Advances in AI-Enabled Tactical Autonomy:
From Sensing to Execution

Title: From Rules to Reasoning: The Army's AI Journey and the Research Frontiers That Matter Most

Dr. Reginald L. Hobbs is a computer scientist and Branch Chief at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Army Research Laboratory, where he leads approximately 20 scientists conducting basic and applied research in semantic comprehension, artificial reasoning, and intelligent autonomous systems. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S. in Electronics from Chapman University.

With over 40 years of experience spanning U.S. Air Force service, defense contracting, and Army research, Dr. Hobbs brings rare operational depth and scientific rigor to the challenge of transitioning AI from the laboratory to the battlefield. His research spans natural language processing, autonomous decision-making, multi-agent systems, and ontology-based battlespace modeling. He has authored 45+ peer-reviewed publications and serves as Adjunct Professor at Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia.

Dr. Hobbs recently designed and co-taught the Artificial Intelligence for Soldiers course, guiding mid-career Army officers through the full arc of AI — from classical reasoning systems to modern autonomous platforms. His unique ability to bridge foundational AI science and real-world Army mission requirements makes him the ideal voice to open this symposium and frame the research challenges that demand the community's most urgent attention.

Title:The Need for Operational AI Red-Teaming in the Department of War

Nathaniel D. Bastian, Ph.D., joined DARPA in August 2023 as a program manager to design, develop, execute, and transition programs in artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber operations. His primary research interests include designing and developing intelligent, assured, human-aware, data-centric, and decision-driven capabilities that enable decision advantage for multi-domain operations across the complex, contested, congested, and evolving battlefield.

As a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he joins DARPA from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the U.S. Military Academy, where he currently serves as deputy director of the Robotics Research Center (RRC) and principal investigator of the Laboratory for AI Research & Engineering (LAIRE) within RRC. He previously served in roles as chief scientist, Data & Decision Sciences division chief, and chief data scientist at the Army Cyber Institute (ACI). He also teaches courses and advises cadets in systems engineering, mathematical sciences, and computer science as a West Point faculty member.

Prior to joining West Point, Bastian served as the chief AI architect at the Department of War’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, operations research scientist at the ACI/USMA, and analytics officer at the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. He also previously served as a UH-60 Black Hawk MEDEVAC aviator with the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, including a year-long deployment supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Bastian was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow, a Fulbright U.S. student fellow to the Netherlands, and served on DARPA’s Information Science and Technology Study Group. He also served as a distinguished visitor professor at the National Security Agency and a visiting research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

He is a senior member of INFORMS and IEEE, as well as an active member of MORS, ACM, and AAAI. His work has been included in more than 200 journal articles, conference papers, and books.

Education
Ph.D., Industrial Engineering and Operations Research – Penn State
M.E., Industrial Engineering – Penn State
M.S., Econometrics and Operations Research – Maastricht University
B.S., Engineering Management – U.S. Military Academy

Title: Toward (Truly) Resilient Networking and Learning in Tactical Cyber-Physical Systems

Francesco Restuccia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. Dr. Restuccia’s main research focus is addressing the fundamental challenges related to networked cyber-physical systems. Restuccia's research is funded by several grants from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Restuccia has received the DARPA Young Faculty Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlights Award, the Mario Gerla Award for Young Investigators in Computer Science, as well as Best Paper Award at IEEE INFOCOM (twice) and IEEE WOWMOM. Dr. Restuccia has been granted 12 US patents and has been cited 6000+ times with an h-index of 41. He regularly serves as a TPC member and reviewer for several top-tier ACM and IEEE conferences and has served in the editorial board of Computer Networks, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM.