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Welcome to the Secure Quantum-era Integrated Architecture Lab (Sequoia Lab) at the University of California, Merced!
Dr. Qian Wang Receives NSF CAREER Award!
Project: "Securing and Optimizing Quantum-Resilient Cryptography for Versatile Computing Architectures"
The NSF CAREER Award is one of the most prestigious awards for early-career faculty, recognizing outstanding research and education contributions.
Recent News
- 04/26 Dr. Qian Wang receives the NSF CAREER Award for the project "Securing and Optimizing Quantum-Resilient Cryptography for Versatile Computing Architectures"!
- 03/26 Hui Feng and Ben Dong's paper "Secure and Efficient CAD-LLM Inference via GPU-Accelerated TEEs" accepted at IEEE MDTS'26! Congrats!
- 02/26 Hui Feng's paper "CipherShield: Safeguarding DNN Inputs from Ciphertext Side-Channels in TEE" accepted at DAC'26! Congrats!
- 01/26 Hui Feng and Ben Dong's paper "CELLM: Confidential and Efficient Lightweight LLM Inference in TEEs" accepted at ISQED'26! Congrats!
- 01/26 Ben Dong's paper "OptHQC: Optimize HQC for High-Performance Post-Quantum Cryptography" accepted at ISCAS'26! Congrats!
Research Focus
The Sequoia Lab, led by Dr. Qian Wang, researches hardware-centered security in the post-quantum and quantum computing era.
Real systems face two simultaneous pressures: (1) deploying post-quantum cryptography (PQC) without breaking performance on constrained platforms, and (2) securing emerging quantum computing toolchains against leakage, side-channels, and IP theft. Our work emphasizes end-to-end realism—measuring overheads, hardening trust boundaries, and building optimizations that translate into deployable systems.
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We are recruiting Ph.D. students and Research Assistants interested in post-quantum cryptography and hardware security.
Learn more arrow_forwardResearch Thrusts
Post-Quantum Secure Networking on Constrained Systems
We design and evaluate PQC integrations for real protocols and stacks, targeting practical deployment constraints (compute, memory, handshake latency). This includes PQC-enabled secure communication (e.g., QUIC/TLS contexts) and systematic profiling/optimization on embedded/IoT platforms.
High-Performance PQC Implementations and Acceleration
We develop algorithm- and architecture-aware optimizations for PQC primitives—especially compute-heavy schemes—pushing performance on modern platforms. This includes optimized implementations of HQC (Hamming Quasi-Cyclic) and GPU-centric acceleration for expensive PQC signature workloads such as SPHINCS+.
Quantum Circuit IP Protection and Trusted Compilation
As quantum computing workflows increasingly rely on third-party toolchains, we investigate protections against untrusted compilers and circuit IP leakage. Our research proposes methods such as split compilation/obfuscation and enhanced locking mechanisms to preserve functionality while making reverse engineering substantially harder.