Kastner Research Group alum Dr. Jason Oberg was given the DAC Under-40 Innovators Award. The award recognizes the top young innovators who have made a significant impact in the field of electronics design and automation.

Jason is a leader in the hardware security community. Jason’s PhD work helped lay the foundation for hardware information flow tracking. After his PhD, he commercialized this research as co-founder and CEO of Tortuga Logic. Hardware information flow tracking is now a key part of hardware security validation used in top semiconductor companies in a large part due to Jason’s strategic and technical guidance. Jason is currently is CTO at Tortuga, and continues to drive many of the innovations there and in the broader hardware security community.

I met Jason at UC Santa Barbara back when I was a professor there. Jason was a floppy-haired surfer fresh from Hawaii, but also an outstanding undergraduate researcher. He worked with Bridget Benson in developing the early version of the AquaModem. Shortly thereafter, I moved to UC San Diego and convinced Jason to follow me there for his PhD. Jason worked on a lot of different topics. He eventually settled on hardware security.

Jason’s hair has gotten a lot less floppy, but the psyche still remains. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him over the years, and look forward to all the great things that he will undoubtedly do in the future.