CSE and NSERC to fund research on robust, secure and safe artificial intelligence

From: Communications Security Establishment Canada

News release

Ottawa, Ontario - July 15, 2024

The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSE) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) are pleased to announce the creation of the NSERC-CSE Research Community on Robust, Secure and Safe Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Dr. David Lie of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto will lead the community, which includes 18 researchers from 4 Canadian universities: Toronto, Concordia, Waterloo and York. Dr. Lie’s project, “An End-to-End Approach to Safe and Secure AI Systems,” will receive $5.6M over 4 years through a joint funding opportunity offered by CSE and NSERC.

The community’s goals will be to research, develop and demonstrate solutions for AI-related issues, including:

  • creating methods to train AI models in situations where reliable, labelled data is unavailable without relying on external, untrusted pre-trained foundation models
  • developing techniques to ensure AI models are robust, fair and interpretable
  • establishing guidelines for AI use to ensure regulatory compliance and support the auditing process

This is the first of 4 communities created as part of the NSERC-CSE Research Communities grants. Each community will focus on a different topic.

Quick facts

  • The NSERC-CSE Research Communities grants fund Research Communities to conduct research on cutting-edge technologies in areas of strategic importance to CSE and the Government of Canada.

  • The program was launched as part of the CSE Research Initiative, a funding commitment to research investment announced in Budget 2022.

  • Launched in 2023, the NSERC-CSE Research Communities grant on Robust, Secure and Safe AI aims to:

    • generate new knowledge in robust, secure, and safe AI
    • enhance the capacities of Canadian universities to undertake research related to robust, secure, and safe AI
    • help produce a new generation of data scientists and engineers sensitive to the issues around robust, secure, and safe AI

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Contacts

For more information, please contact (media only):

CSE Media Relations
media@cse-cst.gc.ca

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