Frank Piessens is a Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at KU Leuven's Faculty of Engineering Science, where he leads the Distributed and Secure Software (DistriNet) research group. His research focuses on cutting-edge security challenges at the hardware-software interface. His research interests span: Hardware-software co-design for end-to-end security Confidential computing architectures Microarchitectural side-channel mitigation Secure IoT development Compiler-based security mechanisms Control-flow integrity techniques Recent publications (2024-2025) demonstrate strong focus on: Hardware security cost/performance tradeoffs Processor-level security enhancements (RISC-V, high-end CPUs) IoT device lifecycle security Control-flow leakage prevention Microcontroller IP protection He currently supervises PhD students including M. Bognár and H. Winderix, and leads major research initiatives such as: Hardening confidential computing through vertically integrated system design (2025-2031) Designing secure hardware for software-exploitable attacks (2025-2029) Compiler-based mitigations for microarchitectural side-channels (2023-2027) Security Arms Race at the Hardware-Software Boundary (2020-2025)






