At its Honeywell Users Group event in Dallas, Honeywell and Chevron revealed a strategic alliance that would use AI to streamline operator decision-making in refining processes, aiming to enhance both efficiency and safety. “The focus of the partnership is to use AI to build real, impactful solutions that will set new standards for operational efficiency,”…
Copyleaks CEO: OpenAI’s o1 emergence could blur the lines between human researcher and AI assistant
The web is facing a deluge of AI-generated content, with an explosive 8,362% surge from November 2022 to March 2024, according to a study by Copyleaks. From Q1 2023 to Q1 2024, the volume of AI-detected content jumped 2,848% based on an analysis of more than a million web pages per period using data from…
Explore the 2024 R&D 100 award winners and finalists: The Oscars of Innovation at your fingertips
For six decades, the R&D 100 Awards have been a benchmark of achievement in science and technology, often referred to informally as “The Oscars of Innovation.” This year, we’re offering a new interactive experience, allowing you to explore the remarkable work of both winners and finalists across diverse fields. From advances in mechanical and material…
AMD raises earnings forecast to $4.5B, after continuously doubling revenue; NSC to feds: increase AI spending
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Santa Clara, California, announced last week that its data-center revenue more than doubled year over year, exceeding Wall Street analyst’s estimates. The company also raised its forecast for this year’s sale of AI chips to more than $4.5 billion, an increase of 13% from its forecast three months ago. While this…
Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI to test genAI-based biological threats
Los Alamos National Laboratory and OpenAI are joining forces to conduct the world’s first real-world evaluation of AI’s potential role in biological threats. The partnership between OpenAI and Los Alamos goes beyond previous text-based assessments of AI in biological contexts. OpenAI highlighted two aspects that set this research apart, noting the “research will involve real…
EDF, Alice & Bob, Quandela, and CNRS team up to enhance quantum computing efficiency
French electric utility outfit EDF is partnering with quantum computing firms Quandela and the quizzically-named Alice & Bob, alongside the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), to enhance energy consumption in quantum computing. With the support of grant money from the public investment bank Bpifrance, the €6.1M initiative will also compare the energy requirements…
As Apple Intelligence debuts, a quiet AI army is taking shape
Apple made waves at WWDC 2024 by launching Apple Intelligence (beta coming in the fall), its answer to the booming generative AI space. But while this marks Apple’s public entry into the arena, the company has been quietly assembling an “AI army” behind the scenes for years, and continues to do so with more than…
Cerberus: Cybersecurity for EV Charging Infrastructure — R&D 100 winner of the day
Researchers anticipate a large network of EV charging equipment to be an attractive target for adversaries or criminal enterprises. Idaho National Laboratory’s Cerberus system — relying on basic sensors and computer hardware linked together in a smart configuration — sharply limits or sometimes eliminates damage to assets and human health. Recent work demonstrated that high-power…
University-based cybersecurity centers receive $15 Million for research and training
From the DOE: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $15 million in funding to establish six university-based electric power cybersecurity centers that will foster collaborations across the energy sector to address gaps in energy security research and provide cybersecurity education programs. Each university, selected by the DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency…
U.S. DOE launches digitizing utilities prize for grid reliability and resilience solutions
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) has launched the $1.85 million Digitizing Utilities Prize Round 2. This competition aims to connect electric utilities with interdisciplinary teams of software developers and data experts to transform digital systems and data analytics for utilities in the energy sector. This round will also award prizes…
R&D 100 winner of the day: Intelligence-Driven Cybersecurity Analytic Platform
Ransomware has ravaged industries all around the world in recent years, no matter if it is manufacturing, technology, or public infrastructure. According to forecasting by cyber research firm Cybersecurity Ventures, ransomware attacks will be launched every 2 seconds on average in 2031 and will cause a global loss of $7.3 trillion. The outbreak of COVID-19…
R&D 100 winner of the day: MOSAICS: Bringing the Future of Industrial Cybersecurity Into Focus
Developer: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Co-developers: Sandia National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory The vulnerability of industrial control systems (ICS) to cyberattacks has become alarmingly clear in the past several years, with a series of headline-grabbing hacks. In response, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in partnership with Sandia…
R&D 100 winner of the day: Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies (PARROT)
The Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies (PARROT), developed by Idaho National Laboratory, provides an extra layer of security from cyberattacks on critical infrastructure operations. When placed between control systems and infrastructure, PARROT isolates a cyberattack, provides a manual or automated response, and prevents harmful impacts while maintaining operations. Most critical infrastructure in…
BIO-ISAC formed to protect bioeconomy infrastructure from increasing attacks
Dotmatics, a scientific informatics software and services company that is helping to automate laboratory data workflows for scientific discovery and innovation research, has announced that Charles Fracchia, VP of Data and founder of BioBright, a Dotmatics company, has been appointed to the Bioeconomy Information Sharing and Analysis Center (BIO-ISAC) Board of Directors and the Executive…
U.S. Army’s Sentinel A4 radar program receives Orolia M-Code solution
In September 2019, Lockheed Martin was awarded a contract to develop the U.S. Army’s Sentinel A4 system, an air and missile defense radar that will provide improved capability against dynamic threats. The following November, Orolia Defense & Security announced the availability of M-Code Military GPS receivers in its flagship SecureSync – the first Defense Information…
NUS researchers bring attack-proof quantum communication two steps forward
by National University of Singapore Quantum key distribution (QKD) is a method for secure communication that uses quantum mechanics to encrypt information. While the security of QKD is unbreakable in principle, if it is incorrectly implemented, vital information could still be stolen by attackers. These are known as side-channel attacks, where the attackers exploit weaknesses…
R&D 100 winner of the day: CyberPow: Cyber Sensing for Power Outage Detection
MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s CyberPow: Cyber Sensing for Power Outage Detection uses pervasive, internet-connected devices as an alternative sensing network to rapidly estimate and map the extent and location of power outages across geographic boundaries. Enabling real-time situational awareness without the need for electric utilities, allowing more timely and effective post-disaster decision making and resource prioritization.…
R&D 100 winner of the day: High-density Evaluator of COTS Applications for Trust and Efficacy (HECATE)
Recent advances in adversary sophistication have led to targeting the software supply chain to inject malicious code into trusted software applications, subverting visibility to developers and users alike. As Hecate was a protector in Greek mythology, such is Sandia’s HECATE platform, protecting organizations by assessing the risk of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications before they hit the…
R&D 100 winner of the day: Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO)
Hostile influence operations that exploit digital communications and social media pose a rising threat to open democracies. MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO) allows early indication of influence operation campaigns and has the potential to forecast effects of targeted counter responses. This end-to-end system framework collects contextually relevant data, identifies potential influence operation…
R&D 100 winner of the day: FOVEA (Forensic Video Exploitation and Analysis) Tool Suite
The FOVEA tool suite, from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, addresses a major capability gap in video surveillance systems: efficient forensic review and investigation. Once integrated with a video management system, the analytics can be applied to any camera feed without any additional hardware or need for preprocessing the video data. FOVEA acts as a force-multiplier for…
R&D winner of the day: LAVA: Large-Scale Vulnerability Addition
Work on automating software vulnerability discovery has long been hampered by a shortage of ground truth corpora with which to evaluate tools and techniques. This lack of ground truth prevents authors and users of tools from being able to measure fundamental quantities such as the miss and false alarm rates of bug-finding systems. Large-scale Automated…
R&D 100 winner of day: Timely Randomization Applied to Commodity Executables at Runtime (TRACER)
Sophisticated, modern cyberattacks that hijack the control of a machine remotely heavily rely on the static and homogeneous nature of computer systems. Researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory developed Timely Randomization Applied to Commodity Executables at Runtime (TRACER), a patented technology to prevent such attacks in closed-source commodity applications running on top of Windows operating system…
SwRI hacks electric vehicle charging to demonstrate cybersecurity vulnerabilities
Engineers at Southwest Research Institute were able to interfere with the charging process of an electric vehicle (EV) by simulating a malicious attack as part of an automotive cybersecurity research initiative. The SwRI team reverse-engineered the signals and circuits on an EV and a J1772 charger, the most common interface for managing EV charging in…
R&D 100 winner of the day: CoDeAc
Speed is of the essence in radiological response to prevent the spread of contamination. CoDeAc, from Idaho National Laboratory, allows crucial decisions to be made quickly during an event. The CoDeAc pack has no equal in the rapid detection of actinides and is capable of on-site deployment, making it the go-to tool for first responders…
R&D 100 winner of the day: PBI: Public Biometric Infrastructure
Hitachi’s PBI: Public Biometric Infrastructure is the world’s first biometric authentication system that does not store any biometric data such as facial and finger-vein features anywhere, minimizing the risk of data leakage and abuse. It processes empty-handed payments and bank transactions without a card or smartphone while strongly protecting security and privacy. It runs on…