Eric Pollmann has been named the recipient of the IEEE James C. Klouda Memorial Scholarship from the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society. A Georgia Tech electrical engineering major, Pollmann will be presented with this award at the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, to be held July 25-29 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Pollmann is an undergraduate researcher who has been advised by Alenka Zajic for the last two years through the Opportunity Research Scholars Program. He is also pursuing the undergraduate research option and is working on an undergraduate thesis entitled “Localization of EM Emanations from FPGAs” with Zajic, who is an assistant professor in Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Smartcards, cellphones, and laptops can be susceptible to side-channel attacks, which are the exploitation of low-power electronic signals that a wireless electronic device like a laptop emits as electromagnetic waves even when it is not connected to the Internet. With the trend towards internet-of-things (IoT) and millions of connected devices, defense against side-channel attacks becomes even more important. Pollmann is working on developing techniques to identify sources of these low-power electronics signals with the goal of eliminating them and hence preventing side-channel attacks.