Felix Staudigl received his B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from TH Nuremberg in 2012. He completed a double master’s degree as part of the TIME program, earning M.Sc. degrees from RWTH Aachen University and Czech Technical University (CTU) Prague in 2019. In 2020, he began his Ph.D. at RWTH Aachen University, where he worked as a research assistant and graduated summa cum laude in February 2025. His research focuses on hardware security and neuromorphic computing, particularly the reliability and security of memristor-based Computing-in-Memory (CIM) architectures. He contributed to the research project NEUROTEC II, which develops neuromorphic hardware and software beyond the von Neumann paradigm, and the European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) Rheinland, which supports SMEs in adopting AI and digital solutions.
Rainer Leupers received the M.Sc. (Dipl.-Inform.) and Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) degrees in Computer Science with honors from TU Dortmund in 1992 and 1997. From 1997-2001 he was the Chief Engineer at the Embedded Systems Chair at TU Dortmund. In 2002, he joined RWTH Aachen University as a professor for Software for Systems on Silicon. His research comprises embedded software development tools, system-on-chip architectures, hardware security, and electronic design automation. He served in committees of the leading international EDA conferences and received various scientific awards, including Best Paper Awards at DAC and twice at DATE, as well as several industrial awards. Dr. Leupers is also engaged as an entrepreneur and in turning research results into innovations. He co-founded LISATek (now with Synopsys), Silexica (acquired by Xilinx/AMD), Hensoldt Cyber (via Secure Elements), MachineWare, and RooflineAI. As the coordinator of the TETRACOM and TETRAMAX EU projects, he created a structured approach to academia-to-industry technology transfer with 100+ successful instances across Europe.