This National Science Foundation project grant of $150,000 supports research at the University of Maryland, College Park to develop secure cyber-physical links for supply chain authentication using micro-surface sensing and vision-enabled verification. Funded under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041), the three-year award running from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2025 will investigate the scientific foundations and technological barriers to utilizing physically unclonable features of item surfaces at the microscopic scale. Researchers will examine surface features in mobile imaging settings to uniquely identify objects, establish light reflection models at the microscopic level through signal analysis and machine learning, and explore integrating surface verification with blockchain-based supply chain information management systems. The project aims to advance understanding of photometric behaviors at the microscale and improve light reflection modeling through controlled experiments and machine learning.