Updated on 5 October 2023.

Can AKNESİL

Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM
aknesil@kth.se
www.canaknesil.com

EDUCATION

KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2021 – Present
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, STOCKHOLM
Doctoral Study in Information and Communication Technology
Specialization: Electronic Systems
Title: Protection of Intellectual Property and Confidential Data from Machine Learning Based Attacks
Supervisor: Prof. Elena Dubrova

KTH Royal Institute of Technology 2018 – 2020
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, STOCKHOLM
Master of Science in Embedded Systems (Platform track)

Koç University 2013 – 2018
College of Engineering, ISTANBUL
Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Electronics Engineering
Double Major in Computer Engineering
(25% Scholarship)
GPA: 3.44 / 4
Vehbi Koç Scholar in 2014 and 2016

Notre Dame de Sion French High School 2008 – 2013
ISTANBUL

PUBLICATIONS

Can Aknesil, Elena Dubrova, Niklas Lindskog and Håkan Englund. “A Near-Field EM Sensor Implemented in FPGA Configurable Fabric”. 2023 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom). 2023.

Can Aknesil, Elena Dubrova, Niklas Lindskog and Håkan Englund. “Is Your FPGA Transmitting Secrets: Covert Antennas from Interconnect”. 2023 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops (IPDPSW). 2023.

Can Aknesil and Elena Dubrova. “Towards Generic Power/EM Side-Channel Attacks: Memory Leakage on General-Purpose Computers”. 2022 IFIP/IEEE 30th International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC). 2022.

Can Aknesil and Elena Dubrova. “An FPGA Implementation of 4x4 Arbiter PUF”. 2021 IEEE 51st International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic (ISMVL). 2021.

Can Aknesil. “An FPGA Implementation of Arbiter PUF with 4x4 Switch Blocks”. Master’s Thesis, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm, Sweden. 2020.

Can Aknesil and Didem Unat. “MAM: A Memory Allocation Manager for GPUs”. 5. Ulusal Yüksek Başarımlı Hesaplama Konferansı, Istanbul, Turkey. September, 2017.

EXPERIENCE

Professional Experience

Doctoral Study March 2021 – Present
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology)
Stockholm, Sweden
Doctoral Student in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Electrical Engineering, Division of Electronics and Embedded Systems

Employment June 2020 – January 2021
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology)
Stockholm, Sweden
Research Engineer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Internship R&D June 2019 – November 2019
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
Stockholm, Sweden
Intern in High Performance Broadband/Radio Software Department

Work&Study in College of Engineering September 2017 – January 2018
Koç University - College of Engineering
Istanbul, Turkey
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant under Deniz Yüret

Internship July 2017 – September 2017
CTech Bilişim Teknolojileri San. ve Tic. A.Ş.
Istanbul, Turkey
Hardware Department Intern

Work&Study in IT Department February 2017 – June 2017
Koç University - IT
Istanbul, Turkey
Communication and Infrastructure Services Mentor Student

OBSS Summer Internship July 2016 – August 2016
OBSS
Istanbul, Turkey
Technology Department Intern

Teaching Experience

Various Teaching Assistantship during Doctoral Study March 2021 - Present
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology)
Stockholm, Sweden
Doctoral Student in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Electrical Engineering, Division of Electronics and Embedded Systems

CS Bridge Program June 20 – 30, 2016
Stanford University & Koç University
Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Section Leader

Research Lab Membership

Koç University - Parallel and Multicore Computing Laboratory September 2016 – March 2018
Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
Lab Member

SKILLS

Language

Turkish: Native language

English: IELTS (Overall: 6.0, Listening: 6.0, Reading: 6.5, Writing: 5.0, Speaking: 5.5), TOEFL IBT (Overall: 88, Listening: 27, Reading: 22, Writing: 22, Speaking: 17)

French: DELF B2 Overall: 57.5/100

Swedish: SFI Course C (roughly corresponds to CEFR A2/A2+)

Electronics Engineering & Computer Science

Hardware security

  • Power/EM side-channel attacks (simple, differential, ML-based, and remote power analysis on FPGAs and microcontrollers)
  • Covert channel attacks on remote FPGAs

Hardware design & development

  • FPGA design with VHDL, verification with VHDL and SystemVerilog (using both Xilinx and Intel (Altera) design tools)
  • Tcl scripting in Xilinx Vivado environment

Embedded systems design & development:

  • Embedded real-time platform and software development with Nios II soft-processor and MicroC/OS
  • Embedded software development with Linux
  • Embedded software development directly on processor in AVR Assembly, MIPS Assembly, and C

High-performance computing (HPC)

  • Parallel programming with pthread library, MPI, CUDA, and MicroC/OS

Computer science

  • Scientific programming
  • Machine Learning (supervised and unsupervised)
  • Machine Learning Security
  • Proficiency in Linux (personal usage, system administration, driver and application development)
  • Compiler and interpreter design with Lex (Lexical Analyzer) and Yacc (Parser)
  • Version control with Git and Subversion
  • Build automation with GNU Make
  • Proficiency in Office Programs

Programming/scripting languages

  • C, C++, Java, Julia, Python, Matlab, Lisp, Haskell, Bash, PowerShell

Various other areas I have experimented

  • PCB design using KiCad
  • Image analysis and computer vision
  • Networking
  • Mobile application development for IOS (Objective – C) and Android (Java)
  • Web development with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, Java EE, and Django
  • Database design with SQL and MongoDB
  • Circuit development for audio applications
  • Electronic circuit simulation with PSpice and LTspice
  • Emacs lisp programming

PROJECTS

(From the most recent to the earliest)

A subset of my projects can be found here.

AWARDS

  • Vehbi Koç Scholar 2014, 2016
  • International mathematical competition named “Le Kangourou des mathématiques”, 22th among 10627 participants, 2011

CONFERENCES & WORKSHOPS

HOBBIES & INTERESTS

  • Music: Piano, Guitar and Oud (A Classical Turkish Musical Instrument)
    • London College of Music Piano Examinations, Grade 5
    • Koç Orchestra, piano and keyboard, during 3 years. Performed 7 concerts
    • Water Clock (band), keyboard, during 1 year. Performed 2 concert
  • Water sports: Sailing, Windsurfing
    • Have an Amateur Yacht Captain License
    • Participated to optimist courses at Ataköy Marine
    • Participated to sailing education at Istanbul Sailing Club
    • Officially licensed, intermediate level windsurfer registered with the Turkish Sailing Federation.
  • Tennis, Table tennis
    • Table tennis team member in Notre Dame de Sion (high school)
  • Winter sports: Skiing, Ice skating