Junior Professor Chair Dr.-Ing. Maria Méndez Real

Personal Info

UNIVERSITE BRETAGNE SUD
Lab-STICC - CNRS UMR 6285 - SHAKER research team

mail: maria.mendez-real@univ-ubs.fr

Address
Université Bretagne Sud
Laboratoire Lab-STICC - CNRS UMR 6285
Centre de Recherche- CS7030
F-56321 Lorient Cedex- FRANCE

Short bio

Originally from Mexico, Maria Méndez Real spent one year in the United States and lives in France since 2009.
Since September 2024, Maria Méndez Real holds the Junior Professor Chair on Swarm of Autonomous and Trusted Maritime Drones at UBS (Université de Bretagne-Sud), within Lab-STICC (Laboratoire des Sciences et Technologies de l’Information, de la Communication et de la Connaissance, UMR CNRS 6285) in France.
Maria has been working in Hardware Security since 2014. Her reasearch interests include side-channel attacks, fault and remote attacks, embedded systems, and machine learning implementation security.
Maria is scientific leader and coordinator of CoPhyTEE ANR JCJC Project.

From 2018 to 2024, she has been Associate Professor (Maitre de Conférences) at Polytech Nantes Université, France. Before, she was an Assistant Professor (ATER) from 2017 to 2018.
She received her PhD, european label, in Electronic Engineering - Hardware Security from UBS, within Lab-STICC CNRS UMR 6285 lab in France. Her PhD work was on the frame of the French ANR TSUNAMY project (2013-2017) and deal with secure-enable mechanisms for the physical isolation of sensitive applications on many-core architectures.
In 2015 Maria was invited researcher at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (RUB), Germany. She worked on virtual prototyping tools for evaluating multi core architectures security.
Before that, she received her master (Dipl.-Ing.) in Electrical and Computer from UBS in 2014.

Maria Méndez Real is author and co-author in international journals, conferences and workshops (TECS, TC, HOST, DATE, JSA, FPL, SAMOS, VLSI, etc). She is PC member and reviwer of several international journals and conferences (VLSI, JCEN, DATE, NEWCAS, FPT, TCAD, LASCAS, MCSoC, ICCS), and she is PC member of TCHES 2023, 2024, top venue in her field.
She actively participates on national project evaluation (ANR projects, PEC, regional, etc) and jurys for recrutement of Associate Professors and PhD following and defense jurys.

List of Publications

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fr&user=5GDDjKkAAAAJ

Recent Publications (2025)

Journals

• DynHaMo: Dynamic Hardware-based Monitoring dedicated to Attacks Detection, J. Pottier, M. Méndez Real, B. Granado, S. Pillement, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), 2025.

• Do Not Trust Power Management: Challenges and Hints for Securing Future Trusted Execution Environments, G. Le-Gonidec, G. Bouffard, J-P. Prévotet, M. Méndez Real, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), 2025.

Conferences

• Double Strike: Breaking Approximation-based Side-Channel Countermeasures for DNNs, L. Casalino, M. Méndez Real, JC. Prévotet, R. Salvador, IEEE International Symposium on Hardware Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), 2026.

• Comb frequency division multiplexing: A non-binary modulation for airgap covert channel transmission, BAHI, Mohamed Alla Eddine, REAL, Maria MENDEZ, et PELCAT, Maxime. In : 2025 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference (DATE). IEEE, 2025. p. 1-2.

• AudioGap: An AirGapped Covert Channel Exploiting the Frequency Diversity of Audio IC Electromagnetic Leakage, M. A. E. BAHI, M. MENDEZ REAL, E. NOGUES and M. PELCAT, 2025 IEEE 49th Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Toronto, ON, Canada, 2025, pp. 989-994, doi: 10.1109/COMPSAC65507.2025.00128.

Research Projects & Fundings

• Chair on Swarm of Autonomous and Trusted Maritime Drones (Chair Leader)
  2024-2028
  Funding: ANR
  
• CoPhyTEE: Addressing Covert & Physical Attacks performed from SW in Open-Hardware Trusted Execution Environment-enabled System-on-Chip (Laureate, Coordinator)
  2023-2027
  Funding: ANR JCJC - Jeunes Chercheuses et Jeunes Chercheurs (252KE)
  
• SecDRONE (Scientific leader): Embedded Detection of Deviant Drone Behavior
  2024-2027
  Funding: DGA through PEC (Pôle d’Excellence Cyber) (140KE)
  
• VAVIECA: Side-Channel Attacks vulnerabilities on FPGA Deep Neural Networks implementions (Scientific leader)
  2021-2024
  Funding: DGA through PEC (Pôle d’Excellence Cyber) (140KE)
  
• SecV: Processor obfuscation through dynamical instruction decoding
  2022-2025
  Funding: ANR PRC (736KE)
  
• SecureIoT (Laureate, scientific leader)
  2018-2021
  Funding: RFI WISE Attractivité (135KE)
• SEROIF: SEcursation des Réseaux d’Objets interconnectés et de l’information pour l’Industrie du Futur (Participant)
  2018-2021
  Funding: RFI WISE International, mobility (9KE)
• TRUST: Towards Reconfigurable and Secured Industrial IoT (Participant)
  2018-2021
  Funding: RFI WISE, mobility (10KE)
• NOPE: Normally-Off Computing (Participant)
  2019
  Funding: Cominlabs, Exploratory action
  
• Exploration of security and reliability compatibility (Scientific leader)
  2013-2017
  Funding: PEPS IETR (3,6KE)
• TSUNAMY: Hardware and software managemenT of data SecUrity iN A ManY core platform (PhD, Participant)
  2013-2017
  Funding: ANR PRC (573KE)

PhD supervision

• Tsion Fikadu (2025 - ), Embedded Detection of Drone Deviant Behavior
• Mohcine Kaddi (2025 - ), Trusted Embedded and Distributed IA
• Eliott Quéré (2024-2027), Security Analysis on Heterogeneous Systems on Chip
• Owen Le-Gonidec (2023-2026), Securing TEE-enabled RISC-V Processor against Energy-based Attacks
• Alla-Eddine Bahi (2023-2026), Covert Channels on Air-Gap Computers
• Juliette Pottier (2022-2025), Cache memory Protection through Obfuscation
• May Myat Thu (2021-2024), Study of Side-Channel Vulnerabilities in Deep Learning FPGA Implementations of Computer Vision
• Safouane Noubir (2018-2021), Investigation of Security Vulnerabilities of Energy Management on Multi-Core Architectures

Conferences and journal Program Commitee member

• TCHES’23-24, DATE’24-26, VLSI-Security Track, among others

Other research responsabilities

• Member of doctoral thesis award of GdR Sécurité Informatique (Prix de thèse) (2025)
• Referent of CPER Maritime Drones - Lab-STICC (2024-2027)
• Committee member of GdR Sécurité Informatique (since 2024)
• Committee member of SemSecuElec INRIA/DGA Seminars (since 2024)
• Referent of cyber security activities of IETR lab, ligerian perimeter (2019 - 2024)
• Co-referent of Transversal Axis CYbersecurité Matérielle (CYM) of IETR lab (2021-2024)
• Referent of IETR lab and INSIS institute, member of the CNRS Cybersecurity Miroir research group (2021)
• Referent for EEA club (2018-2024)

CV

CV (short)

List of open-source projects

• DVFS-based attack