The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California (UC) honored Saif Islam as one of the three inaugural recipients of the 2024 CITRIS Innovation Fellowship and AIC Awards. 

In collaboration with the Academic Innovation Catalyst (AIC), a deep tech funding platform founded by Matt and Lisa Sonsini, this program transforms faculty research into commercial solutions for major societal challenges. Awardees receive up to $200,000 over two years, along with support from AIC and the CITRIS Foundry incubator. While all CITRIS-related projects were considered, priority was given to those in advanced aviation, aerospace, AI for good, climate resilience, and deep tech. Out of 65 submissions from CITRIS’s four campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz—over half focused on climate solutions or AI for public benefit. The three winning proposals address global concerns: climate-resilient agriculture, improved crop engineering for food security, and cybersecurity advancements to protect infrastructure and sensitive data.

Saif Islam, professor and chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at UC Davis and campus director of CITRIS at UC Davis, won the award for the project, "Advanced hardware security with unclonable ID protection enabled by photonic technology". 

This project aims to develop an innovative chip that uses light to generate unpredictable random numbers. By harnessing tiny, natural variations in how photodiodes interact with the chip’s surface during manufacturing, this process generates unique patterns that are physically impossible to replicate, making the chip highly secure. This technology has the potential to safeguard a wide range of systems, from personal devices to critical infrastructure, against cyberattacks.