. He is a security architect who leads research and development efforts and provides secure solutions for IoT, control systems, endpoint security, and silicon. He has an extensive background in the DoD and Commercial markets in systems engineering, information assurance, secure communications, secure computing platforms, identity, key management, control systems, and endpoint security.
Ariton Xhafa | Texas Instruments
Ariton received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and has been with Texas Instruments since 2004 where he is Distinguished Member Technical Staff (DMTS) in Connectivity BU. He has held various technical lead roles in wireless technologies, security and network protocols, and standards that span IEEE 802.15.4/e, IEEE 802.15.6 Body Area Network, WiFi/Bluetooth coexistence, Wireless Battery Managements Systems (WBMS), Ultra Wideband (UWB), and IEEE802.11n/s.
Ariton
has served as Technical Advisory Board Member in Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) in Hardware Security program since 2015. He has published more than 50 journals and conferences papers, granted 120+ patents, and regularly volunteers for STEM programs in DFW area. Ariton splits his remaining free time between spending time with his family and being a soccer coach.