News and Events

ISL Student and Faculty Accomplishments in 2023: a Year in Review

Student Accomplishments
  • Adriel Alvarez-Collazo

US Army Internship

  • Ahzsa Strange

NSA Internship
LAS symposium Presenter

  • Anita Amofah

FSU Pre-MacNair Program Acceptance

  • Antonio Ball

MITTC Finalist

  • Ashley Sutherland

NSA internship
LAS symposium Presenter

  • Carley Brinkley

MITTC Finalist
Emerging Researchers Network 2024 Conference Presenter

  • Carrington Pearson

National Cybersecurity Alliance HBCU Scholarship

  • Catherine Spooner

LAS symposium Presenter

  • Garrett Davis

Emerging Researchers Network 2024 Conference Presenter

  • Garrett Sheireiff

McNair Scholars Program Acceptance, NC Space Grant MSI STEM Bridge Scholarship
MITTIC Finalist

  • Givante Lewis

LAS symposium Presenter

  • Jeremy Graves

NC Space Grant MSI STEM Pathways Scholarship

  • Laura DeSantis

Paychex Job Offer
Emerging Researchers Network 2024 Conference Presenter

  • Leviticus Lintag

NC Space Grant MSI STEM Bridge Scholarship
MITTC Finalist

  • Matthew Wilkerson

2024 FBI Internship
NC Space Grant MSI Bridge Scholarship
National Cybersecurity Alliance HBCU Scholarship
MITTIC Finalist

  • Natalie Griffin

Winning entry to Final round of the HBCU xTECH competition

  • Nathan Couch

UCF Grad School Admission Offer

  • Oumar Toure

MITTC Finalist

  • Paul Rodriguez

NC Space Grant MSI STEM Pathways Scholarship
MITTIC Finalist

  • Tivon Brown

LAS symposium Presenter

  • Toby White

NC Space Grant MSI STEM Pathways Scholarship

Faculty Accomplishments
  • Sambit Bhattacharya

UNC Board of Governors award for Excellence in Teaching
Dr. Bhattacharya has been honored by the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching
Links for more info: Article 1 , Article 2 , Article 3

Part-time Visiting Scientist at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency
Dr. Bhattacharya has been appointed as part-time Visiting Scientist at the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). Under this appointment he will work with NGA researchers to solve complex problems faced by the agency in the application of Artificial Intelligence to GEOINT. Geospatial intelligence, or GEOINT is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the Earth. GEOINT consists of imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial information


FSU Finalist Team at NASA MITTC

May 2, 2023

A team from FSU became a finalist in NASA’s MUREP Innovation and Technology Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTC), against six other teams all in pitching business plans on NASA-originated technology.
The FSU’s team business plan was to create ASAPA: an autonomous swarm drone for solar panel maintenance, automation, and transport.
You can see FSU’s ASAPA Team Project Introduction here and information about the competition at this article.


Dr. Bhattacharya wins the 2023 UNC Board of Governors Excellence in Teaching Award

APRIL 28, 2023

Fayetteville State University in North Carolina congratulates Dr. Sambit Bhattacharya, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, for receiving the 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award from The University of North Carolina Board of Governors. He is one of 17 faculty members from public universities in North Carolina who have been honored with this award. The recipients were nominated by committees at their respective institutions and chosen by the Board of Governors Committee on Educational Planning, Policies, and Programs.
The award includes a commemorative bronze medallion and a cash prize of $12,500 for each winner. A future ceremony will be held at each recipient's institution to honor their achievements.
For more information read:
UNCFSU article
Award Recipients
University Awards


Igniting Curiosity: Reedy Creek Middle School Outreach on AI and NASA's Artemis Mission

April 18, 2023

Reedy Creek Middle School hosted an outreach event that aimed to introduce their students to Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and their correlation with space exploration. Dr. Bhattacharya and his team from Fayetteville State University shared insights on their research and NASA's Artemis space mission. The event successfully sparked curiosity among the students, helping them gain a deeper understanding of the dynamic relationship between science, AI, and space discovery.
More information about the outreach can be found at the Reedy Creek Middle School's Facebook.


FSU TO HOST AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CYBERSECURITY HACKATHON

February 24 – 26, 2023

Fayetteville State University will host a Hackathon from Feb 24 - 26, 2023 where students can participate to solve homeland security issues in "real-world" designed intelligence and cybersecurity scenarios.
This event is in partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) and is funded by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help maintain an active pipeline of new homeland security professionals.
For more information visit the University’s LinkedIn and news site.


NC Space Grant Pathways and Bridge Scholars Announced!

December 2, 2022

The 2022-23 recipients of the Minority Serving Institution (MSI) STEM Bridge Scholarship and of the MSI STEM Pathways Scholarship Program have been formally announced! Representing Fayetteville State University, MSI STEM Bridge Scholars includes Antonio Ball, Carley Brinkley, Khali Crawford, Morgan Jackson, Deneen Royal, and Antwaun Tune. Also from Fayetteville State University, MSI Stem Pathways Scholars includes Ashley Sutherland. Congratulations to all the recipients for your achievements, through your continued hardwork and perseverance.
More information about each students success and can be found from the following article.


FSU COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS’ NASA EXPERIENCE LEADS TO NEW BUSINESS VENTURE

November 22, 2022

FSU Computer Science students and alumni have started a new business venture after going through NASA’s Minority Serving Institutions Space Accelerator program during the summer. With the NASA Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Pilot Program Grant they are looking for potential partners in this entrepreneurial project.
Sambit Bhattacharya serves as the Principal Investigator and Technical Lead.
Daniel Rundell is the Entrepreneurial Lead.
For more information visit the University’s LinkedIn and news site.


North Carolina Defense Summit: Academic Research Panel

Dr. Bhattacharya was a panelist at the North Carolina Defense Summit which was held in Raleigh, NC on September 27th 2022. Other professors from the University of North Carolina System and professionals working in defense related research were members of the panel. Dr. Bhattacharya spoke about best practices for collaboration between the Department of Defense (DoD) and universities on Artificial Intelligence research. He also listed some best practices for the DoD when working with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) like Fayetteville State University. More information about the summit can be found here.


Fayetteville State University Receives Funding From North Carolina Collaboratory

Dr. Sambit Bhattacharya recently received from the Collaboratory for his research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) drone software that aims to improve drone performance in confined and geographically complex areas during AI-led search operations. You can read more about their experience from the following article.


Fayetteville State University Students’ NASA Experience Leads to Potential Business

ISL students recently returned from a trip to California where they visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. While there, they also had the opportunity to meet with potential investors and mentors from NASA. During this trip they learned about patenting new technologies, writing grant proposals, and telling the “story” of their concepts. You can read more about their experience both from NASA’s press release and Fayetteville State's press release. You may also hear an interview with Dr. Bhattacharya and ISL students Grace Vincent and Khali Crawford with this link to the podcast. Their section of the interview starts at about the sixteen minute mark.


Fayetteville State Student Research Team Presents Winning Design in NASA’s University Student Design Challenge 2021-2022

Two students from Fayetteville State's Intelligent Systems Lab, Laura DeSantis and Kyle Schultz, and NCSU student Chris Arsenault, alongside their FSU faculty advisor, Sambit Bhattacharya, Ph.D, travelled to NASA’s Glenn Research Centers to present their winning project: “Improving the Design of Heat Exchangers with Artificial Intelligence.” Read more from university news site.


NASA Selects Minority-Serving Institution Proposals to Receive Support

The awardees in the first MSI Space Accelerator have been announced after a competitive application process in which they were encouraged to think like startup businesses. Fayetteville State's Intelligent Systems Laboratory included amongst winners with our proposal, “Autonomous Systems With On-Demand Inference From Perception Pipelines”. Read more from Jet Propulsion Laboratory news site


Our Team Won at NASA's MSI Space Accelerator Final!

Great news! A team from our lab has been awarded seed money and immersion in a training program for creating a startup by commercializing research results. Read more from university LinkedIn and news site.


NSF Award for Trustworthy and Socially Responsible AI

Recent progress in AI, the digital transformation of work and human communication has created a wide range of possible applications of AI. While it will take more time and effort to realize its full potential these areas, the risks of adopting AI are an urgent and important problem because it can potentially cause harm when it is prematurely deployed before being tested for trustworthiness. Our lab has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation to pursue research and education on trustworthy and socially responsible AI. Read more from university LinkedIn post and news site.


Telvin Vann and Elijah Bryant completed their Senior Design with co-advisors from LAS/DoD

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) partnered with Dr. Sambit Bhattachayra, Professor of Computer Science at Fayetteville State University (FSU) and students enrolled in a Computer Science Senior Design course to devise a rendering engine that generates synthetic data on rare objects to improve the robustness of computer vision models for object detection. With the mentorship of the LAS team and Dr. Bhattacharya, the senior design students programmatically rendered over 4000 objects, including variations such as differences in object angles, shades and environments, thus dramatically increasing training datasets for objects that are underrepresented or not represented at all in an existing dataset. To demonstrate the outcome of the rendering engine, the FSU senior design students and Dr. Bhattacharya were invited to the LAS to present their research on synthetic data generation to over 100 members in the U.S. Department of Defense. This gave the senior design students the opportunity to showcase their talents on AI/ML, critical thinking, applying advanced technological approaches to problem-solving and assisted with developing a capability of significant size and impact to the U.S. Department of Defense.

Fayetteville State University Spring 2022 Computer Science senior design students and Dr. Sambit Bhattacharya, Professor of Computer Science, visited the Laboratory for Analytic Sciences to present their research to the U.S. Department of Defense (June 2022)


Graduate School and Scholarships for Students, Summer 2022

Congratulations to Grace Vincent for admission to PhD in Electrical Engineering at NC State University. She has been awarded full financial support and the Provost's Fellowship!
Congratulations to Ejijah Bryant for admission to MS in Computer Engineering at NC State University.
Congratulations to Carley Brinkley for scholarship award from the Grace Hopper Conference.


Internship Offers for Students, Summer 2022

Congratulations to the following students for being selected for internships:
Grace Vincent and Jonathan Soltren: Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA
Nathan Couch: Johnson Space Center, NASA
Ahad Qureshi: SAS Institute Inc.
Antwaun Tune: Lenovo Inc.
Gabriel Ohmes, Khali Crawford, and Laura DeSantis: Naval Research Laboratory
Elijah Bryant: Laboratory of Analytical Science at NC State University
Daniel Bigler and Carley Brinkley: North Carolina Department of Transportation
Deneen Royal, Jack Santini, and Catherine Spooner: Corvid Technologies


Team AERISS Goes to the Final Round of the NASA MITTIC 2022 Competition!

Congratulations to the MITTIC team and well deserved after months of hard work in preparing for the competition. Read more from university LinkedIn post here.


Fayetteville State Graduate Grace Vincent admitted to Doctorate Program at NCSU

23 June 2022

Fayetteville State University and ISL alumna Grace Vincent will continue her studies at North Carolina State University as an Electrical Engineering Ph.D. student. She will be studying and researching applications for Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, and Computer Vision. Additionally, she was awarded the Provost's Doctoral Fellowship which will cover her tuition and an excess of 30k will be used to fund her research. In the meantime, she is spending the Summer at an internship with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a Computer Vision Intern working with Martian image segmentation.


DANC S&T Forum with Presentations from Vector Analytics and Fayetteville State University

Dr. Bhattacharya will present on “Use-inspired Research in AI/ML at the Intelligent Systems Lab” at the Science & Technology Forum of the Defense Alliance of North Carolina. The agenda is available here


Update on ISL Student Accomplishments

SNCURCS attendance

Khali Crawford will be attending and presenting at the SNCURS (State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium) about the construction and functions of a semi-autonomous robotic tank swarm. This tank swarm would be used for exploration and terrain mapping utilizing Ultra-Wide Broadband sensors and satellite overhead. This project would assist NASA Artemis Mission, a NASA project to return to the moon by 2024.

ASGSR attendance

Ahad Qureshi attended the ASGSR (American Society for Gravitational and Space Research) conference. The conference led the discussion of plans of returning to the moon, the development of sustainable lunar habitation, and preparing the moon as a base for the exploration of Mars. The topic the conference used as the focus to achieve the aforementioned goals was space biology, the study of biology when exposed to the effects of deep space for a long duration of time.


North Carolina Department of Transportation Research & Innovation Summit – 2021

Dr. Bhattacharya presented on the topic of “Deep Learning Software for Traffic State Prediction” at the Summit hosted by the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. The recorded presentation is available under “NC Transportation Center of Excellence on Mobility and Reducing Congestion” on the agenda page


Dr. Bhattacharya was a speaker at the TechNet Symposium

The goal of the TechNet Symposium is to allow a forum to demonstrate new, innovative ideas and share best practices that promote valuable results to technology challenges faced by our military today, especially in the Fort Liberty area. This year the symposium was held in the Emerging Technology Institute (ETI) in Red Springs, NC on September 16 – 17. Dr. Bhattacharya speech titled Emerging Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Neural Networks was scheduled for September 16th beginning at 10 am. For more details see technetfortbragg.com and bizfayetteville.com.


Fayetteville State University Wins NASA Grant to Support Artemis Space Technology

Fayetteville State University is one of seven universities which has been selected for grant supported research to move forward NASA’s Artemis mission. FSU’s research project titled Active and On-demand Multi Robot Perception (AOMRP) aims to develop multi-robot perception, a technology that utilizes highly specialized image sensors, to support NASA’s use of autonomous multi-robot systems performing scouting missions on the surface of the Moon or other planets. This project which will be hosted by the ISL builds upon previous work in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at the lab. The award was announced at the site. This is the FSU News release about the award.


DoD Announces Winners of the Fiscal Year 2020 Nunn-Perry Award with Fayetteville State University as Partner in the DoD Mentor Protégé Program

The Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP) recently awarded Booz Allen and Masego a 2020 Nunn-Perry Award for collaboration and impactful innovation under the DoD Mentor Protege Program (MPP) and development of the Masego Advanced Demographic Attribution (ADA) Data as a Service capability, with Fayetteville State University (FSU) provided critical support in partnership with Booz Allen and Masego. Two of the FSU student team leads were hired by Masego and have continued to support the project beyond graduation. The ISL provided on-site computational resources including dedicated and special-purpose hardware and software which were crucial to FSU's critical support in this partnership. The award was announced at the site. The link to the FSU News release site is FSU sites.


Students win Research Scholarship

Fall 2020 to Spring 2021

Grace Vincent and Nkombe Maro have been awarded a scholarship by the NC Space Grant’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship program to support their research in the ISL lab. Grace and Nkombe will work on the applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for time-series predictions for Manufacturing and Metrology


Fayetteville State University AI Workshop

July 20 - 24, 2020

Students and faculty will host a workshop on AI at Fayetteville State University. Click here for the agenda.

Workshop materials including slides of keynotes, notebooks, and data files can be accessed from the Workshop Github Repository


Center of Excellence funded by the North Carolina Department of Transportation

July 20 - 24, 2020

The North Carolina Department of Transportation has awarded funds to create University Research Centers of Excellence (CoE). As part of the CoE for Enhancing Mobility and Reducing Congestion established at North Carolina State University (NCSU), researchers from the ISL lab will work on the project titled Transportation Deep Learning Software for Traffic State Prediction. Read more from the WRAL Tech Wire news article.


Students Win US Department of Homeland Security Internship Offers

Summer 2020

Two students, Grace Vincent and Raymond Kimble have received offers of summer internship at the Coastal Resilience Center (CRC) located in the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The CRC is funded by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). During this DHS sponsored internship Grace and Raymond will develop computational approaches to increase the accuracy of storm surge prediction in coastal areas of the US, specifically in North Carolina.


Student wins Research Scholarship

Summer 2020 to summer 2021

Joshua Hilbish has been awarded a scholarship by the NC Space Grant’s Undergraduate Research Scholarship program to support his research in the ISL lab. Joshua will work on the applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Manufacturing and Metrology


Students Participate in NanoTechnology Entrepreneurship Challenge

Spring and Summer 2020

Two students, Germaine Gregory and Raymond Kimble are participating in the 2020 NanoTechnology Entrepreneurship Challenge – Multicultural and Underrepresented Nanoscience Initiative (NTEC – MUNI). NTEC-MUNI 2020 is supported by Virginia Tech’s NSF-funded National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology (NanoEarth). Winning teams receive a cash award to help develop their concept as well as business development mentorship for their innovative idea. For more details, visit NTEC-MUNI


AAAI Symposium

March 23 - 25, 2020

Dr. Bhattacharya will present research at the Spring 2020 Symposium of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Click here to visit the AAAI Symposium.
Read papers and presentation slides, specifically “Physics-Guided Machine Learning for Self-Aware Machining” at the Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing symposium site.


Booz Allen / Masego Meeting

February 20 - 21, 2020

Dr. Bhattacharya and his students attended meetings with Booz Allen and Masego in Virginia


Emerging Researchers Network conference

February 6 - 8, 2020

Dr. Czejdo and one of our students, Frank Penhallegon, attended ERN. Click here to visit ERN


iNaCoMM 2019

December 5 - 7, 2019

Dr. Bhattacharya was invited to be a keynote speaker at iNaCoMM in India. Click here to visit iNaCoMM2019


GEOINTegration Summit

September 27 - 28, 2019

Dr. Bhattacharya was been invited to be a speaker at the GEOINTegration Summit. He participated in the discussion entitled: Curriculum Design Through Collaboration and Integration. Visit the GeoINTegration Summit website.


Booz Allen and Masego, Inc. Career Development

September 23, 2019

Booz Allen Hamilton and Masego, Inc. visited our campus to talk to students about career opportunities at their respective companies, and with the companies in their extensive network.


CyberCarpentry 2019

July 16-27, 2019

Dr. Bhattacharya was invited to teach an NVIDIA class in Image Captioning and Artificial Intelligence at the Cyber Carpentry symposium in Chapel Hill, NC.


CSAM Annual Meeting

May 14-15, 2019

Dr. Bhattacharya and the CSAM students attended the annual meeting for the CSAM project in Charlotte, NC. While there, the students presented their recent work in a poster session.


Masego Research Training

Apr 26, 2019

Masego, Inc. came to our campus in the afternoon for a workshop to train the students who will be participating in our GEODATA project over the summer. The training covered information retrieval strategies, as well as ArcGIS usage. The information gathered is to be standardized (as defined by Masego, Inc.) and then attributed to existing geospatial locations.


Booz Allen and Masego, Inc. Career Development

Apr 26, 2019

Booz Allen Hamilton and Masego, Inc. visited our campus in the morning to talk to students about career opportunities at their companies, and with the companies in their extensive network. They also discussed ways for students to prepare themselves for the job they want.


North Carolina Space Symposium

Apr 5, 2019

Kesharra West, Jordan Hupp and Catherine Spooner presented their work in a poster presentation at the NC Space Symposium in Raleigh, NC.

Visit the NC Space Symposium


Fayetteville State University Symposium

Apr 5, 2019

Several of our students attended the FSU Symposium in Fayetteville, NC to present their recent work. Dalisha Rivera-Rodriguez, Jeremiah Prieto and Kevin Kabbes presented their recent work in an oral presentation. Elise Olivolo, Germaine Gregory and Raymond Kimble presented their recent work in a poster presentation.

Visit the FSU Symposium


Panel: Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics: Army Questions to Answer, Industry Trends, and How Industry Can Help the Army Leverage AI.

Mar 26, 2019

Dr. Bhattacharya was a panelist at the Ft. Bragg Technet Conference, in Fayetteville, NC.

Visit the Ft. Bragg Technet