Intel Hardware Security Academic Award

Intel Hardware Security Academic Award
Logo of Intel, which presents the award
DescriptionRecently published academic research in hardware security
CountryUnited States
Presented byIntel
RewardsUS$75,000 (first prize) and US$50,000 (second prize) in 2021–2022, paid to the winners' institution
First award2021
Websiteintel.com

The Intel Hardware Security Academic Award is an award presented by Intel for recently published academic papers in hardware security. Intel launched the program in 2021 to recognize advances in solutions, tools and methodologies that improve the industry's ability to deliver secure and trustworthy foundational technologies. The award has two categories: a main award for papers published in the preceding one or two years and, since 2022, a Test of Time Award for papers published at least ten years earlier that have had a lasting impact on the field.

Eligibility and prizes

Candidate papers are collected through an open call, and each call covers a fixed publication window. The 2021 call accepted papers published in 2020, with a submission deadline of 3 April 2021. The 2022 call accepted papers first published or presented in calendar year 2021, with a submission deadline of 5 June 2022. The 2024 call covered papers published between 1 January 2022 and 31 December 2023 and was limited to submissions by full-time faculty members. Intel employees cannot be the primary author of a submitted paper; papers with an Intel co-author are eligible, but the Intel co-author does not share in the award. The 2026 call also spanned two years, accepting papers published between 1 January 2024 and 31 December 2025, with a deadline of 15 June 2026; Test of Time submissions had to be published before 1 January 2016. The call stated that finalists would be notified by mid-August 2026 and that the winners would be announced at an Intel academic security event in the fall of 2026.

Submissions are judged on viability, novelty, originality and relevance, with a focus on papers that make a contribution to the hardware security ecosystem.

In the first two editions the first prize was US$75,000 and the second prize US$50,000. The money is paid to the winners' academic institution, to be used for further research or curriculum development, rather than to the authors. The 2022 call also offered twelve months of access to Intel's virtual pre-production environment, a feature on Intel's security podcast and invitations to present at Intel security conferences. The 2024 call does not mention prize money; it lists an announcement on the Intel Newsroom, a podcast feature and an invitation to a special event with senior Intel leaders. The 2026 call likewise mentions no prize money; it lists an invitation to a special event with a senior Intel leader, a feature on Intel's Chips and Salsa security podcast and opportunities to present to Intel's security research teams.

History

The winners of the first edition were announced on 28 May 2021. Isaura Gaeta, Intel's vice president of security research, presented the awards during the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. A committee at Intel selected the first and second prize winners from 26 papers by more than 80 authors in 14 countries.

The results of the second edition were announced on 10 August 2022. That year 34 papers by more than 140 authors from academia and industry in 11 countries competed, and the awards were presented at a reception in Boston held alongside the USENIX Security Symposium by Anand Rajan, senior director of the Emerging Security Lab at Intel Labs. The first Test of Time Award was also given that year. The first prize, awarded to a team led by Wolfgang Kunz at TU Kaiserslautern for a formal method that checks the confidentiality of a chip design during the design phase, was covered by the German trade press; the judges described the approach as the first of its kind, with great potential for practical use.

The 2024 edition covered papers published in 2022 and 2023. Out of 60 nominations from 240 authors at 100 institutions in 17 countries, three papers were recognized: one winner and two honorable mentions. The awards were presented at an event during the 2024 USENIX Security Symposium.

The 2026 edition covered papers published in 2024 and 2025. The selection committee named five finalist papers; one received the Recent Publication Award and two received honorable mentions, and a Test of Time Award was also given. The winners were announced on 30 September 2026 on stage at the Intel Academic Security Conference, an invitation-only event. The other two finalists were BadRAM, presented at the 2025 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, and TLBlur, presented at the 2025 USENIX Security Symposium.

Calls and submissions by edition
EditionPublication windowDeadlinePapersAuthorsInstitutionsCountriesRecognized papers (main award)Test of Time Award
20262024–202515 June 2026––––31
20242022–202310 March 2024602401001731
202220215 June 202234140+–1121
202120203 April 20212680+–142–

A dash means that the figure was not given in the announcements for that edition, that the category did not yet exist, or that results have not yet been announced. Publication windows and deadlines are taken from each edition's call. Sources for the figures: Intel's 2021 announcement, Intel's 2022 press release, Purdue University's 2024 news release, and Intel's 2026 announcement.

Recipients

Paper titles link to the published version of each paper.

YearCategoryPaperAuthorsInstitutionsVenue
2026Recent Publication Award"Chronus: Understanding and Securing the Cutting-Edge Industry Solutions to DRAM Read Disturbance"Oğuzhan Canpolat, A. Giray Yağlıkçı, Geraldo F. Oliveira, Ataberk Olgun, Nisa Bostancı, İsmail Emir Yüksel, Haocong Luo, Oğuz Ergin, Onur MutluETH Zurich, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, University of SharjahHPCA 2025
2026Honorable mention"Segue & ColorGuard: Optimizing SFI Performance and Scalability on Modern Architectures"Shravan Narayan, Tal Garfinkel, Evan Johnson, Zachary Yedidia, Yingchen Wang, Andrew Brown, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Michael LeMay, Wenyong Huang, Xin Wang, Mingqiu Sun, Dean Tullsen, Deian StefanUniversity of Texas at Austin, University of California, San Diego and othersASPLOS 2025
2026Honorable mention"Synthesis of Sound and Precise Leakage Contracts for Open-Source RISC-V Processors"Zilong Wang, Gideon Mohr, Klaus von Gleissenthall, Jan Reineke, Marco GuarnieriVrije Universiteit Amsterdam and othersACM CCS 2025
2026Test of Time"Flipping Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: An Experimental Study of DRAM Disturbance Errors"Yoongu Kim, Ross Daly, Jeremie Kim, Chris Fallin, Ji Hye Lee, Donghyuk Lee, Chris Wilkerson, Konrad Lai, Onur MutluCarnegie Mellon University, Intel LabsISCA 2014
2024Winner"There's Always a Bigger Fish: A Clarifying Analysis of a Machine-Learning-Assisted Side-Channel Attack"Jack Cook, Jules Drean, Jonathan Behrens, Mengjia YanMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyISCA 2022
2024Honorable mention"Branch History Injection: On the Effectiveness of Hardware Mitigations Against Cross-Privilege Spectre-v2 Attacks"Enrico Barberis, Pietro Frigo, Marius Muench, Herbert Bos, Cristiano GiuffridaVrije Universiteit AmsterdamUSENIX Security Symposium 2022
2024Honorable mention"Going beyond the Limits of SFI: Flexible and Secure Hardware-Assisted In-Process Isolation with HFI"Shravan Narayan, Tal Garfinkel, Mohammadkazem Taram, Joey Rudek, Daniel Moghimi, Evan Johnson, Chris Fallin, Anjo Vahldiek-Oberwagner, Michael LeMay, Ravi Sahita, Dean Tullsen, Deian StefanUniversity of California, San Diego, University of Texas at Austin, Purdue University and othersASPLOS 2023
2024Test of Time"Flicker: An Execution Infrastructure for TCB Minimization"Jonathan M. McCune, Bryan Parno, Adrian Perrig, Michael Reiter, Hiroshi IsozakiCarnegie Mellon UniversityEuroSys 2008
2022First prize"A Formal Approach to Confidentiality Verification in SoCs at the Register Transfer Level"Johannes Müller, Mohammad R. Fadiheh, Anna Lena Duque Antón, Thomas Eisenbarth, Dominik Stoffel, Wolfgang KunzTU Kaiserslautern, University of LübeckDesign Automation Conference 2021
2022Second prize"Nyx: Greybox Hypervisor Fuzzing using Fast Snapshots and Affine Types"Sergej Schumilo, Cornelius Aschermann, Thorsten HolzRuhr University Bochum, CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information SecurityUSENIX Security Symposium 2021
2022Test of Time"AEGIS: Architecture for Tamper-Evident and Tamper-Resistant Processing"G. Edward Suh, Dwaine Clarke, Blaise Gassend, Marten van Dijk, Srinivas DevadasMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyInternational Conference on Supercomputing 2003
2021First prize"Speculative Data-Oblivious Execution: Mobilizing Safe Prediction for Safe and Efficient Speculative Execution"Jiyong Yu, Namrata Mantri, Josep Torrellas, Adam Morrison, Christopher W. FletcherUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Tel Aviv UniversityISCA 2020
2021Second prize"Transys: Leveraging Common Security Properties Across Hardware Designs"Rui Zhang, Cynthia SturtonUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillIEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2020
  Top recognition in the main award
  Test of Time Award

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". Intel. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "2022 Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". EasyChair. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  3. 1 2 "2021 Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". EasyChair. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "2024 Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". EasyChair. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  5. 1 2 3 4 "2026 Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". EasyChair. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Intel Announces Hardware Security Award Winners" (PDF). Intel. 28 May 2021. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Intel Names Hardware Security Award Winners". Intel. 10 August 2022. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  8. 1 2 "Zhang, Sturton take second place in Intel Hardware Security Academic Award". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of Computer Science. 3 June 2021. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  9. 1 2 "Prof. Suh receives Hardware Security Test of Time Award from Intel". Cornell University, Computer Systems Laboratory. 12 August 2022. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  10. ↑ Kuther, Thomas (31 August 2022). "Forscher erhalten Intel Hardware Security Academic Award 2022". ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS (in German). Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  11. ↑ "Intel Hardware Security Academic Award 2022 verliehen". channel-e (in German). 30 August 2022. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 "Intel Announces Hardware Security Award Winners 2024". Intel. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  13. 1 2 "Taram's Novel Research Wins Multiple Prestigious Awards in Hardware Security". Purdue University, Department of Computer Science. 9 September 2024. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  14. 1 2 "CSE Researchers Earn Intel Award for Their Transformative Hardware Security Fix". University of California San Diego, Computer Science and Engineering. 26 August 2024. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Intel Announces 2026 Hardware Security Award Winners". Intel. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
  16. ↑ De Meulemeester, Jesse; Wilke, Luca; Eisenbarth, Thomas (2025). BadRAM: Practical Memory Aliasing Attacks on Trusted Execution Environments. 2025 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). doi:10.1109/SP61157.2025.00104.
  17. ↑ "TLBlur: Compiler-Assisted Automated Hardening against Controlled Channels on Off-the-Shelf Intel SGX Platforms". USENIX. 2025. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Canpolat, Oğuzhan (2025). "Chronus: Understanding and Securing the Cutting-Edge Industry Solutions to DRAM Read Disturbance". arXiv:2502.12650 [cs.CR].
  19. ↑ "Segue & ColorGuard: Optimizing SFI Performance and Scalability on Modern Architectures" (PDF). University of California San Diego. 2025. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
  20. ↑ "Synthesis of Sound and Precise Leakage Contracts for Open-Source RISC-V Processors". Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
  21. ↑ "Flipping Bits in Memory Without Accessing Them: An Experimental Study of DRAM Disturbance Errors" (PDF). Carnegie Mellon University. 2014. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
  22. ↑ "CSD Faculty Win Two "Test of Time" Awards at USENIX 2024". Carnegie Mellon University, Computer Science Department. 20 August 2024. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  23. ↑ "Professor Adam Morrison's Team Wins Intel's Hardware Security Academic Award". Tel Aviv University, Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center. 20 December 2021. Retrieved 1 October 2026.
  24. ↑ "Josep Torrellas: Curriculum Vitae" (PDF). University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Retrieved 1 October 2026.