Intelligent systems now connect people, software agents, data and physical infrastructure. Building them well takes more than better AI models: they also have to coordinate with one another, exchange information securely, and act on an accurate picture of the physical world they operate in.
The Advanced Intelligent Systems Center (KU-AIS) at Khalifa University brings artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital twins together into coherent intelligent ecosystems. The center succeeds the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems (C2PS) and gathers 16 faculty members from Computer Science, Computer & Communication Engineering and Mathematics, together with postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
Our research is organized in four interconnected themes:
Representation & Multimodal Learning: vision-language models, time-series foundation models, and learning from biomedical, genomic and sensor data.
Multi-Agentic Systems & Collective Intelligence: multi-agent reinforcement learning, agentic decision-making, federated learning and AI-native 6G networks.
Decentralized & Distributed Systems: Trust, Security & Optimization: blockchain and cyber trust, secure AI, large-scale optimization and game theory.
Digital Twins & Cyber-Physical Intelligence: high-fidelity digital twins, crowdsensing, incentive mechanisms and IoT security.
The themes are designed to work together. Perception and forecasts from multimodal models drive agent decisions. Agents rehearse in a digital twin before acting in the real world. Twins test a policy, and a ledger certifies the resulting action. Robust models are what make the overall system trustworthy.
We apply this research where the UAE and the region need it most: smart cities and mobility, industrial automation, healthcare, energy and critical infrastructure, agri-food, and financial services. We work alongside partners such as the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), Silal, Hameem Technologies and the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, and with international collaborators including Stanford University, MIT, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Zhejiang University.
Director’s Message
“Intelligent systems are no longer single models. They are ecosystems of people, agents, data and physical infrastructure that must work together, securely and reliably.”
The Advanced Intelligent Systems Center was formed to meet this challenge. We bring together researchers in multimodal learning, multi-agent systems, security and trust, and digital twins, and we ask how these fields can be combined into systems that people and institutions can depend on.
Our researchers study how foundation models perceive and forecast, how autonomous agents coordinate and learn, how data and decisions can be secured and verified, and how digital twins can let us test decisions before they reach the physical world.
We judge our work by its rigor and also by its relevance, whether that means safer autonomous finance, smarter agriculture with Silal, more reliable networks with TII, or healthcare AI adapted to the population of the UAE. We welcome researchers, students, and industry and government partners who share this ambition to work with us.”
— Prof. Jamal Bentahar, Director, Advanced Intelligent Systems Center (KU-AIS)
To advance the integration of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital twins into coherent intelligent ecosystems through rigorous research in multimodal learning, multi-agent systems, trust and security, and cyber-physical intelligence. We aim to turn that research into reliable, verifiable solutions to real-world challenges in the UAE and beyond, and to train the next generation of researchers and engineers to build them.
In practice, we:
To be a leading regional and international center for trustworthy intelligent ecosystems, where people, autonomous agents, data and physical infrastructure work together securely and transparently. We want to be the partner of choice for UAE industry and government, including organizations such as ADNOC, Silal and the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), in turning advanced AI research into national impact.
KU-AIS turns research into practical solutions in domains of strategic importance to the UAE:
