Young Kim - Purdue University

Students: Spring 2026, unless noted otherwise, sessions will be virtual on Zoom.

Counterfeit Medical Devices and Medicines as a Fundamental Cyber-Physical Security Problem

Jan 28, 2026

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Abstract

Hardware security is not a new problem, but it is rapidly expanding in both consumer and medical domains due to hyperconnectivity. Medical devices and counterfeit medicines represent a fundamental security challenge. In particular, although counterfeit medicines are not a new issue,the problem continues to worsen as counterfeiting practices become increasingly sophisticated. The counterfeiting of biomedical products poses a serious threat to patient safety, public health, and economic stability in both developed and developing countries, and many current countermeasures remain vulnerable because they provide limited security. In this talk, we will share our work on biomedical hardware security with a focus on pharmaceutical products. We present cyber-physical biomedical security technologies that encode dosage information and authentication into edible biomaterials, enabling serialization, track-and-trace, and authentication at the dosage level. This approach empowers patients to play an active role in combating counterfeit medicines.

About the Speaker

Young Kim is a professor in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and holds the titles of University Faculty Scholar and Showalter Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. His research centers on co-creating hardware(devices) and software (models) for large-scale societal and healthcare applications. His lab develops hybrid machine learning by combining data analytics with models grounded in optical spectroscopy and light-matter interactions to move beyond big-data, compute-intensive AI and leverage engineers' domain expertise. His work spans optical imaging and spectroscopy, mesoscopic physics, meta materials, cancer research, hardware security, and global health,unified by machine learning and data analytics. His research has been funded by a diverse range of agencies, including NIH, CDC, VA, AFOSR, USAID and Gates Foundation. His primary applications are in global health and rural community health, which address large-scale societal and healthcare challenges in mutually reinforcing ways.

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