Onur Mutlu

Onur Mutlu (born 1978) is a Turkish-American computer scientist and professor of computer architecture at ETH Zurich. He previously held the William D. and Nancy W. Strecker Early Career Professorship at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on computer architecture, memory systems, hardware security, bioinformatics and efficient & high-performance computing systems design. He leads the SAFARI Research Group at ETH Zurich. He was born in Turkey, he took his undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and his postgraduate degree and PhD at the University of Texas at Austin.

Mutlu is known for his research on computer architecture, especially memory system design and reliability, including work on the RowHammer phenomenon in dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). His group's research on the RowHammer vulnerability was the first to demonstrate that repeatedly accessing certain rows in DRAM can cause bit flips in adjacent rows, revealing a widespread hardware failure mechanism, with implications for system security and reliability. He has also conducted significant research into processing-in-memory systems, including research into processing using DRAM, near-memory processing, in-storage processing, and processing using flash memory. As of June 2026 he had an h-index of 141, and 481 cited publications.

Academic biography

Mutlu completed both his PhD and MS at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds BS degrees in computer engineering and psychology from the University of Michigan.