Team
Cross-functional experts in hardware security, remote labs, and educational research.
Dr. Robert Karam
Founder / Principal Investigator
Associate Professor in the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing at USF and Founder/Director of the Interface Research Lab (IRL). His work in hardware security, low-power AI systems, and implantable medical devices has been funded by NSF, NIH, and the State of Florida, resulting in numerous publications and patents. Senior Member of IEEE and member of ACM.
Ahmed Ghoneim
Platform Engineering Lead
PhD student in Computer Science & Engineering at USF and NSF NRT Semiconductor Fellow. Leads HaCKSEE’s distributed cloud-hardware integration platform, focusing on secure container orchestration, FPGA-based architectures, and scalable remote experimentation systems.
Samir Ahmed
Hardware Engineering Lead
PhD researcher at USF and Microelectronics Engineering Team Lead at Orion Edge Group. Specializes in PCB design, firmware, FPGA systems, and security-by-design architectures for embedded and mixed-signal systems. Published researcher in hardware security and secure medical devices.
Michelle McAveety
Hardware Engineer
Computer Engineering Honors student and leader of USF’s nationally competitive CyberHerd cybersecurity team. Experience in software supply chain security, secure container development, and embedded systems research, with a focus on hardware security and RF systems.
Rylan Pietras
Hardware Engineer
Rylan Pietras is a senior at the University of South Florida majoring in Computer Engineering. He has experience interning at LinkLive with full stack development and developing AI powered CCaaS solutions. His research focuses on hardware and embedded systems security and design.