Press kit · Shujaatali Badami

Topics I can speak to authoritatively

• Post-quantum cryptography migration — NIST PQC standards (Kyber/ML-KEM, Dilithium/ML-DSA, SPHINCS+/SLH-DSA), Falcon, hybrid deployments, harvest-now-decrypt-later threat model
• ICS / SCADA quantum-era security — ISA/IEC 62443, OT lifecycle constraints, gateway architectures, anomaly detection on SWaT/HAI testbeds
• IoT cryptographic standards — IETF LAKE PQ-EDHOC, OSCORE, oneM2M, lightweight authenticated key exchange for constrained devices
• Quantum kernel methods on NISQ hardware — ZZFeatureMap, IBM ibm_fez (156-qubit), QSVM, cross-testbed validation
• Critical infrastructure protection — Purdue model, Zone-and-Conduit, smart-grid security, smart-meter PQC
• 6G cognitive radio security — deep RL under partial observability, energy-aware reward shaping, policy-level attack surfaces

Topics I won't claim expertise on

• Consumer crypto wallets, blockchain trading strategies, or token economics
• Generative-AI policy debates and AI-safety alignment philosophy
• Quantum-supremacy hype claims (I will analyze, not advocate)
• Smart-contract auditing or DeFi protocol security

Ready-to-quote paragraphs (pre-cleared, attribute as Shujaatali Badami)

Harvest-now-decrypt-later

The harvest-now-decrypt-later threat is not theoretical. Adversaries are already storing encrypted traffic from grid SCADA networks today, betting they will have a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer in 10 years. Every utility that has not started its PQC migration is donating data to that bet.

Cleared 2026-04-26 · Cite as: Shujaatali Badami, IEEE Senior Member

Why ICS migration is harder than TLS migration

TLS migration is a software problem with a fast feedback loop. ICS migration is a hardware-and-procurement problem stretched across 20-year asset lifecycles, regulated change windows, and vendors who cannot patch firmware in field. The threat models look similar; the implementation timelines are an order of magnitude apart.

Cleared 2026-04-26 · Cite as: Shujaatali Badami, ISA99 Committee Member

What ZZFeatureMap is doing on NISQ

An 8-qubit ZZFeatureMap is doing one specific thing: encoding pairwise correlations between process variables in a way that is genuinely hard for classical kernels to capture. On the harder ICS testbed (HAI), that bought us +10.8% AUC over a strong RBF baseline. Whether that survives shot-noise scaling is the next experiment.

Cleared 2026-04-26 · Cite as: Shujaatali Badami, IEEE Access 2026

NIST PQC migration timeline reality check

NIST CNSA 2.0 calls for PQC adoption in critical infrastructure by 2030–2033. That is a goal, not a forecast. Most utilities cannot complete a single firmware-rotation cycle in that window. The honest planning question is what we deploy in 2026 that is still safe in 2035, not whether we can hit a 2030 milestone.

Cleared 2026-04-26 · Cite as: Shujaatali Badami, IETF LAKE PQ-EDHOC Design Team

6G security under partial observability

Cognitive radio is a POMDP. The agent never sees the true spectrum state, just sensed slices. Securing the resulting controller is harder than securing a deterministic radio because the attack surface is the policy itself, not just the protocol stack.

Cleared 2026-04-26 · Cite as: Shujaatali Badami, Quantum-IoT Research Engineer

Past media appearances

• Automation.com (International Society of Automation) · 2026 Exploring Gateway Architectures for Quantum-Safe Industrial Networks ↗
  Authored technical article on PQC gateway designs for ICS/SCADA.
• ReversingLabs · 2026 Crypto Group Ushers in Post-Quantum Security ↗
  Quoted as expert source on the Ethereum Foundation's PQC initiative.
• TechNewsWorld · 2026 Malware Threats Accelerate Across Critical Infrastructure ↗
  Quoted on ICS malware and the FrostyGoop Lviv attack.

Bio (copy-paste)

Shujaatali Badami is a Quantum-IoT Research Engineer based in Chicago, IEEE Senior Member, ISA Senior Member, and Hackathon Raptors Fellow. He works on post-quantum cryptography for critical infrastructure, contributes to the IETF LAKE PQ-EDHOC Design Team, and serves on the ISA99 (ISA/IEC 62443) standards committee.

Shujaatali Badami is a Quantum-IoT Research Engineer based in Chicago. He is an IEEE Senior Member, ISA Senior Member, and Hackathon Raptors Fellow, with sole-authored peer-reviewed papers in IEEE Access, IEEE DSIT, IEEE ICPCT, IEEE ICBATS, and IEEE ICEACE.

His IEEE Access 2026 paper validated quantum kernel methods on IBM's 156-qubit ibm_fez NISQ processor, achieving +10.8% AUC over classical SVMs on the HAI industrial control testbed. He contributes to the IETF LAKE Working Group's Post-Quantum EDHOC (PQ-EDHOC) Design Team and the ISA99 Committee that develops ISA/IEC 62443.

He is a Technical Program Committee member for the United Nations ITU Kaleidoscope 2026 (AI for Good Summit, Geneva) and reviews for IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Trans. Mobile Computing, IEEE Open J. Communications Society, and IEEE Trans. Quantum Engineering. He has judged 100+ AI and deep-tech startups at showcases hosted alongside AWS, Intercom, and Michigan State University.

Shujaatali Badami is an IEEE Senior Member, ISA (International Society of Automation) Senior Member, Hackathon Raptors Fellow, and Quantum-IoT (QIoT) Research Engineer based in Chicago, Illinois. His research secures next-generation IoT and industrial-control systems against emerging quantum threats through post-quantum cryptography, quantum kernel methods, energy-efficient VLSI architectures, and 6G cognitive radio optimization.

His IEEE Access 2026 paper presented the first cross-testbed validation of quantum kernels on real NISQ hardware for ICS/SCADA security, executed on IBM's 156-qubit ibm_fez processor. The work demonstrated +10.8% AUC improvement over classical RBF SVMs on the HAI thermal-power testbed using an 8-qubit ZZFeatureMap kernel. He has additional sole-authored papers on the quantum bootstrap method for microcanonical ensembles, mitigating tails-switching in multi-branch Proof-of-Stake systems, and reinforcement learning under partial observability.

He is an active contributor to two international standards bodies: the IETF LAKE Working Group's Post-Quantum EDHOC (PQ-EDHOC) Design Team, where he collaborates with researchers from Ericsson, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, INRIA, ISI Athens, and IIT Delhi; and the ISA99 Committee that develops ISA/IEC 62443, the global standard for industrial automation and control system cybersecurity.

He serves on the Technical Program Committee for the United Nations ITU Kaleidoscope 2026 (AI for Good Summit, Geneva) and is an invited reviewer for leading journals including IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IF 10.6), IEEE Trans. Mobile Computing (IF 9.2), IEEE Open J. Communications Society (IF 6.1), IEEE Communications Letters (IF 4.4), and IEEE Trans. Quantum Engineering (IF 3.9).

His work on quantum-safe gateway architectures has been published in Automation.com (ISA), and he has been quoted as an expert source by ReversingLabs and TechNewsWorld on critical infrastructure cybersecurity. He has judged 100+ AI and deep-tech startups at showcases alongside AWS, Intercom, and Michigan State University.

Headshots

Editorial-use portrait below. Available in AVIF (16 KB), WebP (34 KB), and JPEG (474 KB, original). License: editorial-use only, attribution "© Shujaatali Badami". For higher-resolution / event-specific shots, email with subject [PRESS] Headshot request.

Pronouncer

Phonetic: Shu-jaa-tali Bah-dah-mee /ʃʊ.ˈdʒɑː.tə.li bə.ˈdɑː.miː/. Audio recording will be added; until then this written guide is canonical.