CV
29 September 2025
Can Aknesil
Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, SE-100 44 STOCKHOLM
aknesil@kth.se
www.canaknesil.com
EDUCATION
Doctoral Study in Information and Communication Technology 2021 – 2025
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Specialization: Electronic Systems
Title: Protecting Remote FPGAs and Embedded Devices from Non-Invasive Physical Attacks
Supervisor: Prof. Elena Dubrova
Master of Science in Embedded Systems (Platform track) 2018 – 2020
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Electronics Engineering 2013 – 2018
Double Major in Computer Engineering
Koç University, Istanbul
College of Engineering
(25% Scholarship)
GPA: 3.44 / 4
Vehbi Koç Scholar in 2014 and 2016
Member of Koç University - Parallel and Multicore Computing Laboratory
High School 2008 – 2013
Notre Dame de Sion French High School, Istanbul
PUBLICATIONS
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Postdoctoral Researcher June 2025 – Present
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Computer Science
Division of Network and Systems Engineering
Doctoral Student March 2021 – June 2025
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Electrical Engineering
Division of Electronics and Embedded Systems
Research Engineer June 2020 – January 2021
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Intern June 2019 – November 2019
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, Stockholm
High Performance Broadband/Radio Software Department
Intern July 2017 – September 2017
CTech Bilişim Teknolojileri San. ve Tic. A.Ş., Istanbul
Hardware Department
Mentor Student February 2017 – June 2017
Koç University, Instanbul
IT Department
Communication and Infrastructure Services
Intern July 2016 – August 2016
OBSS, Istanbul
Technology Department
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Guest Lecturer September 2025
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm
Course titled Digital Forensics and Incident Response (EP2780)
Teaching Assistant (during doctoral studies and later as postdoc) March 2021 - Present
KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), Stockholm
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department of Electrical Engineering
Division of Electronics and Embedded Systems
Undergraduate Teaching Assistant September 2017 – January 2018
Koç University, Istanbul
College of Engineering
Supervisor: Deniz Yüret
Section Leader June 20 – 30, 2016
Stanford University & Koç University, Istanbul
CS Bridge Program
LANGUAGE SKILLS
Turkish: Native language
English: IELTS in 2018 (Overall: 6.0, Listening: 6.0, Reading: 6.5, Writing: 5.0, Speaking: 5.5), TOEFL IBT in 2017 (Overall: 88, Listening: 27, Reading: 22, Writing: 22, Speaking: 17)
Swedish: SFI Course C in 2021 (roughly corresponds to CEFR A2/A2+), KTH Swedish C1 for Employees in 2025
French: DELF B2 in 2012 (Overall: 57.5/100, Listening: 11/25, Reading: 12.5/25, Writing: 18/25, Speaking: 16/25)
PROFESSIONAL SKILLS
Hardware security
- Power/EM side-channel attacks (simple, differential, ML-based, and remote power analysis on FPGAs and microcontrollers)
- Microarchitectural side-channel attacks
- FPGA security
- Machine learning security
Computer security
- Machine learning security
- Penetration testing
- Networking and network security
Hardware design & development
- FPGA design and verification with VHDL and SystemVerilog (using Xilinx and Intel (Altera) design tools)
- Tcl scripting in Xilinx Vivado environment
- RTL synthesis with Yosys
- Graph-bases analysis of digital circuits
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, ARM Assembly, C, and C++
- Fault-tolerant systems design
High-performance computing (HPC)
- Parallel programming with pthread library, MPI, CUDA, and MicroC/OS
Computer science
- Scientific programming
- Machine Learning (supervised and unsupervised)
- Proficiency in Linux (personal use, system administration, driver and application development)
- Compiler and interpreter design with Lex (Lexical Analyzer), Yacc (Parser), LLVM (Optimization development), and PLY (Python Lex-Yacc)
- Version control with Git and Subversion
- Build automation with GNU Make, and CMake
- Proficiency in Office Programs
- LaTeX
Programming/scripting languages
- C, C++, Rust, Java, Julia, Python, Matlab, Lisp, Haskell, Bash, PowerShell, Tcl
Various other areas I have experimented
- PCB design using KiCad
- Mixed-signal IC design using Cadence Virtuoso
- Image analysis and computer vision
- 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)
- Detection and mitigation of speculative microarchitectural side channels with LLVM. (KTH Postdoc)
- Hybrid fingerprinting (via power side-channel analysis) of neural networks (Doctoral Study)
- Go (board game, not the programming language) computer game in Rust (Independent)
- Circuit Disguise: Detecting Malicious Circuits in Cloud FPGAs without IP Disclosure (Doctoral Study)
- Near-field EM sensor implementations in FPGA configurable fabric (Doctoral Study)
- Covert antenna implementations on FPGA interconnect (Doctoral Study)
- Side-channel attacks on memory operations of general purpose computers (Doctoral Study)
- Side-channel attacks on Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA bitstream encryption engine (Doctoral Study)
- Bitstream Extraction from SPI Flash Communication (Doctoral Study)
- Breaking Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) on FPGA via power side-channel attack combined with deep learning (KTH Employment)
- Machine Learning modeling attacks on Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) (KTH Employment)
- FPGA implementation and statistical analysis of Arbiter PUF with 4x4 Switch Blocks (MSc. Embedded Systems thesis, under the supervision of Elena Dubrova)
- Single-Event Upset Detector (SEUD) Experiment in the Miniature Student Satellite (MIST) (MSc. Embedded Systems final project)
- Robust Header Compression (RoHC) for Profile 6 (TCP/IP) (Ericsson internship)
- Interfacing C++ high-performance radio simulation libraries from Julia, using Cxx.jl (Ericsson summer internship)
- CUDA Compilation Support for Snowflake DSL (Computer Engineering Final Project)
- Limon: A simple and powerful general purpose programming language (Independent)
- Programmable clock generator chip, RF receiver chip, and RF transmitter chip programming via BeagleBone Black (CTech internship)
- FPGA C++ Framework for FIR Filtering Applications (Electrical & Electronics Engineering Final Project)
- MAM: A Memory Allocation Manager for GPUs, in C, compatible with C++ and CUDA (ParCoreLab)
- HR Job Advert & Application Management Web Application, in Java (OBSS Summer Internship)
- Cannon’s matrix multiplication algorithm, in C, using MPI library (Independent)
- Unix-style operating system shell, in C, on Linux (During undergraduate study)
- Air traffic control simulator, in C++, using pthread.h library (During undergraduate study)
- Cache simulator, in C (During undergraduate study)
- Sound Transmission via Amplitude Modulation of Light, electronic circuit and simulation on PSpice (During undergraduate study)
- Digital clock, on FPGA board using VHDL (During undergraduate study)
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
- IEEE 55st International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic (ISMVL). Presented a research paper. (2025)
- 27th Euromicro Conference Series on Digital System Design. Presented a research paper. (2024)
- Cybersecurity and Privacy (CySeP) Summer School. (2024)
- 30th Reconfigurable Architectures Workshop (RAW). Presented a research paper. (2023)
- 30th IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI-SoC). Presented a research paper. (2022)
- FPGAworld Conference in Stockholm. (2022)
- IEEE 51st International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic (ISMVL). Presented a research paper. (2021)
- Solid-State Circuits Directions Inaugural Workshop: Hardware Security. (2020)
- TECoSA Federated Learning Workshop. (2020)
- FPGAworld Conference in Stockholm. (2019)
- FPGAworld Conference in Stockholm. (2018)
- National High Performance Computing Conference (BAŞARIM) (Ulusal Yüksek Başarımlı Hesaplama Konferansı). Presented a research paper. (2017)
- Training named "Neuroscience for Leadership" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Training named "Idea Production Techniques" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Training named "Communication Mastery" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Training named "Personal Quality" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Training named "Sustainable Motivation" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Training named "Gamification" at Kariyer.Net (2017)
- Participated to workshop organized by NDS to "Istanbul Technical University Energy Institute Nuclear Researches Division". Observation of "ITU TRIGA Mark-II Training and Research Reactor". (2012)
HOBBIES & INTERESTS
- Music: Piano, Oud (A Classical Turkish Musical Instrument), and Guitar
- 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
- Summer 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, Badminton
- Table tennis team member in Notre Dame de Sion (high school)
- Winter sports: Skiing, Ice skating