(Press-News.org) Shima Mohebbi, Assistant Professor, Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR), George Mason University; Milos Manic, Professor, Computer Science, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU); and Babak Aslani, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, SEOR, George Mason, are studying agentic artificial intelligence (AI)-driven cybersecurity for critical manufacturing.
The Commonwealth of Virginia is home to nearly 5,000 small- and medium-sized critical manufacturing entities, which collectively serve as the backbone of supply chains supporting national defense, transportation, and health care. These entities face increasing exposure to cyber-physical threats, including data poisoning, counterfeit components, and system disruptions that can propagate through supply chains and severely impact production and distribution.
To address this national security concern, the team is developing a scalable AI-driven proof-of-concept for cyber-physical manufacturing that integrates data-driven learning from operational data with knowledge-driven modeling. Merging these streams unifies statistical inference and symbolic reasoning, enabling agentic AI for proactive detection and adaptive mitigation.
Mohebbi, Manic, and Aslani received $100,000 from the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority for this work. Funding began in Jan. 2026 and will end in late Dec. 2026.
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Mohebbi, Manic, & Aslani receive funding for study of scalable AI-driven cybersecurity for small & medium critical manufacturing
2026-02-10
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