Furkan Turan

Co-founder & Hardware Designer @ Belfort

PhD Electrical Engineer

I am an experienced engineer specialized in FPGA-accelerated computing, with hands-on expertise across a range of platforms from SoCs to datacenters. My work focuses on developing secure applications, implementing cryptographic algorithms in hardware, and leveraging trusted computing solutions.

Work Experience

Hardware Designer @ Belfort / 2025 -

Hardware Acceleration for FHE

Researcher @ COSIC - KU Leuven / 2017 - 2024

FPGA-Accelerated Homomorphic Computation in Cloud

  • Explored design-space for massively parallel hardware computation
  • High-performance HW/SW interfaces for low-latency ciphertext transfers

Security Analysis of FPGA-Accelerated Computing

  • Platforms: Intel Xeon+FPGA, Amazon EC2 F1, Xilinx Zynq SoC/MPSoC
  • Interconnects, kernel drivers, and IP protection schemes

INVASIC Project

  • Mutual trust establishment in invasive computing nodes

Internship @ Intel Labs / 2020

Security of Intel FPGAs

  • Scalable Runtime Validation for On-Device Design Rule Checks (Patent US11556677B2)
  • Multi-tenant FPGA usage in mistrusting server-client setups

Embedded Systems Engineer @ Elmaksan / 2014

Industrial System Designs

  • Ethernet-based data logger for walk-through metal detectors
  • Achieved 50% cost reduction by integrating DC motor driver and PLC comms

Education

PhD @ COSIC - KU Leuven / 2017 - 2022

  • FPGA Accelerators for Cryptography and Their Protection in the Cloud
  • Finalist prize winner at ZPRIZE competition
  • Twice finalist at AMD/Xilinx Open Hardware Competition
  • Best Teaching Assistant Award by VTK Student Association

Master's @ ESAT - KU Leuven / 2014 - 2016

  • HW Acceleration of a Software-based VPN
  • Achieved Best Masters' Thesis Award

Bachelor @ METU / 2008 - 2013

  • Computer Architectures Track