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When delays in National Science Foundation (NSF) funding threatened to stall progress on George Mason University’s emerging Center for Infrastructure Security in the Era of AI (ISEAI), Director Massimiliano Albanese and his collaborators refused to treat uncertainty as a stop sign. Instead of waiting, they kept building, kept convening, and kept advancing the Center’s mission while the prospect of federal funding remained in question.
“As emerging AI technologies reshape our digital landscape, it is essential that they become tools for resilience rather than vectors of risk,” said George Mason’s Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact Andre Marshall. “Through the Infrastructure Security and AI Center, George Mason University is advancing sustainable cyberinfrastructure by uniting academia, government, and industry to secure critical systems and build a safer, smarter, and more secure future for all.”
The plan for ISEAI grew out of George Mason’s previous leadership in an NSF Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC), where faculty had already built strong, interdisciplinary partnerships with industry and federal labs. When the team prepared its next IUCRC proposal, focused on protecting infrastructure in an era dominated by AI, the groundwork was solid. Then the NSF paused funding for new centers until further notice.
“Over the past year, we’ve had to navigate uncertainty, align partners across institutions, and work through the complexities of building something new. But each challenge helped us define our priorities and strengthen the foundation we’re building on,” Albanese said. Instead of pausing efforts or losing momentum, he and his partners at the University of North Dakota and the University of Arkansas continued to organize planning workshops, identify high‑priority research thrusts, and engage industry members. More than 65 experts from government agencies, national laboratories, and industry attended early planning meetings, helping shape a collaborative framework even before ISEAI’s official launch in April 2025.
With a mission to secure critical U.S. infrastructure across such sectors as energy, transportation, healthcare, government facilities, and supply chains, ISEAI’s research spans AI‑enabled threat detection, resilience engineering, privacy and governance frameworks, predictive maintenance, and human‑AI interaction—reflecting the breadth of challenges facing today’s interconnected systems. “AI offers unprecedented capability for monitoring, protecting, and strengthening infrastructure systems. The key challenge now is translating research into resilient, trustworthy operational solutions through sustained industry–academic collaboration, and ISEAI enables this translation,” said Prakash Ranganathan, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of North Dakota.Ambitious educational and workforce initiatives are already underway via ISEAI. The team has formalized a partnership with NewPush, a cybersecurity company based in Hungary. George Mason’s Vice President and Chief AI Officer and ISEAI’s Deputy Director Amarda Shehu, who played a central role in forging the partnership with NewPush for the NoéMI AI Training Program, emphasized the importance of preparing professionals for responsible, mission‑critical AI deployment She said, “AI now touches every layer of our infrastructure ecosystem. Moving beyond basic literacy, we must equip our workforce with the practical skills needed to deploy and manage AI effectively and responsibly.”
Rather than slowing in the face of funding delays, the researchers behind ISEAI expanded partnerships, launched professional training pipelines, and began laying the foundations of a national research agenda for AI‑driven infrastructure security–precisely the grit that defines how George Mason meets grand challenges.