Representing ACTION, Dongyan Xu served on the panel as an academia panelist participating in a USG-funded research project on both AI and cybersecurity. Xu gave an overview of ACTION's mission, vision, and technical approaches and expected impacts, providing concrete testimony on the challenges and opportunities in "AI for security" and "security for AI" and how ACTION is addressing these challenges and opportunities in a cross-domain (AI and cybersecurity), agent-centric methodology. Xu discussed with both government panelists and conference audience on emerging technical topics, such as large language models, shared research infrastructures and data, and ethics and policies.
See below for panel information, copied from the ACSAC 2024 conference website.
NITRD Panel: Cybersecurity and AI R&D
Session Chair: Tomas Vagoun, NCO and NITRD
Abstract:
Improving cybersecurity and cyber resilience depends on advances in many technological, social, and economic areas. The dramatic progress in artificial intelligence is creating significant challenges and opportunities across many of those cybersecurity dimensions. Panelists will discuss the challenges in this area and federal government priorities for research.
Moderator:
Tomas Vagoun, Technical Coordinator, NCO and NITRD
Panelists:
Donald Coulter, Senior Science Advisor for Cybersecurity, Science and Technology Directorate, Department of Homeland Security
Jeremy Epstein, Lead Program Director, Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Program, National Science Foundation
Harold Booth, Computer Scientist, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dongyan Xu, Professor of Computer Science, Purdue University; Director of CERIAS, Purdue's cybersecurity research center; and Executive Committee Member, NSF AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION)