About Me

About Me

Saber Ganjisaffar

PhD Candidate

Hey there! I'm Saber Ganjisaffar, a Ph.D. Candidate in CSE at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), specializing in computer architecture, hardware-software co-design, and performance analysis. My current research focuses on CPU/GPU/Accelerator architectural modeling and developing AI-driven analysis tools to identify performance bottlenecks and security vulnerabilities in modern computing systems. I’m interested in building systems that are not only high-performance and efficient, but also secure and reliable by design. My research has been published in venues such as ISCA, and I’m fortunate to be advised by Professors Nael Abu-Ghazaleh and Chengyu Song.

I’m always happy to connect with people working on interesting problems in computer architecture, systems, and security. Feel free to reach out!

News

April 1, 2026

Our paper, SpecASan, originally accepted to ISCA 2025, has been selected as an Honorable Mention in this year’s IEEE Micro Top Picks! NEW

July 19, 2025

Happy to share that I successfully passed my oral qualifying exam today and have advanced to PhD Candidacy!

July 10, 2025

Excited to be serving on the Artifact Evaluation Committee for MICRO-58 (2025).

May 21, 2025

Our paper, "SpecASan: Mitigating Transient Execution Attacks Using Speculative Address Sanitization," got accepted to ISCA 2025!

Publications

SpecASan: Mitigating Transient Execution Attacks Using Speculative Address Sanitization

S. Ganjisaffar, E.M. Koruyeh, J. Zellmer, H.A. Esfeden, C. Song, N. Abu-Ghazaleh
Proceedings of the 52nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2025)

PRACtical: Subarray‑Level Counter Update and Bank‑Level Recovery Isolation for Efficient PRAC Rowhammer Mitigation

R. Nazaraliyev, S. Ganjisaffar, N. Nazaraliyev, N. Abu‑Ghazaleh
arXiv, 24 Jul 2025

ShadowScope: GPU Monitoring and Validation via Composable Side Channel Signals

G. Almusaddar, Y. Zhang, S. Ganjisaffar, B. Williams, Y.D. Liu, D. Ponomarev, N. Abu‑Ghazaleh
arXiv, 3 Sep 2025

Services

2026

Conference Organizing Team (Student Volunteer)

IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA), 2027

Artifact Evaluation Committee Member

47th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2026

4x Peer Reviewer

IEEE Access, 2026

Artifact Evaluation Committee Member

European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys), 2026
2025

Artifact Evaluation Committee Member

International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), 2025

Peer Reviewer

Integration, the VLSI Journal (Elsevier), 2025
2024

Conference Organizing Team (Student Volunteer)

International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS), 2024

Teaching

Spring and Winter 26, Fall, Spring, and Winter 25, Spring 24

Teaching Assistant - CS010A - Introduction to Computer Science for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering 1 (Beginner C++ Programming)

University of California, Riverside
Summer 24, Fall 24

Teaching Assistant - CS153 - Design of Operating Systems

University of California, Riverside
Winter 24

Teaching Assistant - CS010B - Introduction to Computer Science for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering 2 (Intermediate C++ Programming)

University of California, Riverside
Spring 2020

Teaching Assistant - Design of Digital Circuits Course

Shahid Beheshti University

Awards

2022

Dean’s Distinguished Fellowship Award

Awarded by University of California, Riverside (UCR) for Academic year 2022

Skills & Technologies

💻 Languages and Frameworks

C/C++
CUDA
OpenCL
ARM Assembly
Python
Golang
Verilog
Chisel
SystemC/TLM

🛠️ Tools and Technologies

Linux
Bash
Git/Github
LaTeX
Xilinx Vivado
Intel Quartus Prime
Synopsys Design Compiler
Intel HLS
ModelSim

🎛 Architectural/System Modeling

gem5
AccelSim (GPGPUSim)
MGPUSIM
Ramulator
Scarab
RocketChip(Chipyard)
Verilator
CACTI