Featured Funding Opportunities

• This call for research requests innovative approaches to advance any of the functional components of an intent-based network architecture: Translation, Activation, Assurance. Specific areas of interest include (but not limited to):

• Architectures and algorithms to capture intent, such as translation from human spoken intent to network and security policies
• Models and semantics for intent-based policies in general or specific to a technology domain (e.g. security)
• Mechanisms to validate policy rules and resolve potential conflicts that may arise in multi-operator environments or evolutions over time
• Intent-based architectures for specific domains, such as smart cities, manufacturing or IoT
• Architectures and interfaces to facilitate operational flexibility for IBN, for example if one or more domains are operated by a managed service provider while other domains remain under operation of the enterprise.

• Budgets depend on the institution and geography, since costs vary. Research funds are to cover costs associated with: Graduate or post graduate students employment; Limited release time (1-2 months) for PI; Research support costs (e.g., equipment, laptops, incidental costs); Travel associated with research (e.g., conferences, standards); Overhead for research gifts is limited to 5%

For further assistance: frontdoor@rutgers.edu

Area of Interest: The goal of this RFP is to solicit proposals that aim to conduct cybersecurity research in emerging technology verticals such as Healthcare, IOT, and manufacturing in addition to the traditional areas such as perimeter defenses (e.g., firewalls) where Cisco has been a long-established leader. Specific areas of research include but are not limited to the following.

Healthcare Security and Privacy:

• Techniques for securing electronic health records (EHRs) and ensuring appropriate controls around who gets access to them to preserve privacy
• Solutions for securing legacy medical devices that are not as well maintained and software not upgraded properly
• Detecting data breaches and alerting quickly
• Zero trust approaches for securing largely inter-connected healthcare industry
• Simplifying security solutions for non-tech savvy patients and caregivers

IOT Security and Privacy:

• Prevent hijacking of IoT devices and ransomware
• Security in smart home environments
• Hardening IoT devices that are intermittently connected to the Internet
• Securing Connected and Autonomous Vehicles

Security in Manufacturing sector:

• Managing insider threats
• Securing cyber-physical systems such as smart doors, locks/alarms, security cameras
• Use of computer vision techniques for securing manufacturing floors
• False positive reduction and prioritization of alerts
• Counterfeit detection and provenance
• Supply chain security

Security in Hybrid Environments:

• Managing security and privacy across heterogeneous devices with different home/work personas
• Preventing unauthorized access to secure and confidential data
• Observability, access tracking and control of data and resources

Other:

• Advanced AI/ML techniques for Cybersecurity (e.g., anomaly detection)
• Applications of Knowledge Graphs and Causal Modeling for cybersecurity use cases
• AI/ML techniques for automated detection of Zero-Day vulnerabilities
• Managing (observability and controls) security aperture of software, hardware, device architectures, and systems
• Exfiltration of confidential data and information
• Privacy-Preserving Computation and Data sharing
• Honeypots for detecting bad actors
• Scalable and automated penetration testing techniques
• Zero-trust service mesh architectures
• Post-quantum cryptography solutions for securing data and communications against quantum computers

Award: Budgets depend on the institution and geography, since costs vary

For further information: frontdoor@rutgers.edu

Cisco- Contactless Supply Chain RFP-21-06: Rolling Deadline

Area of Interest: Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, trade wars, new regulation as well as disruptions in working practices have contributed to make even more evident that supply chains require a profound transformation. Indeed, innovations capable of endowing supply chains with new levels of automation, efficiency and resiliency are now critical.

To address some of these challenges and support supply chains in their continuous evolution, Cisco Research is soliciting novel ideas and proposals for designing and building future technologies and architectures with focus on the supply chain. Specific topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Technical topics:

• New smart labels and next generation of connected tags for identifying and tracking goods throughout the supply chain
• New indoor/outdoor location techniques
• Cost-effective satellite-based sensor/location
• Digital bill of materials (DBOMs), digital bill of lading (DBOL), stack of attestations and channels among supply chain members
• Blockchain applied to supply chains, interoperability & integration between supply chains, smart contracts rules across supply chains
• Techniques to analyze and predict anomalous or erroneous situations in the supply chain and automatic adaption resulting from the analysis
• Demand planning optimization (including, e.g., machine learning)
• New optimized infrastructure and processes required to implement efficient data collection at key points of the supply chain
• Security as a service for supply chains & logistics
• New communication mechanisms for automated mobile robots (AMR) and elements in their environment

Business-oriented topics:

• New ways to collect supply chain members’ data and new models for risks assessment
• New ROI models after integrating new technology in supply chain and logistics
• New models allowing brands to increase customers’ engagement while preserving their privacy
• Partnerships perspective in supply chain management, cooperative vs individual supply chain problems resolution
• Quantification of the performances of a supply chain in relation with its supply chain management practices
• Impact on companies’ global performances of the following practices: supply chain management practices, global quality management practices, and unexpected events management

Award: Budgets depend on the institution and geography, since costs vary

For further information: frontdoor@rutgers.edu

Area of Interest: Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that focuses on a machine’s ability to understand human language. It’s at the core of tools we use every day – search engine, chatbots, translation apps and so on.

Cisco is interested in several critical areas of research Natural Language Processing, including but not limited to the following:

1. Question Answering
2. Semantic Search
3. Summarization
4. Conversational AI
5. Multimodal Information Retrieval
6. Document Classification
7. Word/Sentence/Document representation
8. Sentiment Analysis
9. Knowledge Graph applications in NLU

Award: Budgets depend on the institution and geography, since costs vary

For further information: frontdoor@rutgers.edu

Area of Interest: Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) emerged as new technologies in order to bridge our physical world and digital world(s) (i.e., metaverse). AR/VR presents a great potential to fundamentally transform the way we interact with our physical world to understand it better, to facilitate new discoveries and innovations, to make our lives better, and much more. However, AR/VR is an emerging technology and requires foundational and practical innovations so that its full potential benefits the world.

The goal of this RFP is to solicit proposals that aim to conduct research in AR/VR technologies and applications. Specific areas of research include but are not limited to the following:

• Infrastructure: Devices, cloud, App runtimes, networking and communications
• Brain-machine communication and interface
• Immersive games, 360-degree video, Volumetric display and projection technology, Mobile, desktop or hybrid 3DUIs
• AI/ML techniques and applications for AR/VR
• Security, privacy & compliance
• Applications: Multimodal/cross-modal interaction and perception, Online learning, Collaborative Work

Award: Budgets depend on the institution and geography, since costs vary

For further information: frontdoor@rutgers.edu

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is urgently soliciting proposals and can provide up to $500M across multiple projects to rapidly produce innovative SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests that will assist the public’s safe return to normal activities.

For assistance contact Research Development