About me

I am a Research Scientist and Invited Assistant Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal. I have built a research group (ESRGv3) which currently has 9 PhD students. I work in the intersection of operating systems and virtualization, real-time, security, and computer architectures. I aim at designing and building embedded, cyber-physical, and IoT systems that make our transports, industries, and core infrastructures more efficient, predictable, reliable, safe, and secure. In the past, I have been mainly focused on understanding how to leverage Arm TrustZone technology to provide an alternative form of system virtualization. Today, my group and I are especially focused on developing trustworthy hypervisors and trusted execution environments (TEE) for modern (low- and high-end) heterogeneous COTS hardware.

Summary

I have a total of 50 peer-reviewed publications, which includes 33 publications in conferences, 15 articles in journals, and 2 publications in workshops. According to Google Scholar, my publications have a total of 616 citations, ~83% of which have been obtained over the last three years (2018-2020). 13 publications were cited 13 or more times (h-index = 13) and 16 publications were cited 10 or more times (i10-index = 16).

Conference Publications

2020

SoK: Understanding the Prevailing Security Vulnerabilities in TrustZone-assisted TEE Systems
David Cerdeira, Nuno Santos, Pedro Fonseca, Sandro Pinto
IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P), 2020.
DOI: 10.1109/SP40000.2020.00061

Multi Zone Security for Arm Cortex-M Devices
Sandro Pinto and Cesare Garlati
Embedded World Conference, Nuremberg, Germany, 2020.

A Clean Slate Approach to Linux Security RISC-V Enclaves
Cesare Garlati and Sandro Pinto
Embedded World Conference, Nuremberg, Germany, 2020.

Bao: a modern lightweight embedded hypervisor
Cesare Garlati and Sandro Pinto
Embedded World Conference, Nuremberg, Germany, 2020.

2019

Virtualization on TrustZone-Enabled Microcontrollers? Voilà!
Sandro Pinto, Hugo Araujo, Daniel Oliveira, José Martins, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), Montreal, Canada, 2019.
DOI: 10.1109/RTAS.2019.00032

User Mode Interrupts: A Must for Securing Embedded Systems
Sandro Pinto and Cesare Garlati
Embedded World Conference, Nuremberg, Germany, 2019.

Towards a Heterogeneous Fault-Tolerance Architecture based on Arm and RISC-V Processors
Cristiano Rodrigues, Ivo Marques, Sandro Pinto, Tiago Gomes, and Adriano Tavares
45th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON), Lisbon, Portugal, 2019.
DOI: 10.1109/IECON.2019.8926844

WallScreen: Plataforma de Nova Geraçao para a Gestao de Vıdeo 8K UHD
Miguel Silva, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, Vasco Bexiga, Fernando Piedade, Joao Rodrigues, José Dias
XIV Jornadas sobre Sistemas Reconfiguráveis (REC), Guimaraes, Portugal, 2019.

2018

DIHyper: Providing Lifetime Hypervisor Data Integrity
José Lopes, José Martins, Adriano Tavares, and Sandro Pinto
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Cairns, Australia, 2018.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2018.8433832

TZ- VirtIO: Enabling Standardized Inter-Partition Communication in a Trustzone-Assisted Hypervisor
André Oliveira, José Martins, Jorge Cabral, Adriano Tavares, and Sandro Pinto
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Cairns, Australia, 2018.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2018.8433781

Towards a Green and Secure Architecture for Reconfigurable IoT End-Devices
Daniel Oliveira, Tiago Gomes, and Sandro Pinto
ACM/IEEE 9th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), Porto, Portugal, 2018.
DOI: 10.1109/ICCPS.2018.00041

Towards a Secure Hardware-Software Co-Designed Framework for Reconfigurable Platforms
Sérgio Pereira, Adriano Tavares, and Sandro Pinto
XIV Jornadas sobre Sistemas Reconfiguráveis (REC), Lisbon, Portugal, 2018.

A TrustZone-assisted Hypervisor Supporting Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration
José Ribeiro, Nuno Silva, Sandro Pinto, and Adriano Tavares
XIV Jornadas sobre Sistemas Reconfiguráveis (REC), Lisbon, Portugal, 2018.

2017

LTZVisor: TrustZone is the Key
Sandro Pinto, Jorge Pereira, Tiago Gomes, Adriano Tavares, and Jorge Cabral
Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS), Dubrovnik, Croatia, 2017.
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2017.4

Lightweight multicore virtualization architecture exploiting ARM TrustZone
Sandro Pinto, André Oliveira, Jorge Pereira, Jorge Cabral, João Monteiro, and Adriano Tavares
43rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (IECON), Beijing, China, 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/IECON.2017.8216603

We-care: An IoT-based health care system for elderly people
Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Tiago Gomes
IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), Toronto, Canada, 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/ICIT.2017.7915565

SECSSY Hypervisor: security-safety synergy for aerospace
Sandro Pinto, José Martins, José Lopes, Miguel Abreu, and Adriano Tavares
Data Systems in Aerospace, European Space Agency, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2017

2016

Towards an FPGA-based network layer filter for the Internet of Things edge devices
Tiago Gomes, Filipe Salgado, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Berlin, Germany, 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2016.7733684

Space and time partitioning with hardware support for space applications
Sandro Pinto, Adriano Tavares, and Sergio Montenegro
Data Systems in Aerospace, European Space Agency, Tallinn, Estonia, 2016.

Hypervisor for Real Time Space Applications
Sandro Pinto, Adriano Tavares, and Sergio Montenegro
4S (Small Satellites Systems and Services) Symposium, Valletta, Malta, 2016.

FPGA vendor-agnostic IP-XACT- and XSLT-based RTL design generator
Rui Machado, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON), Cyprus, 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/MELCON.2016.7495380

2015

FreeTEE: When real-time and security meet
Sandro Pinto, Daniel Oliveira, Jorge Pereira, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Luxembourg, 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2015.7301571

HcM-FreeRTOS: Hardware-centric FreeRTOS for ARM multicore
Essam Qarallel, Diogo Lima, Tiago Gomes, Adriano Tavares, and Sandro Pinto
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Luxembourg, 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2015.7301570

RT-SHADOWS: Real-time system hardware for agnostic and deterministic OSes within softcore
Tiago Gomes, Sandro Pinto, Paulo Garcia, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Luxembourg, 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2015.7301572

Towards an FPGA-based edge device for the Internet of Things
Tiago Gomes, Sandro Pinto, Tiago Gomes, Adriano Tavares, and Jorge Cabral
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Luxembourg, 2015.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2015.7301601

2014

Towards a lightweight embedded virtualization architecture exploiting ARM TrustZone
Sandro Pinto, Daniel Oliveira, Jorge Pereira, Nuno Cardoso, Mongkol Ekpanyapong, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Barcelona, Spain, 2014.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2014.7005255

Porting SLOTH system to FreeRTOS running on ARM Cortex-M3
Sandro Pinto, Jorge Pereira, Daniel Oliveira, Filipe Alves, Essam Qarallel, Mongkol Ekpanyapong, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Istanbul, Turkey, 2014.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2014.6864903

Co-Designed FreeRTOS Deployed on FPGA
Jorge Pereira, Daniel Oliveira, Sandro Pinto, Nuno Cardoso, Vitor Silva, Tiago Gomes, José Mendes, and Paulo Cardoso
Brazilian Symposium on Computing Systems Engineering, Manaus, Brazil, 2014.
DOI: 10.1109/SBESC.2014.11

2013

Exploiting Template Metaprogramming to customize an object-oriented operating system
Sandro Pinto, Tiago Castro, José Mendes, Sergio Lopes, Mongkol Ekpanyapong, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Taipei, Taiwan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2013.6563724

ClimaWin: An intelligent window for optimal ventilation and minimum thermal loss
Sandro Pinto, Tiago Castro, Nuno Brito, Adriano Tavares, José Mendes, and Jorge Cabral
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Taipei, Taiwan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2013.6563790

LP805X: A customizable and low power 8051 soft core for FPGA applications
Tiago Castro, Sandro Pinto, Vitor Silva, Jorge Cabral, Adriano Tavares, Sarat Yoowattana, Warisa Sritriratanarak, and Mongkol Ekpanyapong
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Taipei, Taiwan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2013.6563739

Hardware-software extensions to a softcore processor for FPGA-based adaptive PID control
Tiago Gomes, Paulo Garcia, Sandro Pinto, Filipe Salgado, Jorge Cabral, João Monteiro, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), Taipei, Taiwan, 2013.
DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2013.6563670

2012

Shifting SOA to MPSoC: An exploratory example of application
Filipe Salgado, Paulo Garcia, Tiago Gomes, João Vale, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Mongkol Ekpanyapong
IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA), Krakow, Poland, 2012.
DOI: 10.1109/ETFA.2012.6489726

Journal Publications

2020

Wall Screen: An Ultra-High Definition Video-Card for the Internet of Things
Miguel Costa, Ricardo Moreira, Jorge Cabral, José Dias, and Sandro Pinto
IEEE Multimedia, vol. 27, no. 3, July-Sept 2020.
DOI: 10.1109/MMUL.2020.3011595

The Future of Low-End Motes in the Internet of Things: A Prospective Paper
Daniel Oliveira, Miguel Costa, Sandro Pinto, and Tiago Gomes
Electronics, vol. 9, no. 1, January 2020.
DOI: 10.3390/electronics9010111

2019

Demystifying Arm TrustZone: A Comprehensive Survey
Sandro Pinto and Nuno Santos
ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 51, no. 6, Article 130, February 2019.
DOI: 10.1145/3291047

Operating Systems for Internet of Things Low-End Devices: Analysis and Benchmarking
Miguel Silva, David Cerdeira, Sandro Pinto, and Tiago Gomes
IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 6, December 2019.
DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2019.2939008

ChamelIoT: An Agnostic Operating System Framework for Reconfigurable IoT Devices
Miguel Silva, Adriano Tavares, Tiago Gomes, and Sandro Pinto
IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 1, February 2019.
DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2018.2863545

Detecting Driver’s Fatigue, Distraction and Activity Using a Non-Intrusive Ai-Based Monitoring System
Miguel Costa, Daniel Oliveira, Sandro Pinto, and Adriano Tavares
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing Research, vol. 9, no. 4, Aug 2019.
DOI: 10.2478/jaiscr-2019-0007

2018

A 6LoWPAN Accelerator for Internet of Things Endpoint Devices
Tiago Gomes, Filipe Salgado, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, Feb 2018.
DOI: 10.1109/JIOT.2017.2785659

2017

IIoTEED: an enhanced, trusted execution environment for industrial IoT edge devices
Sandro Pinto, Tiago Gomes, Jorge Pereira, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 21, no. 1, Jan-Feb 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/MIC.2017.17

Towards a TrustZone-Assisted Hypervisor for Real-Time Embedded Systems
Sandro Pinto, Jorge Pereira, Tiago Gomes, Mongkol Ekpanyapong, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, vol. 16, no. 2, Jul-Dec 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/LCA.2016.2617308

μRTZVisor: A Secure and Safe Real-Time Hypervisor
José Martins, João Alves, Jorge Cabral, Adriano Tavares, and Sandro Pinto
Electronics, vol. 6, no. 4, October 2017.
DOI: 10.3390/electronics6040093

Building IEEE 802.15.4 Accelerators for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Nodes
Tiago Gomes, Sandro Pinto, Filipe Salgado, Adriano Tavares, and Jorge Cabral
IEEE Sensors Letters, vol. 1, no. 1, February 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/LSENS.2017.2681625

Condition Codes Evaluation on Dynamic Binary Translation for Embedded Platforms
Filipe Salgado, Tiago Gomes, Sandro Pinto, Jorge Cabral, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, vol. 9, no. 3, September 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/LES.2017.2718531

Setting Engineering Students Up for Success in the 21st Century: Integrating Gamification and Crowdsourcing into a CDIO-based Web Design Course
Donglei Song, Adriano Tavares, Sandro Pinto, and Hao Xu
Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, vol. 13, no. 7, June 2017.
DOI: 10.12973/eurasia.2017.00745a

2016

Hybrid real-time operating systems: deployment of critical FreeRTOS features on FPGA
Tiago Gomes, Jorge Pereira, Paulo Garcia, Filipe Salgado, Vitor Silva, Sandro Pinto, Mongkol Ekpaniapong, and Adriano Tavares
International Journal of Embedded Systems, vol. 8, no. 5-6, November 2016.
DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2016.080386

Bringing Hardware Multithreading to the Real-Time Domain
Tiago Gomes, Paulo Garcia, Sandro Pinto, João Monteiro, and Adriano Tavares
IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, vol. 8, no. 1, March 2016.
DOI: 10.1109/LES.2015.2486384

Workshop Publications

2020

Bao: A Lightweight Static Partitioning Hypervisor for Modern Multi-Core Embedded Systems
José Martins, Adriano Tavares, Marco Solieri, Marko Bertogna, and Sandro Pinto
Workshop on Next Generation Real-Time Embedded Systems (NG-RES), Italy, 2020.
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NG-RES.2020.3

2019

The industry-first secure IoT stack for RISC-V: a research project
Sandro Pinto and José Martins
RISC-V Workshop, Zurich, Switzerland, 2019.

Talks

2020

TBD ...

Recent posts