NEC Laboratories America

News

Read about the impact of our work across data science and system security, integrated systems, machine learning, media analytics, and optical networking and sensing.

NEC Laboratories America Researchers Win a 2026 Edison Patent Award for Optical Fiber Innovation

NEC Laboratories America Researchers Win a 2026 Edison Patent Award for Optical Fiber Innovation

NEC Laboratories America will receive a 2026 Edison Patent Award for a patent that lets optical fiber carry both data communications and distributed sensing at once, reducing interference through counter-propagation and standard WDM filtering, validated across long distances of field fiber.
Summer Interns 2026

Summer Interns 2026

Learn about the amazing group of interns who joined us at Princeton and San Jose campuses this summer. Their hard work, fresh perspectives, and dedication have truly made an impact across the board, from cutting-edge research projects to innovative software development initiatives.
Teaching AI to Edit Driving Scenes It Has Never Seen with HorizonWeaver

Teaching AI to Edit Driving Scenes It Has Never Seen with HorizonWeaver

Our HorizonWeaver software edits driving scenes with instruction-guided AI, adding traffic, changing weather, and generalizing to unseen roads, all while preserving the safety-critical details that keep autonomous vehicle testing honest.
Turning Every Telecom Cable into a City-Wide Sensor Network

Turning Every Telecom Cable into a City-Wide Sensor Network

Verizon and NEC Laboratories America turned live telecom fiber into a city-wide sensing network. By repurposing existing optical infrastructure, the system detects vibrations along fiber routes, cutting cable damage incidents and improving response times. The approach also enables AI models that adapt to new, unseen routes without manual labeling.
When Video AI Gets Physics Wrong, the Consequences Are Real

When Video AI Gets Physics Wrong, the Consequences Are Real

Video generation models can look physically convincing while getting the physics completely wrong. PhyCo, new research from our Media Analytics department, introduces continuous, controllable physical properties to video AI, allowing practitioners to specify friction, bounce, and force.
Mix-CLAP Teaching Audio AI to Work in the Noisy Real World

Mix-CLAP: Teaching Audio AI to Work in the Noisy Real World

Mix-CLAP from NEC Laboratories America delivers near-Transformer accuracy for sound event classification at a fraction of the compute cost, using dual lightweight encoders and adaptive, noise-aware inference for real-world edge deployment.
How AI Can Transform the Way Companies Buy What They Need

How AI Can Transform the Way Companies Buy What They Need

Procurement teams lose time and money to inaccurate demand forecasts and manual supplier negotiations. A new framework from NEC Corporation and NEC Laboratories America combines automated negotiation with multimodal AI forecasting to optimize both sides of the procurement process.
Open SAT How We Taught AI to Search Satellite Images Like a Search Engine

Open SAT: How We Taught AI to Search Satellite Images Like a Search Engine

Satellite imagery is vast, high-resolution, and rich with information, but finding specific objects within it using natural language has remained a stubborn challenge. Open-SAT, developed by researchers at NEC Laboratories America and North South University, tackles this problem without retraining any models.
Training Small AI Models Without Blindly Trusting Big Teacher Models

Training Small AI Models Without Blindly Trusting Big Teacher Models

Machine learning is shifting from learning from data alone to learning from both data and teacher models. Beta-KD uses uncertainty-aware Bayesian weighting to train compact multimodal AI without blindly trusting every teacher signal.
How Rule-Driven Routing Makes Retrieval-Augmented Generation Smarter

How Rule-Driven Routing Makes Retrieval-Augmented Generation Smarter

Most retrieval-augmented generation systems stop at documents, ignoring the relational databases that power finance, healthcare, and research. Our researchers built a rule-driven framework that learns which source to query for each question, delivering better answers at lower computational cost.
Making Video AI Fast Enough for the Real World

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 Blog Post

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

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.
Driving the Future of Scene Editing with HorizonForge

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.
Beyond Explainability How We Are Redefining Interpretability in AI

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

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.
Influential NEC Researchers in the United States Who Helped Shape Modern Computing

Influential NEC Researchers in the United States Who Helped Shape Modern Computing

Many pioneers of modern artificial intelligence and machine learning spent part of their careers at NEC research labs in the United States. Researchers such as Yann LeCun, Vladimir Vapnik, Léon Bottou, Corinna Cortes, and others contributed foundational ideas in deep learning, statistical learning theory, speech recognition, and computer vision.
Womens Day Blog Post

Celebrating the Women of NEC Laboratories America

NEC Laboratories America celebrates Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day by recognizing the women researchers, engineers, and interns whose work in artificial intelligence, optical networking, cybersecurity, and data science is helping shape the future of technology.
Honoring Black Innovators Who Shaped Technology

Honoring Black Innovators Who Shaped Technology

Honoring Black innovators who shaped modern technology, from space exploration and collaborative computing to ethical AI and GPS. Discover how pioneering researchers like Katherine Johnson, Clarence Ellis, Timnit Gebru, and others continue to influence AI, computing, and scientific innovation.
2025 Year in Review Blog Post

NEC Laboratories America 2025: A Year of Disruptive Innovation

As 2025 comes to a close, NEC Laboratories America reflects on a year defined by scientific breakthroughs, global collaboration, and real-world impact. Our researchers advanced the state of the art across AI, optical networking and sensing, system security, and multimodal analytics, while expanding our intellectual property portfolio and presence at the world’s leading conferences.
Apply for Summer 2026 Internship No Logo

Apply for a Summer 2026 Internship

Our exciting internship opportunities for Summer 2026 are now available. We are looking for students pursuing advanced degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Internships are typically 3 months long in duration. The benefits of working for us include the opportunity to quickly become part of a project team applying cutting-edge technology to industry-leading concepts.
Anniversary

NEC Laboratories America: Celebrating 23 Years of Research Innovation!

NEC Laboratories America celebrates 23 years of pioneering research and innovation. Emerging from the 2002 merger of NEC Research Institute and NEC C&C Research Laboratories, NECLA has become the U.S. hub for NEC’s global R&D network. Under the leadership of Dr. Christopher White, NECLA bridges the gap between scientific discovery and market-ready technology.
Kayaking 2025

Summer Highlights at NEC Labs America: Teamwork, Innovation, and Fun

This summer at NEC Laboratories America was full of energy, teamwork, and connection. From volleyball games in San Jose and TopGolf with colleagues from Princeton to kayaking adventures, a campus picnic, and celebrating our incredible interns, our teams came together to learn, laugh, and grow. Here’s a look back at the highlights that made Summer 2025 so memorable.
National Intern Day 2025

National Intern Day at NEC Laboratories America: Celebrating the Next Generation of Innovators

On National Intern Day, NEC Laboratories America celebrates the bright minds shaping tomorrow’s technology. Each summer, interns from top universities work side-by-side with our researchers on real-world challenges in AI, cybersecurity, data science, and more. From groundbreaking research to team-building events, our interns contribute fresh ideas and bold thinking that power NEC’s innovation engine.
NEC Labs America Joins CS3 Advisory Board to Advance Smart Streetscapes

NEC Labs America Joins CS3 Advisory Board to Advance Smart Streetscapes

NEC Laboratories America has joined the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) Advisory Board, a National Science Foundation–funded initiative advancing urban innovation through technology, data, and design. As a leader in AI, computer vision, and edge computing, NEC Labs America will collaborate with researchers, civic leaders, and industry partners to develop intelligent infrastructure that enhances safety, accessibility, and efficiency in public spaces.
Graph Neural Networks Explained Our Role in the Future of AI

Graph Neural Networks, Explained: Our Role in the Future of AI

NEC Laboratories America (NECLA) is advancing the frontier of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), a transformative AI technology that processes complex, interconnected data. Through innovations like PTDNet for robust learning, novel frameworks for explainability, StrGNN for anomaly detection in dynamic graphs, and GERDQ for calibration with out-of-distribution nodes, NECLA is addressing critical challenges in GNN development. These breakthroughs have real-world implications in fields such as cybersecurity, bioinformatics, and recommendation systems, positioning NECLA as a leader in the evolution of graph-based AI.
Shaping the Future with Responsible AI, Collaboration & Disruption Chris White (2)

Shaping the Future with Responsible AI, Collaboration, and Disruption

Chris White, President of NEC Laboratories America, reflects on the lab’s mission to build responsible, human-centered technology—from AI to streetscape innovation—that tackles real-world challenges. In recent keynotes and interviews, he’s emphasized the power of collaboration, the importance of designing AI as a tool that empowers (not replaces), and the discipline required to scale truly disruptive ideas. He’s also shared thoughts on using digital tools for sustainability, such as optimizing global water systems, and the need for cooperative decision-making in complex environments like supply chains. Through it all, he reminds us: real innovation isn’t about flashy tech—it’s about solving meaningful problems, at scale, with intention and integrity.
College Pranks

Top 10 Most Legendary College Pranks of All-Time for April Fools’ Day

At NEC Labs America, we celebrate innovation in all forms—even the brilliantly engineered college prank. From MIT’s police car on the Great Dome to Caltech hacking the Rose Bowl, these legendary stunts showcase next-level planning, stealth, and technical genius. Our Top 10 list honors the creativity behind pranks that made history (and headlines). This April Fools’ Day, we salute the hackers, makers, and mischief-makers who prove that brilliance can be hilarious.
Summer 2025 Intern SMM

Apply for a Summer 2025 Internship

Our exciting internship opportunities for this Summer 2025 are now available. We are looking for students pursuing advanced degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Internships are typically 3 months long in duration. The benefits of working for us include the opportunity to quickly become part of a project team applying cutting-edge technology to industry-leading concepts. We have opportunities in Data Science & System Security, Integrated Systems, Media Analytics, Machine Learning, and Optical Networking & Sensing.
Princeton Interns 2024

Summer Interns 2024

Learn about the amazing group of interns who joined us at Princeton and San Jose campuses this summer. Their hard work, fresh perspectives, and dedication have truly made an impact across the board, from cutting-edge research projects to innovative software development initiatives.
Introducing the Trustworthy Generative AI Project Pioneering the Future of Compositional Generation and Reasoning Blog Post

Introducing the Trustworthy Generative AI Project: Pioneering the Future of Compositional Generation and Reasoning

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our latest research initiative, the Trustworthy Generative AI Project. This ambitious project is set to revolutionize how we interact with multimodal content by developing cutting-edge generative models capable of compositional generation and reasoning across text, images, reports, and even 3D videos.
Introducing Our New Project Time Series Language Model for Explainable AI Blog Post

Introducing Our New Project: Time Series Language Model for Explainable AI

Our new project, Time Series Language Model for Explainable AI, represents a significant leap forward in the field of forecasting and explainable AI. By combining advanced forecasting techniques with explainable AI, we are paving the way for a future where data-driven insights are not only accurate but also comprehensible and actionable.
Agentic LLMs for AI Orchestration Project Revolutionizing Complex Workflows

Agentic LLMs for AI Orchestration Project: Revolutionizing Complex Workflows

The development of Agentic LLMs for AI Orchestration represents a significant advancement in artificial intelligence. By seamlessly integrating computer vision, logic, and compute modules, our LLM is poised to revolutionize the way complex workflows are managed and executed. Supported by robust research and driven by innovative training methodologies, our agentic LLM sets a new standard in AI orchestration, offering unparalleled performance and adaptability.
The Evolution of Disciplines From Experimental Roots to Theoretical Frameworks Blog Post

The Evolution of Disciplines: From Experimental Roots to Theoretical Frameworks

Chris White discusses the evolution of scientific disciplines, which often begin with exploration driven by curiosity and experimentation. As fields grow in complexity and cost, they shift to theoretical frameworks that optimize research. This transition is crucial for sustainable progress. Currently, AI and ML remain largely experimental, highlighting the need for theoretical foundations to ensure development.
Multi-Agent Simulator for Carbon Neutrality

Multi-Agent Simulator for Carbon Neutrality: The Technology the World Has Been Waiting For

Today, each country, government, and enterprise are urged to take effective action to fight against climate change; however, an efficient method has not been found. Even a way to accurately calculate Scope 3 carbon emissions has yet to be developed. The technology of a multi-agent simulator could be an essential step in solving worldwide challenges. We interviewed the researchers about the details of this technology.
NEC Laboratories Advances Material Design with AI-based MateriAI Platform

NEC Laboratories Advances Material Design with AI-based MateriAI Platform

NEC Laboratories Europe and NEC Laboratories America have developed MateriAI, an AI-based, material design platform that accelerates the development of new, environmentally friendly materials. The prototype platform was initially designed to overcome major hurdles in the creation of new synthetic, organic and bio-based polymers, such as rubber and plastics.
Summer Intern 2024

Apply for a Summer 2024 Internship

Our exciting internship opportunities for this Summer 2024 are now available. We are looking for students pursuing advanced degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Internships are typically 3 months long in duration. The benefits of working for us include the opportunity to quickly become part of a project team applying cutting-edge technology to industry-leading concepts. We have opportunities in Data Science & System Security, Integrated Systems, Machine Learning, and Optical Networking & Sensing.
Unearthing Nature's Orchestra How Fiber Optic Cables Can Hear Cicada Secrets

Unearthing Nature’s Orchestra – How Fiber Optic Cables Can Hear Cicada Secrets

Our Sarper Ozharar, Yue Tian and Yangmin Ding and Jessica L. Ware from the American Museum of Natural History have discovered that fiber optic cables equipped with distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) can pick up the sounds of Brood X cicadas. DAS technology, typically used to monitor seismic activity, can detect the vibrations caused by the loud sounds of cicadas, which live underground for years until they come up to mate.
Sarper Ozharar Achievement in Science and Technology Award

Sarper Ozharar Receives Achievement in Science and Technology Award from Koç University

Sarper Ozharar was awarded an Achievement in Science and Technology Award from Koç University on their notable 30th anniversary.  As an alumnus of this esteemed institution, Sarper shared that this recognition is especially meaningful to him, marking a significant milestone in his professional journey.
Meet the NEC Labs America Intern Helping to Make Autonomous Vehicles Safer and More Secure Blog Post Graphic

Meet the NEC Labs America Intern Helping to Make Autonomous Vehicles Safer and More Secure

There’s much more to autonomous vehicle security than locking a car door. This summer, Kaiyuan Zhang, a 3rd-year computer science Ph.D. student at Purdue University, joined NEC Labs America’s popular intern program to help advance research around autonomous vehicle security. Each year, nearly 50 Ph.D. candidates join NEC Labs America’s innovative program, which centers on a collaborative environment where interns work directly with senior researchers and potential end-user customers.
AI Fiber Optic Combo Poised To Improve Telecommunications

AI/Fiber-Optic Combo Poised To Improve Telecommunications

Existing underground fiber-optic telecommunications cable networks that can be accessed through street manholes are helping a team at NEC Labs America improve wireless communications systems and the Internet of Things (IoT). "Hundreds of millions of fiber-optic cables are already there for communications purposes,” says Shaobo Han, a researcher at NEC Labs America who focuses on the design and development of machine learning and signal-processing techniques for real-world sensing applications. “We’re turning it all into a ‘thinking’ device, using the same cable that’s already there.”
Industrial Labs to Drive Disruptive Innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Blog Post

Industrial Labs to Drive Disruptive Innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

While the previous generation of industrial progress brought us new capabilities, efficiencies, and even delight through digital transformation, we’re entering a new era of innovation, opportunity, and disruption: the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
Haven for Hope

A New Hope: AI Research is Conquering Today’s Computer Vision Plateau

The age of computer vision is upon us, and it’s transforming the way we live, work and interact with the world. Nearly every industry has found a use case to grow revenue, reduce cost, or create exceptional experiences using computer vision. From self-driving cars to retail automation, surgeons to farmers, computer vision is everywhere, providing critical insights that are driving progress in virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Today, images and videos are annotated to train artificial intelligence (AI) models to recognize specific objects, but there is still so much more to be done when it comes to understanding what those objects are doing in real-time.
Our Time Series Data Research Drives Space Systems Innovation

NEC Labs America’s Time Series Data Research Drives Space Systems Innovation

With decreasing hardware costs and increasing demand for autonomic management, many of today’s physical systems are equipped with an extensive network of sensors, generating a considerable amount of time series data daily. A highly valuable source of information, time series data is used by businesses and governments to measure and analyze change over time in complex systems. Organizations must consolidate, integrate and organize a vast amount of time series data from multiple sources to generate insights and business value.
Next-Generation Computing Finally Sees Light Blog Post

Next-Generation Computing Finally Sees Light

Moore's law is dead, as we have squeezed all the innovation out of silicon. Fiber optics is the solution to meet the computing needs of tomorrow. Today, we can already use the light traveling inside fiber optic cables as sensors that measure vibrations, sound, temperature, light, and pressure changes. We're now developing the means to take this to the next level with photonic computing at the speed of light to provide faster reaction time, reduce energy consumption and improve battery range
Using AI To Safely Put The First Woman On The Moon

Using AI To Safely Put The First Woman On The Moon

We are helping to safely bring the first woman astronaut to the moon as part of NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Artemis Project with our System Invariant Analysis Technology (SIAT). With Lockheed Martin Space's T-Tauri AI platform, our SIAT analytics engine takes the data from the 150,000 sensors and creates a model incorporating over 22 billion data relationships. The AI model is then analyzed to find any irregularities which could lead to a possible malfunction of any of the spacecraft's systems.

Our AI Research Contributing to NASA’s Artemis Space Program

By 2024, the spacecraft "Orion" developed by Lockheed Martin will bring humans to the moon in NASA's Artemis program. The system invariant analysis technology, one of NEC's Artificial Intelligence technologies, will perform checks to ensure that the spacecraft is tested and operating properly during the production phase.

NEC Provides AI-Based Traffic Monitoring System with Fiber-Optic Sensing Technology for NEXCO CENTRAL

NEC Corporation has deployed an AI-based traffic monitoring system to Central Nippon Expressway Company Limited (NEXCO CENTRAL). The system uses fiber-optic sensing and AI technologies to visualize traffic conditions, such as the location, speed, and direction of travel, from vibrations produced by vehicle movement.