News

Applications for 2026 Summer Research Program

As part of the ACTION AI Institute's plan for outreach, education, and broadening participation, we are now welcoming applications from both graduate and undergraduate students to participate in an 8-week research experience at one of the ACTION Institute campuses. Selected students will collaborate as teams with ACTION personnel on research related to Computer Security and Artificial Intelligence.  Participants will receive stipends, provided by the National Science Foundation, including a housing allocation. 

IBM blog hails TOUCAN as new goldmine for tool-calling AI agents

An IBM blog post authored by Kim Martineau highlights how TOUCAN, a tool-calling dataset "of 1.5 million task scenarios, field-tested and open-sourced by IBM and University of Washington, is designed to improve how agents interact with the world and get things done." 

Keynote at ACM CCS by Giovanni Vigna

ACTION Director Giovanni Vigna delivered the first keynote talk at 2025 ACM CCS in Taipei, Taiwan. 

Autonomous Vulnerability Analysis, Triaging, and Repair: A Historical Perspective

Giovanni Vigna
​​​​​​UC Santa Barbara

The software components that support critical infrastructure are riddled with vulnerabilities, whose exploitation could cause service disruption, financial damage, and possibly loss of life.

Brooks Butler, Invited Lecture

Algorithmic Altruism in Autonomous Multi-Agent Systems

Brooks Butler
Postdoctoral Fellow
UC Irvine

Time: 11 am - 12 pm PT
Date: 6 October 2025
Location: Engineering Sciences Building 2003, UC Santa Barbara campus. 

Reversing Labs Blog on CVE-GENIE

A Reversing Labs blog post by Jaikumar Vijayan titled "CVE-Genie raises stakes in the vulnerability race" discusses the impacts of a new tool by ACTION researchers. 

UCSB Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium 2025

On August 14, 2024, ACTION AI was one of fifteen undergraduate summer research programs across UC Santa Barbara gathered for a research symposium and poster session. In total, there were 65 posters on display, spanning engineering, the sciences, and the social sciences. The symposium marked the end of an eight-week research experience, full of hands-on training, professional development, and networking opportunities for our scholars.

ACTION AI Institute Research Powers Team Shellphish to Landmark Success at DEF CON 33

LAS VEGAS, NV – At the conclusion of the high-stakes DARPA AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) at DEF CON 33, Team Shellphish successfully debuted ARTIPHISHELL, an autonomous Cyber Reasoning System (CRS) built upon foundational research from the ACTION AI Institute (AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation).

Summer Experiences at Norfolk State 2025

Last week Norfolk State University hosted their first ACTION-sponsored Capture the Flag training camps. They held a day camp from 9 am - 4 pm and a night camp from 6 pm - 9 pm, both at the campus Cybersecurity Complex.