For Prabhat Mishra, Ph.D., one of the most satisfying elements of his job is mentoring doctoral students, witnessing and supporting their academic journeys. Recently, he was able to see a direct link between his own career and those of two former students.
Aruna Jayasena, Ph.D., received his doctorate in 2025 under Mishra’s supervision. His thesis, “Hardware-Firmware Security Co-Verification,” explored the detection and mitigation of vulnerabilities to design trustworthy electronic systems. Jayasena’s thesis was subsequently awarded a prestigious Outstanding Dissertation Award by the European Design and Automation Association, or EDAA, a society working for the benefit of the international electronics design and design automation community.
Jayasena’s thesis was recognized in the category of “New directions in safety, reliability, security-aware hardware design, validation and test.”
Jayasena is not the first of Mishra’s students to win the award; Zhixin Pan, Ph.D., received the award in 2024.
Mishra is justifiably proud of his former student. “He is one of the best researchers from my lab in the last two decades,” Mishra noted. “It’s not surprising that his dissertation received the highest honor from EDAA.”
Mishra himself is listed in the EDAA rolls, having received the award in 2004 for his thesis, “Specification-driven Validation of Programmable Embedded Systems,” recognized for providing “new directions in embedded system design automation.” Mishra received his doctorate from the University of California at Irvine, under the supervision of Nikil Dutt, Ph.D.
Mishra proudly notes that Zhixin and Aruna are tenure-track faculty members at highly regarded universities, Florida State University and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, respectively.