Mengjia Yan

Mengjia Yan is an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at MIT, affiliated with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research focuses on computer architecture and security, particularly side-channel attacks and defenses. She leads the MATCHA group (microarchitecture attacks and challenges), exploring vulnerabilities in microarchitecture and designing robust defenses.

Educated at Zhejiang University (B.S.) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, Ph.D.), she joined MIT after completing her PhD under Prof. Josep Torrellas. Her work bridges hardware security, speculative execution, and machine learning, with notable contributions like PACMAN (ARM pointer authentication attacks) and Oreo (ASLR protection).

Teaching includes courses on computer system architecture (6.5900/6.823) and secure hardware design (6.5950/6.888). She has advised numerous students, including Rhodes Scholars and recipients of fellowships like NSF and NDSEG.

Awarded the Intel Rising Star Faculty Award (2022), NSF CAREER Award (2021), and multiple best paper awards, she also co-organizes conferences like PLARCH and MAD. Current projects include SecureLoop (DNN accelerator security) and formal verification frameworks for secure processors.

Labs/Teams: MATCHA Group at MIT CSAIL. Active in academic service, serving on program committees for ASPLOS, ISCA, and MICRO.