Capital One and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are pleased to announce the launch of the Center for Generative AI Safety, Knowledge Systems, and Cybersecurity (ASKS). ASKS has a mission focused on advancing the state of the art while addressing the challenges and opportunities of Generative Artificial Intelligence Models (GAIMs) in today’s quickly evolving world. Through research, education, and the responsible advancement of these models across sectors and domains, the Center will work to enhance the ability of GAIMs to manage real-time information while operating with strong performance, accuracy, and safety.

Capital One Center for Generative AI Safety, Knowledge Systems and Cyber Security (ASKS)

With this partnership, Capital One is providing a $3 million pledge over five years, which will provide support to selected faculty research projects and PhD students through fellowships focused on cutting-edge GAIM research. This support will be determined through an annual call for proposals, which invites faculty to submit research proposals and nominate PhD students. The support will be decided by a Center Advisory Board composed of representatives from both Capital One and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“We are delighted to strengthen our customer-centered scientific research initiatives by bringing together top talent from our two organizations,” said Prem Natarajan, PhD, EVP, Chief Scientist, and Head of Enterprise AI at Capital One. “With the launch of ASKS, we are doubling down on our mission to find solutions to the most challenging problems in AI, while providing a platform for the next generation of AI leaders in the U.S. to gain exposure to solving some of the most pressing industry problems through novel advances in science and technology."

In addition to Natarajan, primary contributors of this partnership include Heng Ji, Professor at The llinois Grainger College of Engineering Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, Director of ASKS; Gang Wang, Illinois Professor of Computer Science, Associate Director of ASKS; Milind Naphade, SVP of Capital One’s AI Foundations team; Sambit Sahu, Vice President in Capital One’s AI Foundations team; and Illinois Computer Science Professors Jiawei Han, Bo Li, Gokhan Tur, and Ling Ren.

The Capital One and Illinois ASKS Center builds on the long-standing innovation and science-focused partnership between both organizations. Since 2015, Capital One and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have partnered on the Capital One Tech Incubator Lab at Illinois, where students work on emerging AI and machine learning capabilities that will transform the financial services industry, in partnership with Capital One’s applied researchers and experts.

“Large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in knowledge reasoning tasks. However, there is still a long way to go before we can rely on them as intelligent companions for complex problem-solving and decision-making. I'm incredibly excited and grateful to Dr. Prem Natarajan for launching an AI center dedicated to these critical research challenges, and to Capital One for partnering to push the frontiers of AI research together with the University of Illinois,” said Heng Ji, Computer Science Professor and Director of ASKS.

The ASKS Center will host a symposium in the Fall of 2025. The symposium will invite researchers to share leading insights in their respective areas of expertise. The coming together of both Capital One and Illinois’s leading experts will further advance the mission of the Center and uncover opportunities to expand on broader areas of academic and industry-specific research interests. The event will feature lightning talks from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Capital One scientists, as well as roundtable discussions.

Learn more information about AI at Capital One.