lowRISC Welcomes Queen’s University Belfast to the OpenTitan Open-Source Silicon Project

Renowned Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) to contribute world-class hardware security and cryptographic expertise to the OpenTitan ecosystem.

CAMBRIDGE, UK – November 10, 2026  – lowRISC CIC, the open-source silicon organization and steward of the OpenTitan® project, today announced that Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) has officially joined the OpenTitan coalition. The addition of the University – home to the globally recognized Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) – brings deep academic research and advanced hardware security expertise to the rapidly growing open-source silicon Root of Trust (RoT) ecosystem.

OpenTitan is the world’s first open-source silicon project building transparent, high-quality reference designs and integration guidelines for silicon RoT chips. Foundational to modern security, silicon Roots of Trust ensure that the hardware infrastructure of data centers, mobile devices, storage arrays, and IoT systems remains trustworthy and secure from supply chain attacks and firmware tampering.

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Queen’s University Belfast to the OpenTitan project,” said Javier Orensanz Martinez, CEO at lowRISC®. “QUB’s Centre for Secure Information Technologies has consistently operated at the forefront of hardware security research. Their participation is a strong validation of the transparent silicon security model. By bringing their immense depth of knowledge in cryptography and threat modeling to our coalition, they will help us ensure that OpenTitan sets the definitive industry standard for secure, open-source silicon.”

As an OpenTitan project member, Queen’s University Belfast will leverage its specialized expertise in post-quantum cryptography (PQC), side-channel analysis, and hardware threat mitigation. Researchers and engineers from the University will collaborate directly with lowRISC and industry partners to evaluate hardware cryptographic accelerators and enhance the resilience of the OpenTitan architecture against emerging algorithmic and physical threats.

“Hardware security is the bedrock of digital trust” said Professor Máire O’Neill, Director of the Centre for Secure Information Technologies, Queen’s University Belfast. “By partnering with members of the  OpenTitan project, we are bringing decades of academic research and expertise in secure hardware technologies into the open-source community. We look forward to contributing to a silicon security architecture that is transparent, verifiable, and accessible to everyone.”

Queen’s University Belfast joins an elite and expanding coalition of OpenTitan partners – including Google, Nuvoton Technology, Realtek and others – who are collectively committed to raising the bar for foundational silicon security.

To learn more about the OpenTitan project and its mission to deliver open-source silicon Root of Trust, visit opentitan.org. For more information about Queen’s University Belfast’s cybersecurity research, visit https://www.qub.ac.uk/research-centres/csit/.

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About lowRISC and OpenTitan

lowRISC CIC is a not-for-profit company that aims to provide a high-quality, fully open-source, silicon-proven ecosystem for secure systems on chip (SoCs). lowRISC stewards OpenTitan®, the first open-source silicon Root of Trust (RoT) project. OpenTitan aims to make the silicon RoT design and implementation more transparent, trustworthy, and secure for enterprises and consumers alike. The project is supported by a growing community of commercial and academic partners dedicated to open-source hardware innovation.

About Queen’s University Belfast and CSIT

A member of the Russell Group UK’s 24 leading research-intensive universities, Queen’s University Belfast is an international centre of research and education, with a student-centred ethos. Queen’s is ranked 7th in the world for international outlook (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027), 2nd in the UK for entrepreneurial impact (i2i University Spinout Ranking 2024) and 118th in the world for research quality (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2027) and 174th out of more than 1,500 universities worldwide (QS World University Rankings 2027).   

The university is a lead partner in the Belfast Region City Deal which will unlock £1 billion of transformative co-investment, bringing forward projects in advanced manufacturing, clinical research and secure, connected digital technologies.