NEC Labs America

08/25/2026

Congratulations to Giuseppe Coviello, Mohammad A. Khojastepour, Kunal Rao, Srimat T. Chakradhar, and Will Dennis for being awarded Best Paper at , held alongside Euro-Par in Pisa, Italy!

The paper, "Völ: A Domain-Specific Language and Runtime for AI-Native Workflows," introduces a new language-runtime pairing built for coordinating the models, tools and agents that make up a modern AI application. Rather than requiring custom orchestration code for every project, Völ lets developers describe a workflow declaratively. The runtime handles ex*****on, scheduling, and resource management beneath that specification.

This recognition reflects the strength of the work coming out of NEC Laboratories America's Integrated Systems Department.

Learn more: https://www.nec-labs.com/blog/giuseppe-coviello-presents-at-hipes-2026-euro-par-in-pisa-italy-on-august-25th/

08/21/2026

Giuseppe Coviello from our Integrated Systems department will present "Völ: A Domain-Specific Language and Runtime for AI-Native Workflows" at the HiPES 2026 workshop, held alongside the Euro-Par 2026 conference in Pisa, Italy, on August 25th at 10:30am. Völ addresses a core challenge in building AI-native applications: coordinating multiple models, tools, and agents within a single workflow. The language lets developers express these workflows declaratively; the runtime handles ex*****on, scheduling, and resource management underneath. The other authors include Mohammad A. Khojastepour, Kunal Rao, Willard Dennis & Srimat T. Chakradhar from NEC Labs America.

Learn more about the Workshop. https://www.nec-labs.com/blog/giuseppe-coviello-presents-at-hipes-2026-euro-par-in-pisa-italy-on-august-25th/

Giuseppe Coviello presents Völ, a language, runtime for AI-native workflows, at HiPES 2026 in Pisa, Italy on August 25th.

08/20/2026

Researchers from NEC Laboratories America will receive a 2026 Edison Patent Award from the Research & Development Council of New Jersey for Bidirectional Optical Communication and Sensing WDM Architecture Using Same Fiber Transmission Band, U.S. Patent No. 10,763,964, a bidirectional optical architecture that lets one fiber carry data traffic and distributed sensing at once.

Congratulations to inventors Yue-Kai Huang, Ezra Ip, Philip N. Ji, and Ming-Fang Huang from our Optical Networking & Sensing Department. The awards ceremony will take place at Bell Works in Holmdel, New Jersey, on November 19, 2026.

Read more: https://www.nec-labs.com/blog/nec-laboratories-america-researchers-win-a-2026-edison-patent-award-for-optical-fiber-innovation/

NEC Laboratories America wins a 2026 Edison Patent Award for a bidirectional fiber design enabling simultaneous optical communication and sensing.

08/20/2026

A great summer of research, collaboration, and innovation deserves a great dinner! Our and a few staff members in San Jose went out for a farewell dinner together at Danbi Korean Restaurant. We are grateful for the energy, ideas, and enthusiasm these interns brought to our team this summer. It has been exciting to see the next generation of researchers learn, contribute, and make connections along the way.

Visit our Intern Page to learn more: https://www.nec-labs.com/careers/intern-program/

08/19/2026

Our researchers and interns had a memorable time along the Delaware & Raritan Canal in New Jersey. From calm stretches to navigating light currents, the evening was filled with teamwork, laughter, and a few impromptu races. It was the ideal chance to connect outside the lab and enjoy nature. The event created lasting memories that we will carry long after we put the paddles away. Shoutout to Stacey for organizing!

08/19/2026

This summer, we welcomed 45 excellent from 42 impressive universities onto our research teams!

They pushed our work forward in meaningful ways, contributing to projects across five departments: Data Science & System Security, Integrated Systems, Machine Learning, Media Analytics and Optical Networking & Sensing. Working alongside our researchers, they helped develop real solutions to hard problems in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, natural language processing and data security. Many will head to top conferences in the future to present their work alongside our researchers. Thank you to every intern who spent their summer with us. You made the work better.

➡️ Learn more: https://www.nec-labs.com/blog/summer-interns-2026/

📅 Looking ahead: Applications for our 2027 summer class open this fall. Are you a PhD student who wants to do serious research early in your career?

➡️ Get ready to apply: https://www.nec-labs.com/careers/intern-program/

08/12/2026

Autonomous driving software is only as good as the scenes it gets tested on, and real footage cannot cover every road or storm. Researchers from NEC Labs America and Simon Fraser University have published HorizonWeaver: Generalizable Multi-Level Semantic Editing for Driving Scenes. HorizonWeaver teaches AI to edit driving footage down to the pixel, adding in traffic and weather. The authors are Mauricio Soroco and Wuyang Chen of Simon Fraser University, along with Francesco Pittaluga, Zaid Tasneem, Abhishek Aich, Bingbing Zhuang, and Ziyu Jiang of .

Read more: https://buff.ly/0J6YTHc

08/10/2026

Our Media Analytics summer at our San Jose office traded lab benches for the racetrack last week, taking a trip to K1 Speed in Santa Clara for an afternoon of friendly competition. Fast laps, cool drinks, real medals and a great reminder that sometimes the best ideas happen outside the lab. Thanks to our interns for bringing the same energy to the track that they bring to their research. Stay tuned; the employees are racing this fall!

07/30/2026

🎉 Happy National Intern Day from NEC Laboratories America! 🎉

This summer, 45 fantastic from 42 prestigious schools joined our research teams and helped push our work forward in real ways. They contributed to projects in artificial intelligence, machine learning, optical networking and sensing, computer vision, natural language processing, and data security, working alongside our researchers on problems to develop solutions. Many will be headed for top conferences to present their work. Thank you to every intern who spent their summer with us. You made the work better. 🙌

⭐️ Here are our excellent Media Analytics interns (L to R); Sarthak, Nuo, Morris, Van, Yuqiu, Yichi, Paul, Sriram and Udita)

📅 Looking ahead, applications for our 2027 summer class will open this fall. If you or know a PhD student who wants to do serious research early in their career, now is the time to start watching for the announcement. https://www.nec-labs.com/careers/intern-program/

07/28/2026

What if the fiber optic cable already under your city's streets could also detect construction near buried lines, track traffic, and flag network faults? Researchers from Verizon and tested hybrid fiber sensing and a self-training AI framework across 500 km of live carrier network in Dallas, cutting monitored-zone cable damage from 22% to 9% in one year.

The results were published in "Leveraging Deployed Telecom Cables for Distributed Fiber Sensing Topologies and Applications." Authors: Scott Kotrla and Jeff Mundt (Verizon) with Ming-Fang Huang, Jian Fang, Shaobo Han, Jamie Lynn, Ezra Ip, and Ting Wang (NEC Labs America).

Read more: https://www.nec-labs.com/blog/turning-every-telecom-cable-into-a-city-wide-sensor-network/