The aim of this interdisciplinary project is to develop composites consisting of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), and enzymes. The MOF coating protects the biomacromolecule from inhospitable conditions, and provides a permeable and selective molecular gate for the diffusion of substrates and products, thanks to its intrinsic and tunable porosity. External magnetic forces acts on the MNPs to allow for precise positioning of this ternary system. These highly efficient, long-lasting, robust, and dynamically positionable crystalline biocatalysts will be synthesized using the recently discovered biomimetic mineralization process, in which MOF precursors, metal ions, and organic ligands nucleates on the biomacromolecule without the need of stabilizing polymers or organic solvents, in aqueous solution at room temperature. This innovative technique has been proven successful for a wide range of protein and enzymes, and is currently the best performing procedure available for this class of porous material in terms of efficiency of enzyme encapsulation, absence of leaching, and reactions conditions and time. Key aspects of the project will be: the production of enzymes suitable for a multistep process; the synthesis and characterization of the composites; finally their integration into fluidic devices. The effects of process variables on particle size and morphology, enzyme loading and activity, MOF robustness, magnetic properties, and recyclability of the composite will be investigated with a multifaceted analytic approach. The long-term impact of this project includes technological benefits for industrial biotechnology, owing to the superior resistance of MOF-coated enzymes towards organic solvents, heat, and inhibitors, along with the presence of MNPs that permits the easy recovery of the MagEnzMOFs and their integration into fluidic reactors, to provide continuous production with high automation.

Security and efficiency are often seen as a conflict. IT already consumes 11% of electricity globally, with a steep upwards trend. Resource sharing increases efficiency but introduces information leakage vulnerabilities, such as Meltdown and Spectre. Reducing reliability margins also increases efficiency but introduces fault attacks, such as Rowhammer and Plundervolt. This reveals a fundamental problem in current systems: Reliability mechanisms are not designed with adversaries in mind. Security is then patched on top of reliability mechanisms, incurring additional energy costs. We will overcome the conflict between security and efficiency with novel foundations to make security sustainable and use security to increase efficiency. We will research how to measure the efficiency of security, design principled and efficient security mechanisms, utilize security to increase efficiency, secure microarchitectural optimizations, and secure lightweight isolation. Our methodology is to integrate principled cryptography-grade security into all system layers to minimize and supersede inefficient reliability mechanisms. We will develop a framework for fine-grained energy efficiency measurements. We will research fine-grained replication for side-channel isolation, maintaining efficiency. We will explore selective resource sharing for secure variables, enclaves, and virtual machines, superseding today's inefficient and insecure techniques. The originality of FSSec stands out in that energy efficiency has played no role in security so far. In particular, using cryptography to replace established error correction methods will be the key to our goal of using security to increase efficiency by 20% compared to current systems. We will construct secure optimizations with fine-grained isolation, increasing the efficiency without adding side channels. Asst.-Prof. Daniel Gruss heads an internationally renowned security research group. FSSec will fund 6 PhD students.