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UCR News

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New tool identifies the sources of fake videos
As AI-generated fake videos become more problematic, UC Riverside computer scientists developed a tool that moves beyond simply identifying whether a video is fake. It also determines which AI system created it.
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Cartoon of AI agent on circuitboard
Blind Ambition: AI agents can turn tasks into digital disasters
Computer scientists at UC Riverside have identified troubling flaws in a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) agents designed to take over routine computer chores while users are away — sorting emails, organizing files, analyzing data, and handling other everyday digital tasks that might otherwise consume hours. The researchers found that the automated agents can become dangerously fixated on completing assignments without recognizing when their actions are harmful, contradictory, or simply irrational.
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Lake Shasta
Data center water spikes could cost billions
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is outpacing the ability of many community water systems to deliver large bursts on the hottest days of the year, and building the necessary infrastructure is expected to cost billions of dollars.
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AL conceptual image
Making AI smarter without more training data
UCR researchers develop a method called Test-Time Matching, an approach that significantly improves how AI systems interpret relationships between text and images, especially when presented with unfamiliar combinations.
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Inside UCR News

Mihri Ozkan
UCR professor named national invention ambassador
UCR engineering professor Mihri Ozkan has been named a National Invention Ambassador, joining a national network of accomplished inventors who mentor emerging innovators.
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Professor teaching data analysis class
UCR community urged to use Google AI tools
UC Riverside’s Information Technology Solutions (ITS) team is encouraging the campus community to prioritize data security by using a growing number of university-vetted artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, such Gemini and Notebook LM 
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aerial shot of campus
UCR awarded $800,000 Keck Foundation grant to support high-impact research
UC Riverside has received an $800,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to bolster essential scientific research in agricultural science, quantum mechanics, and regenerative medicine.
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Bourns Hall
NSF grants to advance safer roads, smarter maps, and more trustworthy robots
Three UCR engineering scholars win more than $1 million to advance their research 
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BCOE News

Yanyu Zhang works on the electronic components of an orange drone while seated at a table in a research laboratory.
From UCR to Industry, Yanyu Zhang Helps Robots Navigate the Real World
After earning his Ph.D. at UC Riverside, Zhang now leads research teams developing technologies that help autonomous machines navigate and understand their surroundings.
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Three BCOE researchers pictured alongside graphics representing computational imaging and autonomous vehicle perception.
BCOE Computer Vision Research Earns Recognition at ECCV 2026
A method for recovering information about light that conventional cameras cannot record placed UC Riverside researchers among the 10 Best Paper Award nominees at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV), one of the field’s premier venues. The paper was part of a broader showing by researchers from UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering at ECCV 2026, held Sept. 8-12 in Malmö, Sweden. Three studies involving BCOE faculty and students explored different limits on what machines can perceive, including information hidden from conventional image sensors and objects outside
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Aerial view of an agricultural research field divided into a grid of circular plots arranged in rows and columns. Many plots are highlighted with orange and blue markers, indicating different treatment groups or sampling locations. Crop rows surround the experimental area, and a crosshair marker appears near the center of the image.
A Smarter way to Map Orchard Soil
The UCR team addressed that challenge by integrating a wheeled mobile robot, an electromagnetic induction sensor, onboard localization and a planning algorithm designed for orchard-scale operation. The system allows the robot to navigate orchard rows, prioritize important sampling locations and collect dense soil data within a fixed operating window.
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A woman wearing a white laboratory coat smiles at the camera while seated in front of rows of illuminated scientific equipment and electronic testing devices in a research laboratory.
UCR engineering professor maps California’s university innovation ecosystem through new NAI study
Ozkan, a professor of electrical and computer engineering in UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, co-authored the paper with Paul R. Sanberg, president of the National Academy of Inventors. The work grew out of Ozkan’s role as a 2025 NAI Invention Ambassador, a leadership position focused on collaboration, translational research, and inventor engagement across academic institutions.
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Latest News

UCR researchers to present computer vision advances at premier AI conference in Europe

Three pioneering studies by UC Riverside researchers will be presented orally in September at the 19th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2026) in Malmö, Sweden, one of the world's premier conferences on computer vision and artificial intelligence. Together, the...

ECE Faculty to Lead $8 Million Effort to Advance Dynamic Computer Networks

ECE Professors have received an $8 million Department of Defense grant for developing an Autonomous and Secure Heterogeneous Integrated (AASHI) System of Systems, an AI-driven framework for managing vast, fast-changing networks of devices across land, air, sea, cyberspace. The project...

ECE faculty Ran Cheng receives highly competitive grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation with three experimentalists

Ran Cheng, an Assistant Professor of ECE, has recently received a $250,000 award from the W.M. Keck foundation, along with three renowned experimentalists. The project is led by Prof. Enrique Del Barco from the University of Central Florida. The W...

ECE Team won Best Paper Award at RTAS 2024

Daniel Enright, Hyunjong Choi, Yecheng Xiang, and Hyoseung Kim won the Best Paper Award at the 30th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS) in May 2024. RTAS is one of the top conferences in the field of...

Ran Cheng receives NSF CAREER award on novel spintronics using magnetic topological materials

Assistant Professor Ran Cheng receives the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for his project titled "CAREER: Monostructural Topological Spin-Insulatronics" with a total award of $615,000 for five years. The goal of this project is to develop a fundamental physical...

ECE Professor's Team Received U.S. DOE’s Digitizing Utilities Prize

The research and development team led by Prof. Nanpeng Yu, postdoctoral researcher (Dr. Wenyu Wang) and PhD student (Zuzhao Ye) won the American-Made Digitizing Utilities Grand Prize with $300,000 cash prize from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of...

ECE faculty receives $1.2M NSF grant on autonomous system architecture

ECE Professors Hyoseung Kim (PI), Amit Roy-Chowdhury, Jay Farrell, and Konstantinos Karydis have received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop Attention-Driven Software Architecture for Integrated Perception and Planning in Autonomous Agents. While significant progress...

ECE PhD student wins Materials Research Student Talk Award

Yitian Wang, a Ph.D. student from the Xi Chen group in Electrical and Computer Engineering, won the Recommended Oral Presentation prize at the 2023 Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting Symposium CH03: Neutron Scattering-Enabled Energy Materials Design. The MRS meeting...

ECE Professor receives Amazon Research Award on Exploring Privacy in Deep Metric Learning

ECE Professor and Bourns Faculty Fellow Prof. Amit Roy-Chowdhury has recently received an Amazon Research Award on "Exploring privacy in deep metric learning: applications in computer vision". Deep Metric Learning (DML) aims to learn representations on which semantic relations can...

Fariborz Kargar Leads NSF Project on Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors

Dr. Fariborz Kargar, Research Engineer and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) will serve as Principle Investigator for the newly funded National Science Foundation (NSF) project on Antiferromagnetic Semiconductors. Dr. Alexander Balandin, Distinguished Professor...