IT Cybersecurity lecturer to investigate AI solutions for identity theft

18/04/24

Dr Sreenivas Tirumala, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cybersecurity lecturer at MIT, has been selected to join a global research team looking at using Quantum AI to combat cybersecurity attacks.

Dr Tirumala will partner with a team from India-based Quinfosystems, a solutions provider for quantum technologies, on the two-year project which is being funded by a grant from Macedonia university, UGD.

The research will look at using Quantum AI to create a framework for handling cyber security-based attacks, including encrypting and securing internet transactions, and identifying patterns in malware.

“Currently, Quantum AI based approaches are used to speed up processing data,” Dr Tirumala says.

Dr Tirumala has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence with a specialisation in the theory of deep learning. He has several years’ experience in machine learning and data analytics in various domains.

“With this research, it’s expected we’ll be able to replace deep learning which is currently the top machine learning approach used in face recognition and image processing.”

As a ‘white hat’ hacker, Dr Tirumala actively works on investigating vulnerabilities across various domains and products using AI-based approaches.

He is currently working on context-based text analytics to predict and pre-empt online hate speech, a project funded by InternetNZ and the Te Pūkenga.

He is also working on privacy and security concerns in the virtual reality environment.