Laboratory News

Morgan State University is proud to participate in a groundbreaking report by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA), a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded initiative, which outlines an ambitious pathway for the United States to lead in AI Engineering. This report identifies vital research directions, emphasizing a generational opportunity to shape the future by merging artificial intelligence and engineering for the betterment of society.

Released during a time when public sentiment is cautious about AI’s rapid progress, the report underscores the pivotal role of engineers in guiding AI toward socially responsible applications. The report, titled AI Engineering | A Strategic Research Framework to Benefit Society, urges the engineering community to integrate AI with a strong focus on safety, ethics, and public welfare, ensuring that new advancements align with societal needs and values.

Dr. Onyema Osuagwu, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy Center at Morgan State University, emphasized the critical need for thoughtful AI development: “If unchecked, the AI hype cycle can drive more speculation than innovation in business and research. As we progress in this field, it is crucial to explicitly use well-formulated scientific and engineering principles while keeping our work grounded on verifiable and repeatable results. Blind leaps of faith in this technology driven by our desire to anthropomorphize are not wise.” ...

Baltimore, MD — [October 15, 2024] — Morgan State University has been awarded a $350,000 grant for groundbreaking research in quantum computing as part of the Securing Experimental Quantum Computing Usage in Research Environments (SEQCURE) program. This one-year grant supports a collaboration between Morgan State, the University of Maryland, and the Applied Research Laboratory Intelligence and Security (ARLIS). The project aims to address critical challenges in Zero-Trust Architecture and AI/Machine Learning within the Air Force's First Two Node Quantum Computer.

Under the leadership of Dr. Onyema Osuagwu (PI), a Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy Center (CAP) faculty member and head of the Computation, Circuits, Cognition & Cybernetics Laboratory (The C4 Lab) at Morgan State, the research will explore novel approaches to computing for secure military applications. 

Johns Hopkins and Morgan State universities have been awarded a $2.7 million National Science Foundation grant to launch an innovative training program in AI-guided semiconductor and microelectronics processing. Funded through NSF's NRT (National Research Traineeship) initiative, the program is designed to cultivate a diverse workforce armed with expertise in AI and microelectronics. Dr. Osuagwu is the PI for Morgan State on this grant.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) has been awarded an NSF grant to create the Developing Equity-Minded Engineering Practitioners (DEEP) center in collaboration with Morgan State University (MSU), a historically Black college/university (HBCU) in Baltimore, Maryland.  Dr. Osuagwu is the PI for Morgan State on this grant.

Congratulations to Dr. Onyema Osuagwu for his newly funded research and development project titled “EIR: A Unified Theoretical Framework for Zero Trust Architectures”. This work is strongly aligned with the CISE Directorate’s mission in particular the CCF program’s Foundations of Emerging Technology thrust and the SaTC Program.