Perplexity has announced the launch of its Secure Intelligence Institute (SII), a new flagship research center dedicated to advancing security, privacy, and trust in frontier AI. To spearhead the initiative, the company has appointed Dr. Ninghui Li as the institute’s inaugural director.
Dr. Li brings decades of distinguished leadership in security and privacy research to the role. He currently serves as the Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science and Associate Department Head at Purdue University. A Fellow of both the ACM and IEEE, Dr. Li has held several prominent roles in the global security research community, including Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control (SIGSAC), Chair of the Steering Committee for the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security. He has been involved with ACTION since the institute's inception in 2023.
Under Dr. Li's leadership, the SII will consolidate Perplexity’s ongoing AI safety initiatives into a broader, collaborative research ecosystem. The institute’s core research will span crucial areas of frontier AI safety, including user authentication, usable privacy and security, robust machine learning, and the defense of autonomous, agentic AI systems. Seeking to bridge the gap between academic rigor and real-world system deployments, the SII aims to foster deep collaboration across both industry and academic institutions to secure the next generation of artificial intelligence.