OPTIMIST Workshop '26

October 11, 2026 Antalya, Turkey​

OPTIMIST is a forum for open, reproducible, and community-driven work in implementation security. We aim to make security evaluation more measurable, reusable, and comparable by gathering researchers, practitioners, tool developers, dataset creators, evaluators, and standardization stakeholders in a single forum.

📢 Call for Contributions​

OPTIMIST considers open contributions in implementation security across the physical, microarchitectural, hardware, firmware, software, and system-level spectrum. This includes, for example, reproducible evaluation, interoperable workflows, open benchmarks, AI-enabled security methods, implementation security of AI systems, and post-quantum cryptography implementations.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Open datasets for evaluation of implementation security testing methods, including methods to find sidechannel leakage and fault vulnerabilities at various abstraction levels, especially in new cryptographic standards and AI implementations;
• Open-source tools for measurement, analysis, verification, simulation, benchmarking, reverse engineering, artifact evaluation, and AI-enabled implementation-security workflows;
• Reference implementations in hardware and software, firmware libraries, AI accelerators, test platforms for reproducible security evaluation;
• Specifications, APIs, hardware interfaces, data formats, and documentation practices that support interoperable and reproducible security evaluation workflows;
• Standardization, certification, and benchmark-development efforts for implementation security evaluation;
• Case studies, demonstrations, and lessons learned from using open datasets, tools, platforms, specifications, or implementations;

OPTIMIST supports two presentation formats for accepted contributions.

• Talks and demos. 15-minute presentations or demos on one of the topics of interest listed above.
• Interactive discussions. 15-minute moderated sessions seeking feedback on, e.g., an open issue, proposed direction, specifications, or community need where discussion is the main goal rather than presentation of completed work.

✅ Selection Criteria​

The program committee will select contributions based on fit with OPTIMIST and their potential to stimulate useful discussion among OPTIMIST attendees. Submissions will be evaluated based on one or more of the following criteria:

• Relevance to open and reproducible implementation security;
• Availability of open-source implementation;
• Clarity of the artifact, dataset, tool, interface, specification, or methodology;
• Potential to support comparison, benchmarking, reuse, or standardization;
• Quality of documentation, reproducibility support, and stated assumptions;
• Potential to stimulate discussion, collaboration, or community coordination;

📩 Submission Format​

OPTIMIST welcomes archival and non-archival contributions. Each submission should clearly describe what will be presented and why it is relevant to OPTIMIST.

• For artifact submissions, authors should describe the artifact’s purpose, expected users, setup requirements, assumptions, limitations, and availability.
• For datasets, authors should additionally describe the collection procedure, metadata, intended use, known limitations, and possible evaluation tasks.
• For tools, authors should further describe the supported workflow, inputs and outputs, interfaces, reproducibility support, and comparison with related tools.

Submissions will undergo double-blind review. Submissions can use Anonymous Github for easy blinding of author names on existing repositories. After acceptance, authors may update the submission to include public, non-anonymous artifact links. Submissions should follow Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science format and may be up to 5 pages, including references. Accepted contributions will be bundled and made available on the OPTIMIST website.

🎤 Invited Talks​

Open Samples, Open Findings: Fault Injection Evaluation of the TROPIC01 Secure Element​

Lennert Wouters (KU Leuven)

Lennert Wouters is a hardware security researcher at COSIC, KU Leuven, specializing in embedded and connected devices. His work focuses on reverse engineering, physical attacks, and practical security analysis of real-world systems. His recent projects include developing a modchip for fault-injection attacks on a Starlink user terminal and uncovering vulnerabilities in Saflok hotel locks.

Ondřej Staníček (Tropic Square and CTU Prague)

Ondřej Staníček is a PhD student at the Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, where he researches side-channel attacks, countermeasures, and the secure design of physical unclonable functions and true random number generators. He also teaches Hardware Security and Computer Structures and Architectures courses, and has studied abroad at the University of Ljubljana and at KU Leuven. Since August 2023, he has been working as a Security Expert at Tropic Square, where he has contributed to the specification, implementation, and security evaluation of the TROPIC01 open-source secure element. He is part of a team dedicated to shifting the semiconductor industry away from security by obscurity toward verifiable transparency, open-source hardware methodologies, and collaborative Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) processes.

Abstract to be announced.

🤓 Organizers​

• Aydin Aysu (North Carolina State University)
• Fatemeh Ganji (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)
• Patrick Schaumont (Worcester Polytechnic Institute)

😎 Technical Program Committee​

• Karim M. Abdellatif (Ledger)
• Evan Apinis (zeroRISC)
• Ro Cammarota (University of California, Irvine)
• Gaëtan Cassiers (CryptoExperts & UCLouvain)
• Zhimin Chen (Tenstorrent)
• Helena Handschuh (SCI Semiconductor)
• Jan Jancar (Paderborn University)
• Emre Karabulut (Microsoft)
• Johann Knechtel (New York University, Abu Dhabi)
• Karel Kral (Google)
• Daniel Page (University of Bristol)
• Jade Philipoom (zeroRISC)
• Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen (Tampere University)
• Pascal Sasdrich (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
• Peter Schwabe (Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy & Radboud University)
• Mirjana Stojilovic (EPFL)
• Dean Sullivan (University of New Hampshire)
• Pirmin Vogel (lowRISC)
• Trevor Yap (Nanyang Technological University)

📅 Timeline​

• June 21, 2026 — Submission deadline Extended to July 15, 2026!
• August 1, 2026 — Acceptance Notifications Updated to August 21, 2026!
• August 15, 2026 — Program Announcement Updated to August 21, 2026!