Several Indian American experts are involved in a five-year, $10 million project to establish Accelerate-DAQ, a project focused on expanding North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s defense research capacity in artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber resilience and quantum systems.
Department of War has named NCA&T an inaugural recipient of a grant for the project funded through its Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI) Program to increase research capacity at HBCUs and other MIs, according to a university release.
The DoW established the program to provide support for cutting-edge research and training at HBCUs and MIs in many STEM fields aligned with national security.
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The scale of investment will serve to accelerate progress of the research enterprise itself while supporting specific research projects. For A&T, that includes reaching and sustaining Research 1 status in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
Kaushik Roy, Computer Science department chair in A&T’s College of Engineering, is one of the project’s faculty leads.
“Future AI systems must do more than produce accurate answers. They must be trustworthy, resilient and capable of operating under uncertainty,” said Roy. “Our research explores how intelligent systems can collaborate effectively with people, resist cyber threats and continue making reliable decisions in challenging environments. These advances have the potential to reshape how humans and AI work together in applications that demand both performance and trust.”
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Accelerate-DAQ will focus on several of the six DoW’s Critical Technology Areas (CTAs), with a particular emphasis on Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI) and Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance, with three interconnected research clusters: Trustworthy AI & Cyber Defense, AI-enabled Autonomy, and Quantum Computing.
The Accelerate-DAQ project also seeks to enhance the research culture across campus. It will empower “research champions” within the faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and research staff. It will also increase A&T capacity to do research in sensitive or classified areas.
The Accelerate-DAQ team consists of experts from six A&T colleges representing the three research clusters. They include four Indian Americans: Shyam Aravamudhan, nanoengineering professor, Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN), Bishnu Bastakoti, associate professor of chemistry, College of Science and Technology (CoST), Pankaj Chaudhary, associate professor and chair of business information systems and analytics, Willie A. Deese College of Business and Economics, and Salil Desai, associate dean of research and innovation and distinguished professor, College of Engineering (COE).