Peterson Yuhala

347-2366 Main Mall

Office: 347

Vancouver, V6T 1Z4

Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to visit. I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Systopia Lab at UBC, Vancouver.

I am interested in making systems more secure while maintaining high performance. My research primarily explores hardware-based security mechanisms, such as trusted execution environments (TEEs), that enable secure processing of plaintext data, while also investigating cryptographic approaches, such as homomorphic encryption (HE) and multi-party computation (MPC), that enable computation on encrypted data. I leverage both hardware- (such as in-memory processing) and software-based techniques to improve the performance, scalability, and practicality of these security solutions.

Prior to UBC, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Neuchâtel (UniNE), Switzerland, where I equally completed my PhD in Computer Science on Enhancing Security and Performance in Trusted Execution Environments in February 2024, under the supervision of Prof. Pascal Felber, Dr. Valerio Schiavoni, and Prof. Alain Tchana.

In my free time I am an electronics hobbyist who loves tinkering with microcontrollers to build interesting automation projects or a tech tinkerer experimenting with the latest AI tools. When I’ve got a bit more breathing room, I dive into Kali Linux and explore the art of ethical hacking. I also manage The Tech Hub, a programming and technology blog.

news

Jun 20, 2026	I have been awarded a fellowship by the Swiss National Science Foundation!
Mar 24, 2026	Our paper on “PIM-CACHE: Content-Aware Copy with High-Efficiency” has been accepted at Middleware’26
Sep 20, 2025	Our paper on “IM-PIR: In-Memory Private Information Retrieval” has been accepted at Middleware’25
Apr 20, 2025	Our paper on “Practical Secure Aggregation by Combining Cryptography and Trusted Execution Environments” has been accepted at DEBS’25
Apr 20, 2025	Our paper titled “On Real-Time Guarantees of Intel SGX and Intel TDX” has been accepted at ECRTS’25. This was a joint effort with ABB Research.

selected publications

Middleware

PIM-CACHE: High-Efficiency Content-Aware Copy for Processing-In-Memory

Peterson Yuhala, Mpoki Mwaisela, Pascal Felber, and 1 more author

2026

Bib PDF

@article{pim-cache,
  author = {Yuhala, Peterson and Mwaisela, Mpoki and Felber, Pascal and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  title = {PIM-CACHE: High-Efficiency Content-Aware Copy for Processing-In-Memory},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 27th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference},
  year = {2026},
}

Middleware

IM-PIR: In-Memory Private Information Retrieval

Mpoki Mwaisela, Peterson Yuhala, Pascal Felber, and 1 more author

2025

Bib PDF Code

@article{impir,
  author = {Mwaisela, Mpoki and Yuhala, Peterson and Felber, Pascal and Schiavoni, Valerio},
  title = {IM-PIR: In-Memory Private Information Retrieval},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 26th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference},
  year = {2025},
}

Middleware

SecV: Secure Code Partitioning via Multi-Language Secure Values

Peterson Yuhala, Pascal Felber, Hugo Guiroux, and 4 more authors

2023

DOI Bib PDF Code

@article{secv,
  author = {Yuhala, Peterson and Felber, Pascal and Guiroux, Hugo and Lozi, Jean-Pierre and Tchana, Alain and Schiavoni, Valerio and Thomas, Gaël},
  title = {SecV: Secure Code Partitioning via Multi-Language Secure Values},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 24th International Middleware Conference},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1145/3590140.3629116},
}

DSN

SGX Switchless Calls Made Configless

Peterson Yuhala, Michael Paper, Timothée Zerbib, and 3 more authors

2023

DOI Bib PDF Code

@article{zc,
  author = {Yuhala, Peterson and Paper, Michael and Zerbib, Timothée and Felber, Pascal and Schiavoni, Valerio and Tchana, Alain},
  title = {SGX Switchless Calls Made Configless},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1109/DSN58367.2023.00032},
}

DSN

Plinius: Secure and Persistent Machine Learning Model Training

Peterson Yuhala, Pascal Felber, Valerio Schiavoni, and 1 more author

2021

DOI Bib PDF Code

@article{plinius,
  author = {Yuhala, Peterson and Felber, Pascal and Schiavoni, Valerio and Tchana, Alain},
  title = {Plinius: Secure and Persistent Machine Learning Model Training},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 51st Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1109/DSN48987.2021.00022},
}

Middleware

Montsalvat: Intel SGX shielding for GraalVM native images

Peterson Yuhala, Jämes Ménétrey, Pascal Felber, and 5 more authors

2021

DOI Bib PDF Code

@article{montsalvat,
  author = {Yuhala, Peterson and Ménétrey, Jämes and Felber, Pascal and Guiroux, Hugo and Lozi, Jean-Pierre and Tchana, Alain and Schiavoni, Valerio and Thomas, Gaël},
  title = {Montsalvat: Intel SGX shielding for GraalVM native images},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 22nd International Middleware Conference},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1145/3464298.3493406},
}

VEE

(No)Compromis: paging virtualization is not a fatality

Boris Teabe, Peterson Yuhala, Alain Tchana, and 3 more authors

2021

DOI Bib PDF Code

@article{nocompromis,
  author = {Teabe, Boris and Yuhala, Peterson and Tchana, Alain and Hermenier, Fabien and Hagimont, Daniel and Muller, Gilles},
  title = {(No)Compromis: paging virtualization is not a fatality},
  booktitle = {VEE '21: 17th ACM SIGPLAN/SIGOPS International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.1145/3453933.3454013},
}