News

Elisa Bertino named as ACM President

Dr. Elisa Bertino was elected to a two-year term as president of the Association for Computing Machinery beginning July 1, 2026. 

Dr. Bertino has been a leading ACTION faculty researcher since the institute's inception in 2023. Since 2024 she has been the lead for our research in the area of intelligent agents for response and recovery. 

SAC visit to UC Santa Barbara

Saastha Vasan hosted Chase Jiang and Elena Long for a visit to UC Santa Barbara as part of the ACTION Student Advisory Council student exchange. While here, Chase, who is from the University of Chicago, and Elena, from the University of Virginia, had a chance to learn about the wealth of research activities underway in UCSB's SecLab. 

We hope to hold similar opportunities for cross-pollination at all of our ACTION campuses in 2026-2027. 

University of Washington releases "JobBench: Aligning Agent Work with Human Desire"

ACTION researchers at the University of Washington have released a new evaluation standard for the real-world utility of AI agents. JobBench, now live at job-bench.github.io, applies a human lens to the issue of AI in the workplace. Rather than asking what work AI agents can absorb, the benchmark considers what tasks human professionals want AI to absorb, and then measures AI models' ability to do the work. 

Panel Interview on Teaching Veridical Data Science Features Bin Yu

ACTION faculty member Bin Yu (University of California, Berkeley) joined a panel on "Teaching Veridical Data Science" during the 2025 Joint Statistical Meeting (JSM) of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in Nashville, Tennessee. Others panelists included Dr. Matteo Bonvini (Rutgers), Dr.

AIVO enables collaborative project management

How do you coordinate large AI research teams to tackle complex societal challenges?

The AI Virtual Organization (AIVO) brought together project managers from 25 AI Institutes to share their experiences and help answer this question. Their new paper is now available online and offers practical recommendations for funding agencies, academic institutions, and research organizations on enabling effective team science.

Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/gsJSfKxb

Ninghui Li to serve as Secure Intelligence Institute Inaugural Director

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.

Who has the best programmers? Join Rutgers' ICPC-style Competition

ACTION has a dozen participating campuses collaborating on cutting-edge research at intersection of AI and cybersecurity. But which of these campuses boasts the best programmers?

Graduate student travel grants available through AIVO

The NSF AI Institute Virtual Organization (AIVO) is a nexus for the 29 National AI Institutes established by NSF and USDA-AIFA. AIVO connects the institutes, allowing them to benefit from knowledge sharing and organizational best practices. To strengthen collaboration across geographic and disciplinary lines, AIVO also provides travel support.