This theme runs in two streams: dual-use sensing on one side, and cybersecurity on the other.
Sensing. Remote observation methods developed for civilian monitoring often translate directly into defence and dual-use contexts: wide-area satellite radar analysis, multi-modal perception, and edge inference close to the sensor. The same capabilities that watch a highway settle or a pasture green up can serve situational awareness and resilience missions.
Cybersecurity. The second stream protects the systems and the data: reliable, secure movement of signals from satellite, drone and sensor to model, and a published line of blockchain and decentralized-systems work led by Alvin (Xinyao) Sun, CS Adjunct Professor. That work spans multi-chain data aggregation and real-time ETL (Matrix Syncer, ChainSync), on-chain threat detection and forensics (Blockchain Shield), decentralized middleware (SemNFT), programmable multi-chain 3D worlds (Matrix World), and custody-preserving AI agent delegation.
Both streams are emerging directions for the group, aligned with the University of Alberta’s Centre for Applied Research in Defence and Dual-use Technologies (CARDD-Tech) and its themes in communications, sensing and cyber/AI.