Business Wire

C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute Announces Call for Proposals for AI to Transform Cybersecurity and Secure Critical Infrastructure

21.12.2021 17:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release

Share

The C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute invites scholars, software developers, and researchers to advance the science of digital transformation with artificial intelligence (AI) designed to harden information security (Infosec) and secure critical infrastructure.

“Cybersecurity is an existential issue,” said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman and CEO of C3 AI, a leading enterprise AI software provider. “We are assembling the best minds on the planet to develop innovative AI to attain a step-function improvement in securing IT, OT, and critical infrastructure systems.”

“Advanced AI and machine learning offer the best opportunity to design robust defensive systems,” said C3.ai DTI Co-Director S. Shankar Sastry of UC Berkeley, whose area of research expertise is cybersecurity. “This call for proposals will help design the defenses necessary to securely shield the digital transformation of our economy.”

“We aim to develop AI techniques to identify and neutralize malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, and prevent the weaponization of innocent insiders,” said C3.ai DTI Co-Director R. Srikant of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an expert in AI and networks.

Immediate Call for Proposals: AI to Transform Cybersecurity and Secure Critical Infrastructure.
Topics for research awards may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. AI techniques to identify previously unknown malware, ransomware, and zero-day vulnerabilities, enabling isolation and neutralization
  2. AI-enabled network and system crawlers that can continuously search and identify persistent access mechanisms (backdoors), bots, remote access toolkits (RATS), stagers, and Trojans
  3. AI forensics and attribution techniques to identify sources of attacks
  4. AI techniques to automate simulated adversarial attacks to identify system and network vulnerabilities
  5. AI techniques to accurately identify and enable the neutralization of phishing attacks
  6. Change management techniques to prevent the weaponization of innocent insiders
  7. AI techniques to detect the presence of advanced persistent threats and insider threats
  8. AI-enabled network and/or system crawlers that access and continuously evaluate system security levels
  9. AI techniques, perhaps in supervised or unsupervised learning, to provide early detection of system and/or network anomalies that might be indicative of unauthorized access, denial of service, or data exfiltration
  10. Techniques and methods to enable the development of AI algorithms that are resilient to adversarial attacks
  11. AI techniques to identify concentration risk in the software and computer supply chain
  12. Change management to transform organizational behavior to manifest best practices in cyber hygiene
  13. Techniques to respond to attacks at the organizational and societal level

This third call for proposals is open now, with a submission deadline of February 7, 2022. Researchers are invited to learn more about C3.ai DTI and how to submit their proposals for consideration at C3DTI.ai. Award winners will be announced in March 2022, with a start date around June 1, 2022. Award winners may take part in the annual C3.ai DTI Research Symposium, to be held March 22-24, 2022, in Miami, Florida.

Up to USD $10 million in cash awards will be funded from this third call, ranging from USD $100,000 to $1,000,000 each. In addition to cash awards, C3.ai DTI recipients will be provided with significant cloud computing, supercomputing, data access, and AI software resources and technical support provided by Microsoft and C3 AI. This will include unlimited use of the C3 AI® Suite hosted on the Microsoft Azure Cloud, and access to high-performance computing resources at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. All science developed from C3.ai DTI funded projects accrues to the public domain.

Establishing the New Science of Digital Transformation
C3.ai DTI focuses its research on AI, machine learning, IoT, big data analytics, human factors, organizational behavior, ethics, and public policy. The Institute supports the development of ML algorithms, data security, and cybersecurity techniques. C3.ai DTI research analyzes new business operation models, develops methods of implementing organizational change management and protecting privacy, and amplifies the dialogue around the ethics and public policy of AI.

About C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute
C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute represents an innovative vision to take AI, ML, and big data research in a consortium model to a level that cannot be achieved by any one institution alone. Jointly managed by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, C3.ai DTI attracts the world’s leading scientists to join in a coordinated and innovative effort to advance the digital transformation of business, government, and society, and establish the new science of digital transformation. To support the Institute, C3 AI will provide $57,250,000 in cash contributions over the first five years of operation. C3 AI and Microsoft will contribute an additional $310 million in-kind, including use of the C3 AI Suite and Microsoft Azure computing, storage, and technical resources to support C3.ai DTI research.

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

C3.ai DTI Contact:
Kap Stann
Communications Manager, C3.ai DTI @ Berkeley
Tel. +1 510-295-9685
Kstann@berkeley.edu

Press Contact
Lisa Kennedy
(415) 914-8336
pr@c3.ai

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Fastly Joins DIMPACT to Collaborate on Digital Sustainability8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

Fastly, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLY), a leading global edge cloud platform, today announced it has become a participant of DIMPACT, the coalition of leading organizations working to align industry changemakers and policymakers around meaningful, science-based solutions that reduce the environmental impacts of serving digital media products. As the first edge cloud platform provider to join the coalition, Fastly brings critical, real-world edge network data and infrastructure expertise and a transparent approach to emissions calculation and reporting to help major media, streaming, and publishing companies understand and optimize their digital carbon footprints. “We’re thrilled to welcome Fastly to the DIMPACT initiative. Their participation strengthens DIMPACT's ability to advance a more accurate, data-driven approach to measuring and reducing digital emissions,” said Jason Bell, Director at SLR Consulting and Executive Sponsor of DIMPACT. “Accurately calculating digital emissions requires a de

PubNub Introduces Blocks.ai: The Control Plane and Network Layer For AI Agents8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

PubNub introduces Blocks.ai today, a global network to connect and control agents across all agent frameworks, providers, and APIs. Blocks.ai lets developers reach their existing AI agents regardless of where they are hosted. Blocks Network supports all AI agent use cases without opening inbound ports, setting up tunnels, changing DNS, or modifying firewall rules. For more than a decade, PubNub has been the infrastructure and platform for real-time connectivity supporting billions of devices, now, PubNub delivers Blocks Network connecting the Internet of Agents. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708521206/en/ AI agents have become increasingly critical to businesses who want control over their models, code, and data. But once those agents are running locally or behind a firewall, making them reachable from custom frontends can require brittle infrastructure work. This is a key reason why McKinsey estimates th

STEMCELL Technologies and CCRM Partner to Expand Access to Matched GMP and RUO iPSC Lines for Cell Therapy Development8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

STEMCELL Technologies and the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine (CCRM) today announced a partnership to expand access to high-quality human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) starting materials, giving cell therapy developers worldwide a faster, lower-risk path from research to the clinic. Under the agreement, STEMCELL will manufacture and distribute research-use-only (RUO) iPSC lines derived directly from LineaBio's Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) iPSC lines, and will offer the matched GMP lines to developers worldwide. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708212795/en/ Partnership pairs GMP-manufactured iPSC lines with matched RUO equivalents, giving developers well-characterized, donor-eligible starting materials from early research through clinical development. Supporting comparability data for the RUO and GMP lines to be presented at the 2026 ISSCR Annual Meeting in Montréal, Canada

LUMI AI Factory Selects IQM to Deploy Advanced Quantum Computer, Accelerating Hybrid HPC and AI Development8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

The LUMI AI Factory, led by CSC – IT Center for Science, has selected IQM Quantum Computers (Nasdaq: IQMX) to deliver IQM Halocene H4, an advanced quantum computer aimed at accelerating hybrid high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing capabilities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708006791/en/ LUMI AI Factory selects IQM to deploy advanced quantum computer, accelerating hybrid HPC and AI development IQM Halocene H4 is the first and most advanced on-premises superconducting quantum computer of its kind, combining quantum error correction with NISQ qubits. The system will be delivered in 2027, followed by a series of upgrades delivered in multiple phases with an increasing number of logical qubits. The IQM Halocene H4 and the upgraded systems will enable LUMI consortium users, for the first time, to develop and implement Quantum Error Correction (QEC) concepts on a world-leadi

Merck Announces FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Enpatoran in Lupus Patients With Active Skin Manifestations8.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

Merck, a leading science and technology company, today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to enpatoran for the treatment of lupus with active cutaneous manifestations. Enpatoran is an oral selective toll-like receptor (TLR) 7/8 inhibitor, designed to modulate pathways central to lupus-related inflammation. “For the 85% of lupus patients whose disease includes skin manifestations, often associated with substantial physical and psychosocial burden, the lack of targeted treatment makes the disease hard to control,” said David Weinreich, MD, MBA, Global Head of R&D and Chief Medical Officer for the Healthcare business of Merck. “This Breakthrough Therapy designation demonstrates that enpatoran has the potential to redefine how we approach lupus, by addressing the visible burden of rash, while potentially driving benefit beyond the skin. We look forward to working with the FDA to potentially bring this much-needed option to

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye