National Science Foundation's SECURE Analytics Initiative Expands to Include Innovative AI Partner Finch AI
Finch AI's Artificial Intelligence Capabilities to Enable and Accelerate Enhancements to Critical Research Security Platform
COLLEGE STATION, Texas, Dec. 9, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- After a successful first year as one of the two core components of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE) program, NSF SECURE Analytics announced today a new partnership with Finch AI, an artificial intelligence innovator based in Herndon, Virginia. This collaboration will expand and enhance the development of the Argus due diligence platform, which is the flagship data collection, analysis, and reporting platform for NSF SECURE Analytics.
"We are thrilled to bring Finch AI on board," Dr. Kevin Gamache, Principal Investigator and Director of NSF SECURE Analytics. "Finch AI has robust artificial intelligence capabilities and experience that will elevate the development of Argus as we move into year 2 of the project."
NSF SECURE Analytics was established in July 2024 to provide the research community with data-driven insights, analytical products and an enhanced risk-informed due-diligence platform to help safeguard the security of the research enterprise. Led by Texas A&M University, in partnership with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (and now Finch AI).
Gamache continued, "We look forward to the ways in which the Finch AI team will amplify the potency of the Argus platform and expand our reach, enabling us to provide those throughout the research security community and beyond, with a platform to enhance their ability to make risk-informed decisions."
Scott Lightner, Finch AI's Chief Scientist, added, "Our approach to AI aligns perfectly with the SECURE mission. Our team of data scientists, engineers and analysts has built a differentiated and fundamentally more transparent approach to delivering fast and accurate AI results that can be trusted and acted upon. This includes novel natural language processing capabilities, a retrieval augmented generation pipeline that can run complex queries over and over again, and AI agents that super-power workflows and make individual security analysts instantly more effective and efficient. We look forward to deploying all of these capabilities on the SECURE Analytics program."
During the inaugural year of the NSF SECURE Program, NSF SECURE Analytics presented at dozens of conferences and meetings, providing updates and seeking input from members of the academic, federal and research security communities. During the 2025 Academic Security and Counter Exploitation (ASCE) Program, hosted at Texas A&M University, NSF SECURE Analytics leadership provided attendees with an overview of the NSF SECURE Program and conducted multiple closed feedback sessions of an early demo of the Argus platform.
In June 2025, NSF SECURE Analytics released its first quarterly advisory, "China Refocuses Its Science and Technology Ecosystem on Innovation and Security," and it's second advisory "Iran's Science and Technology Ecosystem: A Primer for Research Security Professionals," in September 2025. NSF SECURE Analytics has partnered with The Texas A&M University System's Research and Innovation Security Competitiveness (RISC) Institute to distribute its quarterly advisories and semi-annual deep dive reports to the broader research security community.
Looking ahead, the team plans to expand the Argus platform from a single offering to multiple versions that will serve more of the research community, including those outside of research security. This is an important step toward ensuring the long-term sustainability of the NSF SECURE Analytics program. Lastly, this work will enable the Argus platform to be provided as a basic, low-cost, point-of-entry solution for the broader research community, with options available for add-ons for interested parties.
These plans, as well as a recap of year-one progress, will take center stage at the Academic Security and Counter Exploitation Conference in College Station in February of 2026.
To learn more about NSF SECURE Analytics, visit: https://secure-analytics.org; to learn more about Finch AI, please visit www.finchai.com.
Contact: Jason Whisenant
SOURCE Finch AI
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