New technologies to improve the cybersecurity of neural networks, help with the increasingly complex demands of deception analysis, and deliver future 6G wireless systems are being developed by three engineering researchers who have been awarded this year’s UK Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships. A fourth project is focused on the use of autonomous robot swarms for underground excavation.
Focusing on areas of unclassified basic research, the fellowships support cutting edge work that can assist the intelligence, security and defence communities and also provide mentoring support to a new generation of engineers.
The UKIC Postdoctoral Research Fellowships, which are offered by the Government Office for Science and administered by the Royal Academy of Engineering, provide a vital link between academia and the intelligence community. Each awardee receives funding for at least two years of their project and mentorship from a Fellow of the Academy as well as an advisor from the intelligence community.
The new postdoctoral researchers are:
- Dr Dovydas Joksas, University College London
Analysis and mitigation of cybersecurity threats to memristive neural networks
Neural networks are energy-hungry, and efficient hardware accelerators based on emerging technologies, like memristors, may address that. However, little is known about how secure these systems are. For example, could nefarious adversaries affect the decisions of autonomous vehicles running specialised hardware? Dr Joksas will study these cybersecurity attacks and ways to mitigate them. - Dr James O’Keeffe, University of York
CAESAR: Conceptual Auto-Excavation for Swarms of Autonomous Robots
CAESAR will develop autonomous robot swarms for subterranean excavation. Swarm robots are especially suited to this type of task, which is dangerous and covers a large area. CAESAR will focus on designing swarm systems that can maintain their own autonomy through strategic coordination, power management and fault tolerance. - Dr Stefan Sarkadi, King's College London
Enhancing deception analysis with storytelling AI
Deception is becoming an increasingly complex socio-cognitive phenomenon that is difficult to figure out and detect. Dr Sarkadi’s research tackles the integration of techniques from AI and deception analysis to generate narratives about multi-agent interactions in complex systems in order to help intelligence analysts perform inference to the best explanation. - Dr Abderrahmen Trichili, University of Oxford
Where does light fit within the wireless future?
Indoor optical wireless communications (OWC), also known as Light Fidelity (LiFi) using visible wavelengths, can offer high-speed wireless connectivity and augment radio frequency (RF) wireless systems. A combination of RF and OWC systems is a potentially attractive way to deliver future 6G wireless systems.
Notes for editors
- UK Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships are offered by the Government Office for Science to outstanding early career researchers. These Fellowships are designed to promote unclassified basic research in areas of interest to the intelligence, security and defence community. Each fellowship is capped at a maximum grant of £200,000 over a two-year period. For more information on the fellowships, visit: https://raeng.org.uk/programmes-and-prizes/programmes/uk-grants-and-prizes/support-for-research/uk-ic-postdoctoral-research-fellowships
Submissions for the UK Intelligence Community (IC) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships 2023 will be open in late January 2023. - The Royal Academy of Engineering is harnessing the power of engineering to build a sustainable society and an inclusive economy that works for everyone. In collaboration with our Fellows and partners, we’re growing talent and developing skills for the future, driving innovation and building global partnerships, and influencing policy and engaging the public. Together we’re working to tackle the greatest challenges of our age.