Join us in Santa Barbara, CA for the ACTION AI Institute's second annual review and knowledge expo.
The two-day event will take place at Henley Hall on the UCSB campus. Find pertinent information below and check back regularly. We will be updating this page as the agendas continue to formalize. Last schedule update was Monday, 23 June 2025.
Registration for the event remains open using this form.
Please contact Tim Robinson by email <trobinson@ucsb.edu> or by phone <805-893-3510> for additional information.
June 26: Program Review (confirmed on June 23)
| Time | in Henley, room 1010 | in Henley, room 1002 |
| 7:30am | Continental Breakfast | |
| 8:00am | Greetings and Introductions - Institute Director Giovanni Vigna, UCSB - CPO Dan Cosley - Site Visit Team (SVT) - Other key personnel |
|
| 8:20am | ACTION Institute Overview Giovanni Vigna |
|
| 8:40am | Review and Update, AI Research Thrusts - AI Lead: Bo Li, U Chicago/UIUC - AI-1: Ambuj Singh, UCSB - AI-2: Ming Yin, Purdue - AI-3: Jie Gao, Rutgers - AI-4: Joao Hespanha, UCSB |
|
| 9:35am | Break | |
| 9:45am | Review and Update, SEC Research Thrusts - SEC Lead: Dongyan Xu, Purdue - SEC-1: Gang Wang, UIUC - SEC-2: David Evans, U Virginia - SEC-3: Nick Feamster, U Chicago - SEC-4: Elisa Bertino, Purdue |
|
| 10:40am | Break | |
| 10:50pm |
Lightning Talks -- Poster Introductions |
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| 11:30am | ACTION's Strategic Impact - Nurturing/growing the next generation of talent - Broadening participation and diversity - Multidisciplinary integration and community building - Multi-organizational synergies/achievements - Knowledge transfer - ACTION as a nexus point for collaboration |
|
| 12:25am | Lunch and student posters | Site Visit Team (SVT) Executive session |
| 1:30pm |
ACTION in Year 3 |
|
| 2:25pm | Break | |
| 2:35pm |
GATE Updates and Demo |
|
| 3:00pm | ACTION Community Building - Evaluation Team presentation and discussion - EAB commendations |
3:00pm SVT meets with Student 3:45pm Final Day 1 Executive |
| 4:30pm | SVT Presentation to Institute Team | |
| 5:30pm | All Institute Dinner (details TBD) | |
June 27: Knowledge Expo
| Time | Event | Location |
| 7:30am | Continental Breakfast | Henley Hall Foyer |
| 8:00am | NSF + ACTION PI Discussion | Henley Hall 1010 |
| 10:40am | Break | Henley Hall Foyer |
| 11:00am | Keynote Talk 1: Shahid Raza, University of Glasgow | Henley Hall 1010 |
| 12:00pm | Lunch and Student Posters | Henley Hall Foyer |
| 1:00pm | ACTION + DHS/CISA (Comments and Feedback) | Henley Hall 1010 |
| 3:00pm | Break | Henley Hall Foyer |
| 3:15pm | Reconvene for Collaborative Project Discussions | Henley Hall 1010 |
| 4:30pm | Final Remarks and Looking to the Future | Henley Hall 1010 |
Posters & Lightning Talks
- Learning with Contextual Information in Non-Stationary Environments -- Sean Anderson, UC Santa Barbara [Highlight Project]
- TopInG: Topologically Interpretable Graph Learning via Persistent Rationale Filtration -- Cheng Xin, Rutgers University
- Optimal Lifelong/Continual Learning for Autonomous AI Agents -- Bing Liu, U Illinois, Chicago
- Progent: Programmable Privilege Control for LLM Agents -- Tianneng Shi, UC Berkeley
- SafeChain: Safety of Language Models with Long Chain-of-Thought Reasoning Capabilities -- Fengqing Jiang, U Washington
- D-LiFT: Improving LLM-based Decompiler Backend via Code Quality-driven Fine-tuning -- Muqi Zou, Purdue University
- On the Price of Differential Privacy for Hierarchical Clustering -- Chengyuan Deng, Rutger's University
- Integrating Semantic and Conversational Agents into Cyber-Physical Systems-- Doguhan Yeke, Purdue University and Georgia Tech
- Intelligent Security Agents in ACTION -- Noah Spahn, UC Santa Barbara
- Practical Deployment of GATE: Launching on SPHERE -- Matthew Lau, Georgia Tech, in collaboration with Purdue University
- ArtPrompt: ASCII Art-based Jailbreak Attacks against Aligned LLMs -- Fengqing Jiang, U Washington [Highlight Project]
- Adversarial Multi-Phase Latent Injection Attack -- Danish Ebadullah, UC Santa Barbara
- Frontier AI's Impact on the Cybersecurity Landscape -- Yujin Potter, UC Berkeley
- Dynamic gradient influencing for viral marketing using graph neural networks -- Saurabh Sharma, UC Santa Barbara
- HexLLM: Pushing Language Models to Reason Through RE Tasks -- Hadjer Benkraouda, UI Urbana-Champaign
- CyberGym: Evaluating AI Agents' Cybersecurity Capabilities with Real-World Vulnerabilities at Scale -- Tianneng Shi, UC Berkeley
- DEEPCAPA: Identifying Malicious Capabilities in Windows Malware -- Saastha Vasan, UC Santa Barbara [Highlight Project]
- RFC-Agent: An RFC-Aware Multi-Agent Reasoning System for Network Protocol Security Analysis -- Stijn Pletinckx, UC Santa Barbara
- Raven: Automated Discovery of Semantic Attacks in Multi-Agent Navigation Systems -- Doguhan Yeke, Purdue University
- One Size Doesn’t Fit All: Introducing a New Malware Dataset and Dynamic Heterogeneous Classification Ensemble for Malware Family Attribution -- Solomon Sonya, Purdue University [Highlight Project]
- NetDiffusion: Network Data Augmentation Through Protocol-Constrained Traffic Generation -- Shinan Liu, UChicago
- ARTIPHISHELL Intelligence - A Framework For Automated Vulnerability Remediation From Crash to Patch -- Saastha Vasan, UC Santa Barbara
Knowledge Expo Talks
Research and Training for Cybersecurity in Sweden
Shahid Raza
Chair and Full Professor of Cybersecurity
University of Glasgow, UK
Abstract: This talk offers a snapshot of Sweden’s cybersecurity efforts, with a spotlight on key national initiatives such as RISE Cyber Range and Cybercampus Sweden. It will explore how these platforms are shaping the national cybersecurity landscape through cutting-edge research, hands-on training, and large-scale simulation exercises. With a particular focus on the RISE Cyber Range, the talk will demonstrate how we are building real-world cyber resilience by bringing together industry, academia, and the public sector. Attendees will gain practical insights into how a coordinated, research-driven approach is strengthening national capabilities in cybersecurity and digital defence.
Shahid Raza is the Chair and Full Professor of Cybersecurity at the University of Glasgow, UK, and serves as Research Director of Cybersecurity at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. At RISE, Shahid previously led the Cybersecurity Unit for eight years, growing it into one of Sweden’s largest and most impactful technical cybersecurity groups. He was instrumental in founding and shaping several national-scale cybersecurity initiatives, including the RISE Cyber Range, a premier platform for cybersecurity research, training, and simulation-based exercises, and the Swedish Cybersecurity Research and Innovation Node (Cybernode.se). He also co-founded Cybercampus Sweden (cybercampus.se) and continues to lead its scientific direction. Shahid’s research spans both foundational and applied cybersecurity, with his work published in leading venues and cited over 7,350 times. Homepage: https://shahidraza.net
Lodging Information
There are a number of hotels near UCSB. If your university has a travel software platform, then you can run a search for available rooms. UCSB's zip code is 93106. Downtown Santa Barbara is 93101. Here are results from a search using a University of California account in Concur.
Below are some nearby hotels where we have set up group blocks. We are happy to call other hotels to set up additional blocks or request more rooms.
Note that none of these hotels offer shuttles anymore. This has been the case since the COVID Pandemic began.
The Leta Santa Barbara Goleta
5650 Calle Real, Goleta, CA 93117
4 miles from venue
Phone: 805-964-6241
Booking Link
Room block name: ACTION AI Institute
Price: $214-235/night
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Book by 25 May 2025
Hilton Garden Inn Goleta
6878 Hollister Ave, Goleta, CA 93117
3.0 miles from venue
Phone: (805) 562-5996
Booking Link
Room block name: ACTION
Price: $239-$279/night
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Book by 30 May 2025
South Coast Inn – Best Western Plus
5620 Calle Real, Goleta, CA 93117
4 miles from venue.
Phone: (805) 967-3200
Booking Link
Room block/event name: ACTION SITE VISIT
Price: $209/Sun-Thur; $299/Fri-Sat
Check-in allowed: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Book by 31 May 2025
Downtown SB Courtyard Marriott
1601 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
9.5 miles from venue
Phone: (805) 968-0500
CALL HOTEL FOR RESERVATIONS
Price: $299/night; $399 Fri/Sat
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Goleta Courtyard Marriott
401 Storke Rd, Goleta, CA 93117
2.5 miles from venue
Phone: (805) 968-0500
Alt phone: 1-800-228-9290
CALL HOTEL FOR RESERVATIONS
Price: $299/night
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Hyatt Place Santa Barbara
4111 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93110
4 miles from venue
Phone: 805-681-1585
CALL HOTEL FOR RESERVATIONS
Price: $299/night
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
UCSB Faculty Club and Guest House
401 Storke Rd, Goleta, CA 93117
0.7 miles from venue; 14 minute campus walk
Phone: (805) 893-7000
Call hotel with Conf #12002
Room block name: ACTION Year 2 Site Visit
Price: $255/night
Check-in date: 6/25/2025
Checkout date: 6/28/2025
Transportation
By air
- Santa Barbara has a quaint airport (SBA), located minutes away from UCSB and the listed hotels.
- Airlines that serve SBA are Alaska, American, United, Southwest, and Delta.
- Additional flights are available via LAX, or via Hollywood Airport in Burbank. Santa Barbara is just over 100 miles from each of these airports.
- The Santa Barbara Airbus is a convenient way to get to UCSB from LAX for those who do not wish to rent a car. The airbus is inexpensive and offers WiFi.
By car
- If driving to Santa Barbara (perhaps via rental car from LAX), please email trobinson@ucsb.edu for help in securing a parking pass for campus.
- UCSB offers parking reciprocity for faculty from other UC campuses. UC Berkeley faculty should be able to use their parking passes when visiting UCSB. Note that you will need to apply for reciprocity, and approval might take a few days.
- Park in Lot 12 or Lot 14 if you have been given a VIP pass. If you need to purchase a pass, park in Lot 18.
Around Santa Barbara
- Uber and Lyft make getting around Santa Barbara easy. There are also taxis. Gold Cab is a trusted cab service (Tel: 805-681-9000).
- Organizers anticipate being able to carpool to group events, like dinners and other activities.
Restaurants
The conference provides a continental breakfast and lunch on June 26 and June 27. Santa Barbara offers a high number of nice restaurants per capita. Here are a few of our favorite places to consider for dinner. None of them have any affiliation with ACTION.
Something for Everyone
- Santa Barbara Public Market is the perfect location for a large group unable to decide on a single cuisine. The market has open seating between a variety of excellent restaurants.
Italian
- Pizzeria Da Michele offers wood-fired pizzas and classic pasta dishes.
- Olio e Limone, also in downtown Santa Barbara, was the venue for the ACTION Institute's SIP retreat dinner.
- Olio Pizzeria, another pizza joint, is adjacent to Olio e Limone.
- Ca Dario is a long-standing Italian restaurant with locations in downtown Santa Barbara and Goleta, near the Hilton Garden Inn.
- Bettina is another one of the best, local Italian restaurants; but you'll need a reservation.
Mexican
- Los Arroyos is a Santa Barbara classic, with locations downtown and Goleta, near the Leta and the South Coast Inn.
- Los Agaves is another SB classic, and also with locations downtown and in Goleta.
- Carlitos is similar to Los Arroyos and Los Agaves, but is a little higher-end.
- Flor de Maiz is another popular Mexican restaurant. They have a great location near the beach.
- Freebirds Burritos, are world famous. This is the original location, still in operation.
- Corazon Comedor specializes in Mexican breakfasts. Perhaps stop by on Saturday morning?
Californian/Mediterranean
- Barbareno is well-known Santa Barbara restaurant with a unique, memorable menu.
- The Lark is always happening, located in Santa Barbara's Funk Zone.
- Mesa Verde has an entirely vegan menu.
- Milk and Honey is a popular place for tapas.
Cajun
- The Palace Grill offers memorable food in a fun environment. Make a reservation, and be sure to order the bread pudding for dessert.
Seafood
- Lure Fish House, located in La Cumbre Shopping Center, is easy to find and has plenty of parking.
- Santa Barbara Fish House is a popular spot near East Beach and the Funk Zone.
- The Boathouse, overlooking Hendry's Beach, is great for brunch.
Asian
- Arigato Sushi and Edomasa Sushi are two very popular sushi restaurants. But honestly, you can't go wrong with sushi in this town. Santa Barbara is famous for its uni.
- Meet Up has been regarded by many as one of the most authentic Chinese restaurants in town.
- Sama Sama, serves South East Asian dishes family style, and delicious.
Burgers and Beer
- Topa Topa Brewery has a great tap room and some local bites.
- Mesa Burger offers hand crafted burgers with a flair for gourmet.
- The Habit is a national burger chain that started in Santa Barbara (and tastes better here, too).
More things to do
And with all of the great restaurants to sample, you might want to stay in Santa Barbara through the weekend. What will you do after the ACTION ends?
- Take a walking wine tour in SB's Funk Zone or visit the Santa Ynez Valley.
- Stop in at the Red Piano for some live entertainment.
- Soho also has live entertainment seven nights a week, and great food, too!
- Visit to a club or micro-brewery in downtown Santa Barbara.
- Head to the beach.
- Go for a hike at Lizard Mouth, Cold Springs Trail, or Toro Canyon Park (easy trails with great views).
- Find more at the Santa Barbara website.