Miriam Leeser

Professor,  Electrical and Computer Engineering

Contact

Social Media

Office

  • 316 Dana Research Center
  • 617.373.3814

Research Focus

Accelerators for computer intensive applications from the edge to the cloud. Applications of FPGAs including wireless communications, machine learning and data privacy

About

Miriam Leeser is a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern where she is head of the Reconfigurable Computing Laboratory. She is a member of the Computer Engineering research group. Her research includes using heterogeneous architectures from the cloud to the edge with applications in data privacy and wireless communications. She is a senior member of the IEEE and of the ACM.

 

Education

  • PhD, Computer Science, Cambridge University, 1988. Joined Northeastern in 1996.
  • BS Electrical Engineering Cornell University

Honors & Awards

Research Overview

Accelerators for computer intensive applications from the edge to the cloud. Applications of FPGAs including wireless communications, machine learning and data privacy

Reconfigurable and GPU Computing Laboratory

In the Reconfigurable and GPU Computing Laboratory (RCL) we research how to use hardware accelerators such as Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for a wide variety of applications. Our interest is in developing tools, libraries and interfaces that make accelerators easier to use. Our work helps speed up wireless networking, IoT, medical imaging, security and privacy applications, in many cases taking theoretical algorithm advances and making them practically viable for the first time.

Reconfigurable and GPU Computing Lab

Selected Research Projects

Department Research Areas

Selected Publications

  • Mohamed, M., Handagala, S., Xu, J., Leeser, M., & Onabajo, M. (2020). Strategies and Demonstration to Support Multiple Wireless Protocols with a Single RF Front-End. IEEE Wireless Communications, 27(3), 88-95. doi.org/10.1109/MWC.001.1900224
  • Blott, M., Halder, L., Leeser, M., & Doyle, L. (2019). QuTiBench: Benchmarking Neural Networks on Heterogeneous Hardware. ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems (JETC), 15(4), 1-38. doi.org/10.1145/3358700
  • Huang, Kai, Mehmet Gungor, Xin Fang, Stratis Ioannidis, and Miriam Leeser. (2019). Garbled Circuits in the Cloud using FPGA Enabled Nodes. In 2019 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC), 1-6. doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2019.8916407
  • M. Blott, T.B. Preußer, N.J. Fraser, G. Gambardella, K. O’brien, Y. Umuroglu, M. Leeser, K. Vissers, FINN-R: An End-to-End Deep-Learning Framework for Fast Exploration of Quantized Neural Networks, ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems, 11(3), 2018, 16
  • B. Drozdenko, M. Zimmermann, T. Dao, K. Chowdhury, M. Leeser, Hardware-Software Codesign of Wireless Transceivers on Zynq Heterogeneous Systems, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 6(4), 2017, 566-578
  • J. Bhimani, N. Mi, M. Leeser, Z. Yang, FiM: Performance Prediction for Parallel Computation in Iterative Data Processing Applications, In Cloud Computing (CLOUD), IEEE 10th International Conference, 2017, 359-366
  • M. Blott, T.B. Preußer, N. Fraser, G. Gambardella, K. O’Brien, Y. Umuroglu, M. Leeser, Scaling Neural Network Performance Through Customized Hardware Architectures on Reconfigurable Logic, In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD), 2017, 419-422
  • X. Fang, S. Ioannidis, M. Leeser, Secure Function Evaluation Using An FPGA Overlay Architecture, In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays, 2017, 257-266

Faculty

Oct 02, 2023

From Classroom Project to Presented Paper

Electrical and computer engineering students Justin Kawakami, E’23, and Dominik Zajac, E’24, who both took the class EECE 4632 Hardware-Software Codesign for FPGA-Based Systems with Professor Miriam Leeser, turned one of their classroom projects into a paper on “Selective Encryption of Compressed Image Regions on the Edge with Reconfigurable Hardware” that was presented at the […]

Faculty

Jul 21, 2023

Securing Scientific Cyberinfrastructures from Advanced Attacks

ECE Assistant Professor Xiaolin Xu is leading a $1.2M NSF grant, in collaboration with ECE Professor Miriam Leeser and Mike Zink from the University of Massachusetts, for “CAREFREE:Cloud infrAstructure ResiliencE of the Future foR tEstbeds, accelerators and nEtworks.”

PhD

May 31, 2023

Han Wins CNERT Workshop Best Paper Award

Computer engineering student Zhaoyang Han, PhD’24, who is advised by ECE Professor Miriam Leeser, won the Computer and Networking Experimental Research using Testbeds (CNERT) Workshop Best Paper Award for their paper on “A Framework to Enable Runtime Programmable P4-enabled FPGAs in the Open Cloud Testbed” at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications.

Marvin Onabajo, Miriam Leeser, Cristian Cassella

Faculty

Sep 09, 2022

Designing Self-Adaptive Next Generation RF Receivers for Heavily Crowded Electromagnetic Environments

ECE Associate Professor Marvin Onabajo, Professor Miriam Leeser, and Assistant Professor Cristian Cassella were awarded a $750K NSF grant for “Advancing Coexistence through a Cross-Layer Design Platform with an Adaptive Frequency-Selective Radio Front-End and Digital Algorithms.” The research lays the groundwork for enhanced radio frequency communication systems that make use of real-time tuning to adapt to different spectrum environments for higher interference tolerance, and to provide design techniques and tools that improve the coexistence of wireless devices.

Miriam Leeser

Faculty

Mar 17, 2022

Leeser Recognized as Charter Member of IEEE Distinguished Contributors

ECE Professor Miriam Leeser was recognized as a charter member of the IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor Program. The program was introduced in 2021 to showcase the immense combined technical expertise and innovation power of its membership while recognizing volunteer commitment.

Miriam Leeser

Faculty

Jul 01, 2021

Leeser Research Receives Best Paper Award at the HEART 2021

ECE alum Jieming Xu, PhD’20, and Professor Miriam Leeser received the best paper award at the International Symposium on Highly Efficient Accelerators and Reconfigurable Technologies (HEART 2021) for their paper Accelerating Matrix Processing for MIMO Systems.

Miriam Leeser

Faculty

Jun 10, 2021

Using FPGAs for New and Efficient Computation

ECE Professor Miriam Leeser, in collaboration with Michael Zink from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was awarded a $300K collaborative EAGER NSF grant for “CNS: PRATE: P4 Research enabled by Accelerators in national TestbEds”.

Faculty

Aug 28, 2020

Best Paper Award at IEEE HPEC 2020

Computer engineering PhD student Mahsa Bayati (PhD’20), ECE Professor Miriam Leeser, Associate Professor Ningfang Mi were awarded the Outstanding Student Paper Award for their paper “Exploiting GPU Direct Access to Non-Volatile Memory to Accelerate Big Data Processing” at the 2020 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC).

Miriam Leeser

Faculty

May 20, 2020

Leeser wins Best Paper for ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems

ECE Professor Miriam Leeser’s paper on “FINN-R: An End-to-End Deep-Learning Framework for Fast Exploration of Quantized Neural Networks” won Best Paper for the 2020 year in ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems.

abstract cybersecurity graphic

Mar 12, 2020

Cybersecurity: Your Secrets Are Safe With Us

Northeastern researchers are at the forefront of cybersecurity research, protecting everything from the phone in your pocket to the city of the future.

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