Overview

Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) forms the backbone of modern society, encompassing the vital systems required for the delivery of public services from energy grids and transportation networks to telecommunications and healthcare. While the reliability of these systems is a priority for both government and industry, their increasing complexity makes them susceptible to disruptions from technical failures, natural disasters, and human error.

The rapid evolution of Artificial Intelligence offers a transformative opportunity to enhance the operability of CNI. AI-driven solutions are being deployed to optimize resource distribution, predict maintenance needs before failures occur, and provide real-time responses to sophisticated cyber-physical threats. These advancements promise a future of more efficient, self-healing infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of a growing population.

However, integrating AI into these high-stakes environments is not a trivial task. As these systems move toward higher levels of autonomy, the role of AI Safety becomes a critical enabler of their deployment. To fully realize the benefits of AI, we must address the technical challenges of ensuring these systems remain robust, predictable, and transparent. This workshop seeks to explore the intersection of AI innovation and infrastructure resilience, focusing on:

• Operational Excellence: Leveraging AI to increase the efficiency and reliability of vital service delivery.

• Defense & Mitigation: Using AI to repel cyberattacks and minimize the impact of natural disturbances on the network.

• AI Safety & Assurance: Developing frameworks to ensure that increasingly autonomous systems operate safely under all conditions, maintaining public trust in the national infrastructure.

This workshop offers a natural connection to the AAMAS community, providing an opportunity to apply multi-agent research to the unique challenges of coordination, AI safety, and the high performance standards inherent to Critical National Infrastructure. Please use the main conference website to register: https://cyprusconferences.org/aamas2026/ 

Topics

By bringing together experts from different stakeholders, this workshop aims to define how we can safely harness the power of AI to build more resilient Critical National Infrastructure. Our goal is to provide a highly interactive session where attendees can present their latest research but also lead demonstrations or drive a discussion round. All accepted papers will be invited to present a poster and we aim to have most papers with an oral presentation (depending on number of submissions).
We welcome submissions on the following topics:

1. Sector-Specific AI and Multi-Agent Applications

• • Energy & Utilities: Smart grid optimization, distributed agent coordination for energy transmission resilience, and nuclear energy generation/nonproliferation.

  • Mobility & Logistics: Multi-agent fleet management for autonomous transportation, supply chain optimization, and waste management.

  • Public Health & Safety: AI for hospital operations, coordinated emergency response services, and water treatment/distribution systems.

  • Industrial Systems: AI-driven safety and human-agent collaboration in the chemical industry and heavy manufacturing.

2. Resilience, Defense, and Cybersecurity

• Autonomous Defense: Multi-agent systems for the cybersecurity of critical systems and collective threat detection.

• Incident Management: AI for the rapid detection, isolation, and automated agent-led repair of service interruptions.

• Mitigation: Leveraging AI to minimize the impact of natural disturbances and preventing cascading failures across interconnected CNI sectors.

3. AI Safety, Reliability, and Trust

• • Safety-Critical Autonomy: Frameworks for ensuring the safety and predictability of autonomous agents and collectives in CNI.

  • System Reliability: Methods for formal verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification in multi-agent high-stakes environments.

  • Human-AI Interaction: Agents in government and public policy to ensure transparent and accountable decision-making.

4. Foundation and Methodology

• • Cross-Domain Research: Fundamental AI/ML research addressing the unique constraints of real-world CNI (e.g., low-latency requirements, data scarcity).

  • Simulations & Benchmarks: Development of high-fidelity multi-agent simulators and open-access datasets specifically for CNI applications.

  • MAS Theory: Coordination, communication protocols, and control of distributed agents within complex, interconnected infrastructure networks.

  • Grand Challenges: Position papers on open problems where AI/MAS is poised to provide feasible solutions for long-term CNI sustainability.

5. Interactive and Participatory Formats

• • Technology Demos: Software products, experimental implementations, or multi-agent frameworks designed for CNI applications.

  • Mini-Tutorials: Concise sessions on AI techniques, AI Safety protocols, or agent-based modeling relevant to critical systems.

  • Panel Discussions: Moderated debates on emerging issues (e.g., the ethics of autonomous defense or the challenges of certifying CNI agents).

Important dates (EoD Anywhere on Earth (UTC-12))

Call for papers open December 17, 2025

Submission Deadline February 19, 2026

Author Notification March 20, 2026

Camera-ready paper April 24, 2026

Workshop May 26, 2026

Paper categories

• Full Paper: Papers with a maximum length of 8 pages plus references (original research)

• Work in Progress: Extended abstract with a maximum length of 4 pages plus references (preliminary results, position papers).

• Highlight Paper: Summary of previously published papers with a maximum length of 1 page including references that have been published or accepted for publication in archival venues but are relevant for this dedicated community.

• Demo: Demonstrations of relevant products, implementations, frameworks, etc. Submit 1 page in the workshop format describing what will be demonstrated and how it fits to the workshop topic.

• Mini-Tutorial: Short tutorials in the subject of the workshop, Submit 1 page in the workshop format describing what the tutorial is about, who will be giving it, how it fits to the workshop topic, and the infrastructure necessary (e.g., will participants be expected to have a laptop with installed software to follow the tutorial?).

Formatting guidelines

Please use the following template for your submission:

• Open template in Overleaf

• Download template as zip file

Submission

Submissions are double-blind (identity or institutions of authors should not be shown or implied in the paper). Make sure you are following the formatting guidelines above and are following the page limitation for your paper category.

• [SUBMIT HERE]

Organizers and affiliations

Felipe Leno da Silva - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Wencong Su - University of Michigan - Dearborn

Ruben Glatt - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Christian Schroeder de Witt - University of Oxford

Contact

Email to workshop chairs: ai4cni@gmail.com

Previous workshops

2024: AI4CI @ IJCAI 2024, Jeju Island, Korea

Program Committee with affiliations

Abhay Kumar (Walmart Global Tech)

Ajitesh Jain (Facebook)

Ameya Wagh (Rivian Automotive LLC)

Anish Mahishi (Bloomberg)

ANSHUMAN GUHA (Freshworks)

Arjun Bali (Rocket Mortgage)

Ashwin Pathak (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Atharva Amdekar (Amazon)

Bala Siva Sai Akhil Malepati (Intel Corporation)

Bhanu Sekhar Guttikonda (CapitalOne)

Bhoomika Ghosh (University of Illinois at Chicago)

Botao Deng (Facebook)

Chenye Wu (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Crispin Vincent Lobo (CapitalOne)

Cynthia Udoka Duruemeruo (VISA)

Deep Shah (Google)

Dinesh Rathinasamy Thangavel (NVIDIA)

Edwin Puertas (Universidad Tecnologica de Bolivar)

Gaurav Mishra (Northeastern University)

Gopikrishnan Anilkumar (Amazon)

Prerana Rane (Stanford University)

Haocheng Bi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Javier Orduz (UNAM)

Jebaraj Vasudevan (VISA)

Jeyadev Needhidevan (New York University)

Jiale Li (University of Auckland)

Jorge Ramírez (CINVESTAV-IPN )

João Mattos (Rice University)

Juan Cardenas-Cartagena (University of Groningen)

Kiran Babu Macha (University of The Cumberlands)

Kshitij Singh Minhas (SRI International)

Madhulekha Arunmozhi (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Madiha Shakil Mirza (Accenture)

Manoj Krishna Mohan (Westcliff University)

Md Abubakkar (Midwestern State University)

Md Imran Nazir (Bangladesh University of Business & Technology)

Meetu Malhotra (Harrisburg university of science and technology)

Mustafa Yurdakul (Kirikkale University)

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Ning Li (Facebook)

Paritosh Kumar Yadav (National Institute of Technology Raipur)

payam pourashraf (DePaul University)

Phuc Nguyen (LinkedIn)

Pouya Afshin (Georgia State University)

Prasad Rao Thota (Boston University, Boston University)

Praveen Gupta Sanka (Facebook)

Subrata Ashe (Facebook)

Puyang Zhao (University of Texas Health Center at Houson)

akhee Sharma,Facebook

Reza Zakerian (Enterprise Mobility)

Ricardo Bessa (INESC TEC)

Sai Prasanna Teja Reddy Bogireddy (Exelon)

Sai Varun Chandrashekar (Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology )

Sanjeev Panta (University of Louisiana at Lafeyette)

Shashank Kapoor (Google)

Sheng Gao (Quant)

Sheshananda Reddy Kandula (IEEE)

Shilpi Bhattacharyya (AI-Basil)

Shuo Li (Anywhere Real Estate Inc)

SILMARA FURTADO DA SILVA (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro)

Sravanth Kodavanti (Samsung Research Institute Bangalore )

Zhengyang Li (DigiPen Institute of Technology)

Surya Teja Appini (Facebook)

Tianwen Zhou (University College London, University of London)

Tirtho Roy (Iowa Sate University)

Tong Wu (Auckland University of Technology)

Umar Farooqi (University of Waterloo)

Varsha Kuppur Rajendra (Oracle)

Vasanth Rajendran (Amazon)

Vibhu Verma (George Washington University)

Vishal Shah (Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources)

Wenke Du (Cornell University)

Wuwei Lin (OpenAI)

Xinjin Li (Columbia University)

Xuecong Fu (Foundation Medicine Inc)

Ye Zhang (University of Pittsburgh)

Yichen Wang (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Yuan Tang (Facebook)

Yubo Wang (Facebook)

Yuhan Wei (CGG)

Yuqing Wang (Microsoft)

haimei wen (University of Texas at Dallas)

Zhenlin Wang (Moveworks Inc.)

Zhiyi Yue (University of Texas Health Center at Houson)

Zhun Zhou (mobiusvision LLC)

Zhuolin Hao (ByteDance Inc.)

Ziheng Chen (University of Texas at Austin)