News Release
International Research Collaboration: Cybersecurity Meets Artificial Intelligence
New joint research center combines artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning research at Technical University Darmstadt and University of California San Diego
San Diego, Calif., Mar. 8, 2019 -- As attackers have increasing incentives to attack machine learning algorithms, cybersecurity researchers have to develop new defenses throughout all layers of an IT system: algorithm design, software, and underlying hardware. Moreover, as the popularity of AI rises and competition rapidly grows, IP protection for pre-trained machine learning models is of unprecedented importance. The rise of embedded and IoT (Internet of Things) devices poses an additional challenge to the development of lightweight secure systems powered by machine learning.
Researchers from different areas of expertise are collaborating and joining forces to provide all-embracing solutions for current global cybersecurity threats. Two renowned cybersecurity and machine learning research institutions have come together to form the new CYSMICS center, which is a joint effort between the Cybersecurity Research Centre (CYSEC) at Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, and the Center for Machine-Integrated Computing & Security (MICS) at the University of California San Diego.
“Global responsibility comes with global responsibility: AI and machine learning are increasingly infiltrating our IT systems and confronting many cybersecurity and privacy challenges that we want to address in our shared CYSMICS lab, a symbiosis of cybersecurity and AI researchers,” said Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, Professor of System Security at TU Darmstadt.
“The joint lab will tackle the increasingly more complex security and privacy problems with increasing attack surface in the new era of rapid integration of AI in our computer systems,” said Tara Javidi, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego.
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CYSMICS researchers will work on privacy-preserving machine learning; protection of machine learning Intellectual Property (IP) by watermarking and fingerprinting; security of autonomous embedded systems; and protection of large networks of devices in the Internet of Things (IoT).
The center celebrated its launch with a kick-off event on Feb. 28 in San Diego. The event featured talks by researchers from academia and influential industry R&D divisions, including Intel AI Research and Google Brain.
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Media Contacts
Liezel Labios
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-246-1124
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