NEC Labs America Attends CVPR 2026 in Denver, CO June 3-7, 2026

NEC Labs America is heading to Denver for CVPR 2026, one of the most prestigious gatherings in computer vision, machine learning, and pattern recognition. The IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition brings innovators from around the world to share breakthroughs.

Making Video AI Fast Enough for the Real World

State-of-the-art video models are accurate but too slow for live deployment. This work transfers their knowledge into causal streaming models that process video frames in real time, achieving 4x lower latency with competitive accuracy across action detection and pedestrian intent tasks.

How Our AI Contributed to NASA’s Artemis Missions

NEC Laboratories America’s AI research played a role in NASA’s Artemis missions, helping analyze complex spacecraft data at scale. Our System Invariant Analysis Technology enables faster insights, improved anomaly detection, and greater confidence in mission readiness for deep space exploration.

Rethinking Molecular Drug Design: From Generation to Control

Designing drug molecules is no longer just about generation, but control. NEC Laboratories America introduces MolDiffdAE, a diffusion-based framework that enables precise, multi-objective tuning of 3D molecular properties. By learning a semantic space, researchers can efficiently guide design, accelerating drug discovery and exploration of chemical space.

Future of Cloud Computing with GenAI: Kunal Rao at Cloud Computing 2026

Generative AI is transforming cloud computing. At Cloud Computing 2026, Kunal Rao will chair the GenAI4Cloud track and deliver a keynote on software engineering in the AI era, exploring how AI agents, LLMs, and intelligent infrastructure are redefining the cloud stack.

Driving the Future of Scene Editing with HorizonForge

HorizonForge introduces a new approach to driving scene generation, enabling precise control over both vehicle behavior and identity. By allowing arbitrary trajectories and flexible vehicle insertion, it creates realistic, scalable simulations for autonomous driving, digital twins, and advanced AI development.

Eric C. Blow to Deliver Photonic AI Keynote at COOL Chips 29 in Tokyo on April 17th

Eric C. Blow of NEC Laboratories America presents a keynote at COOL Chips 29 in Tokyo, exploring multi-modal photonic computing for real-time, ultra-efficient inference. This work highlights how photonics is reshaping AI performance, enabling faster and more energy-efficient processing across next-generation systems.

Beyond Explainability: How We Are Redefining Interpretability in AI

AI interpretability has long been the focus, but what if it’s only part of the story? New research introduces model semantics, a framework for understanding what AI systems truly represent and how their internal structures connect to real-world phenomena.

The Best April Fools’ Day Hoaxes by Companies

Every April Fools’ Day, companies push the boundaries of creativity with bold, believable hoaxes. Led by Google, these pranks blend humor with real tech trends, making them both entertaining and surprisingly insightful. Discover the funniest examples and why they resonate so widely.

Leveraging Deployed Telecom Cables for Distributed Fiber Sensing Topologies and Applications

Distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) has emerged as a promising technology for wide-area monitoring by utilizing existing telecom cables as large-scale sensing media. This paper explores three sensing modalities, backscattering-based sensing, forward-transmission-based sensing, and hybrid sensing, and discusses their respective benefits, challenges, and application domains. Backscattering sensing demonstrates strong potential for applications such as road traffic monitoring, pavement condition assessment, intrusion detection, and cabledamage prevention but is constrained in amplified dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) networks. Forward-transmission sensing enables sensing over operational telecom links with in-line amplification, extending sensing reach, although it involves trade-offs in spatial resolution and localization accuracy. To address these challenges, a hybrid sensing architecture that integrates backscattering and forward-transmission techniques is introduced, achieving enhanced sensing distance while maintaining high sensitivity and localization performance.In addition, this work incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) through a locally adaptive anomaly detection (LAAD) framework based on self-supervised representation learning. By leveraging location-based pretext tasks and unlabeled data, the proposed AI approach enables efficient adaptation across heterogeneous fiber routes and operational environments, significantly reducing reliance on labeled data while improving cross-domain generalization. Field trials over deployed telecom networks validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposedsensing and AI framework, demonstrating scalable, telecom-compatible DFOS for real-world infrastructure monitoring and intelligent network operations.