Sebastian Fischmeister

Sebastian Fischmeister is the Co-founder and CEO of Palitronica Inc. and a Professor at the University of Waterloo, based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. With over 20 years of research and development experience, he holds the NSERC/Magna Industrial Research Chair and specializes in cybersecurity for safety-critical embedded systems. At Palitronica, a Y Combinator-backed startup, he commercializes physics-based cyber defense technologies that have demonstrated 100% accuracy in detecting counterfeit microcontrollers. Under his leadership, the company was named the Most Innovative Security-Focused Company at a 2022 discovery event hosted by In-Q-Tel and Silicon Valley Bank. He previously earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salzburg in 2002 and a master's degree from the Vienna University of Technology in 2000. His current focus remains on bridging academia and industry to secure critical physical infrastructure and hardware supply chains.