North Carolina A&T State University is adding another major investment to its growing research portfolio, this time with a five-year, $10 million award designed to expand the HBCU’s work in some of the country’s fastest-moving technology fields.
The Greensboro university was named an inaugural recipient of funding to establish Accelerate-DAQ, a project focused on artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber resilience, and quantum systems. The award comes through a federal HBCU and Minority-Serving Institutions research program and is intended to strengthen both specific research projects and the university’s broader research infrastructure.
Building Capacity in High-Growth Technology Fields
Accelerate-DAQ will organize its work around three connected research clusters: Trustworthy AI & Cyber Defense, AI-enabled Autonomy, and Quantum Computing.
That scope allows North Carolina A&T to deepen its work in technologies that are increasingly shaping computing, cybersecurity, transportation, communications, and other industries. It also creates room for faculty and students from multiple disciplines to contribute.
The project team includes experts from six of A&T’s colleges, spanning engineering, science and technology, education, business, health and human sciences, and the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.
Computer Science department chair Kaushik Roy, one of the project’s faculty leads, said the work is about developing AI systems that can remain trustworthy and resilient while operating under uncertainty. That includes studying how intelligent systems work with people, withstand cyber threats and make reliable decisions in difficult environments.
More Opportunities for Students and Researchers
The investment is not limited to laboratory projects. A&T says Accelerate-DAQ will also strengthen the research culture across campus by supporting faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and research staff.
Vice Chancellor for Research Lisa Clough, the project’s lead principal investigator, described the program as a way to develop “research champions” across disciplines while strengthening the university’s ability to take on increasingly complex research.
That matters at an HBCU whose research enterprise has been expanding quickly. According to the university, A&T principal investigators secured more than $550 million in external funding over the past five years, including more than $113 million in the previous fiscal year alone.
The Accelerate-DAQ award is also expected to support A&T’s effort to reach and sustain Research 1 status in the Carnegie Classification, a designation associated with universities conducting the highest levels of research activity.
An HBCU Expanding Its Research Footprint
North Carolina A&T’s latest award arrives as the university continues building a national profile in science and technology research. Just a month before announcing Accelerate-DAQ, A&T received a $16.9 million National Institutes of Health award to establish a research center focused on reducing health disparities.
Together, investments like these show what expanded research capacity can mean at an HBCU: more resources for faculty, more hands-on opportunities for students and a larger role in fields that will help shape the future.
For Uptown Sunday, the significance goes beyond the size of the grant. North Carolina A&T is creating more space for Black students and scholars to participate in advanced research in AI, cybersecurity, and quantum computing — fields where access to resources, training, and research opportunities can influence who gets to build what comes next.
