Basel will partner with the security experts in Arm to build a detailed threat model of the integrated circuit (IC) supply chain.

“The multinational-distributed nature of IC supply chain has made it vulnerable to hardware security attacks such as Trojan Insertion and IC counterfeit,” he says. “These have severe financial consequences, for example, counterfeiting is costing the UK economy around £30bn and is putting around 14,800 jobs at risk.

“This project aims to create an infrastructure to enforce reliable tracking of electronic systems throughout its life cycle to mitigate against said attacks. This will be achieved by designing an unforgeable hardware root of trust that can be embedded in each computing device and developing appropriate defence mechanisms based on a trustworthy cryptographically secure tracking system.”

Basel has vast experience of the implementation flow of IC, from concept to silicon, and has recently published a book in this area on the use of Physically Unclonable Functions (PUF) to produce trustworthy electronic systems. He has also designed a new module on secure hardware design to further promote this research area.

The RAEng Industrial Fellowships scheme has supported 58 researchers to complete placements with 53 industrial partners over the past five years.

Other engineering disciplines covered in this latest cohort include innovations in plastic waste recycling, carbon dioxide capture, bamboo-timber composite beams for buildings and 3D reconstructed human skin.