From labs to impact: FIU’s latest innovations in research and discovery

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
‘Antidote’ to data poisoning

Artificial intelligence systems are only “intelligent” because of the extensive amounts of data they are trained on. If this treasure trove gets tainted — like when cyber attackers sneak small doses of poisoned data in the form of false information into these training sets — even once-reliable AI models can become erratic. Real-world ramifications go beyond chatbots speaking gibberish: Self-driving cars may ignore red lights, or critical infrastructure systems could malfunction. Cybersecurity researcher Hadi Amini and his lab at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences combined federated learning and blockchain as a bulwark against these types of attacks. Their approach, described in IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, uses multiple layers of verification to detect potentially poisonous data and remove it before it compromises the main model. The team hopes the technology will be ready for use in the next couple of years.

RESILIENCE
Recreating downbursts at the Wall of Wind

In 2024, a storm hit Houston with a downburst so strong it blew out windows in high-rise buildings built to survive Category 4 hurricanes. Two months later, Hurricane Beryl hit Houston with similar wind speeds but left minimal damage to the downtown buildings. To understand why downbursts can be so destructive and what cities and building designers can do about it, engineer Amal Elawady simulated these winds at FIU’s Wall of Wind — the only full-scale test facility at a U.S. university capable of generating up to 160 mph winds.

While recent building codes address tornado resilience, the experiments show downbursts pose unique challenges because winds place uneven pressure on walls and roofs. Findings, published in Frontiers in Built Environment, aim to improve future design standards so buildings can withstand both hurricanes and downbursts.

CYBERSECURITY
Defending drones from cyber attacks

The Federal Aviation Administration is moving to expand commercial drone use, raising new questions about safety in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Because drones are essentially flying computers, they are subject to the same software and hardware exploitation as their land-bound counterparts.

However, current drone-defense techniques fail to monitor all possible vulnerabilities. That’s why Mohammad Ashiqur Rahman — associate professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences — and his cybersecurity research group developed a comprehensive framework called SHIELD. It detects subtle signs of malicious activity, identifies the type of attack and initiates a tailored recovery plan. In lab simulations, the team’s approach classified an attack in an average of 0.21 seconds and restored normal flight in 0.36. Findings were presented at the 2025 IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Realtime flood forecasting

Floods are as unpredictable as they are dangerous. Traditional physics-based flood models, though, can take hours to run — far too slow for today’s fast-moving storms. More real-time systems are needed. A collaborative research team developed one such system that not only simulates worst-case flooding scenarios but also recommends actionable strategies to either eliminate a flood event or drastically reduce it. Published in theJournal of Water Resources Planning and Management, the model was trained on decades of data collected by the South Florida Water Management District to recognize how rainfall, tides and storm surge interact. It can identify flood drivers, supporting rapid response and long-term infrastructure planning.

The team included Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences Professor Giri Narasimhan and doctoral student Jimeng Shi, along with Director of the Sea Level Solutions Center Jayantha Obeysekera.

MEDICINE
Managing chronic pain

Transcutaneous magnetic stimulation uses focused magnetic pulses to retrain the brain’s pain response. It’s already used to treat depression, OCD and hard-to-treat migraines. A new NIH-funded study will explore how it can also relieve post-traumatic and post-surgical chronic pain. Patients suffering with low back pain, osteoarthritis or injuries will undergo 30-minute TMS sessions. Before and after, researchers measure pain levels, anxiety, depression, vascular function, glucose levels and inflammation markers like endorphins and cytokines.

Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine researchers Dr. Patricia Junquera, chair of psychiatry and behavioral health, and Dr. Saurabh Aggarwal, associate professor and translational researcher, lead the study in collaboration with Dr. Eduardo Icaza, a comprehensive and interventional pain management physician at Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute.

ECONOMICS
Weathering the storm

Extreme weather can have long-term ripple effects on the economy, according to College of Business research. Assistant Professor of Finance Florent Rouxelin — in collaboration with colleagues at Yale University and University of New South Wales — used a dataset of extreme weather events (the Australian Actuaries Climate Index) to analyze effects on key economic indicators. The results, published in Land Economics, show extreme weather events can hurt a country’s overall economic output or GDP — for up to two years — and lead to a spike in unemployment. Food and energy prices also rise. In response to these shocks, central banks typically lower interest rates to stimulate economic growth. This approach to studying economic impact provides valuable insights for policymakers and economists grappling with more frequent extreme weather events.

ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Bureaucracy’s outsized impact on medium-sized firms

Mid-size business owners aren’t imagining the burden of red tape, according to the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom’s 2025 Index of Bureaucracy. The report measures the time firms spend navigating regulatory procedures and shows how excessive bureaucracy undermines economic dynamism. Drawing on data from 21 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe, the study finds that opening a medium-sized company requires an average of 1,850 hours—about 231 workdays devoted solely to administrative steps. Annual compliance adds another 1,577 hours, or 76% of an employee’s working time.

Founding Director Carlos Díaz-Rosillo notes that medium-sized firms are often overlooked despite driving productivity, jobs and innovation. The findings underscore the urgent need for simpler processes to protect democratic freedoms and prosperity.

MARKETING
This research isn’t for you

Telling some people not to buy a certain product may make it more appealing to the target customers. Jaclyn Tanenbaum, associate teaching professor of marketing and logistics in the College of Business, worked with colleagues at Georgetown University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville on several experiments involving products like coffee, mattresses and toothbrushes. Results, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, suggest “dissuasive framing” can be more persuasive to people in the target group or market. For example, an ad stating, “If you don’t like dark roast coffee, this is not the coffee for you,” outperformed the typical “If you like dark roast coffee, this is the coffee for you” among dark roast fans.

ENGINEERING HEALTHCARE
What’s the link between sleep, brain injury and epilepsy?

Sleep is medicine for the brain. So, what happens when a person with a history of poor sleep experiences a traumatic brain injury (TBI)? Can it increase the chance of developing post traumatic epilepsy? It’s an important yet still understudied question.

Post-traumatic epilepsy is mysterious and unpredictable. Some people experience seizures immediately after injury, others don’t until years later.

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering Oleksii Shandra is investigating if transcranial magnetic stimulation — a non-invasive treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate neurons — can stabilize brain activity and improve sleep quality after a TBI and, in turn, prevent epilepsy. The findings may help protect those most vulnerable: military personnel, firefighters, athletes, truck drivers and more.

QUANTUM COMPUTING
No prying eyes on private videos

AI-generated deepfake videos are already a problem. Quantum computers of the future will make matters worse because the super-powerful machines will be able to crack current encryption methods in seconds, making private videos vulnerable to manipulation.

To prevent this, Distinguished University Professor S. S. Iyengar and his research group at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences developed a quantum-safe encryption system.

Designed to run on today’s computers — providing security against both traditional hacking methods as well as future quantum computer attacks — the method combines quantum encryption with secure internet transmission. It transports videos in a digital “lock box” and scrambles video data using cryptographic keys that only authorized users can unscramble. A study published in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronicssuggests the method is more effective than comparable advanced encryption techniques.

ENVIRONMENT
Aggressive seagrass species found in Biscayne Bay

An aggressive species of seagrass, Halophila stipulacea, has been on a steady march across the world, taking over ecosystems beyond its native waters of the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Institute of Environment marine scientist Justin Campbell has confirmed it has now reached the waters off the coast of Florida. As reported in Aquatic Botany, the species is growing in Crandon Marina and nearby areas of Miami’s Biscayne Bay. While it’s unknown whether stipulacea provides similar ecological benefits as compared to native species, at least 19 Caribbean islands have reported this seagrass growing in nearby waters and, in some cases, overtaking meadows of native grass that serve as important nurseries for fish and provide food for turtles.

PUBLIC POLICY
Space governance

Latin America is playing a growing role in the global space economy, fueled by rapid market expansion, increasing investments in satellite systems, telecommunications and more, as well as a burgeoning “NewSpace” startup scene. Space policy specialist Laura Delgado López, recently named Senior Fellow at the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy, is currently working on the methodology for a dashboard to map the region’s network of public and private space actors. Once completed, the tool will help identify governance gaps and strengthen international collaboration. It will be hosted on the institute’s Security Research Hub, which shares interactive dashboards that visualize security-related data across Latin America and the Caribbean.

EDUCATION
Building preschoolers’ STEM skills is child’s play

What do puzzles, navigating a new city or doing a cartwheel have in common? They rely on mental rotation or the ability to visualize objects moving or turning in space without physically moving them. It’s a skill that can lay the foundation for doing well in school and developing an interest in STEM.

Center for Children and Families research, led by doctoral student Karinna A. Rodriguez, used eye-tracking technology to understand how a small group of children (ages 3–7) solved spatial puzzles. Most used an adult-like strategy, rotating the entire object mentally — rather than breaking it down piece by piece — meaning that even before they can read, young children can envision how objects move and turn in space in ways that are more advanced than expected. The findings, published in Infant and Child Development, suggest early play with puzzles and blocks can boost this important skill.