The RobustifyAI consortium at the kick-off event at AIT; Credit: AIT
RobustifAI is a Horizon Europe project aiming to develop a rigorous design and deployment methodology tailored for reliable, robust, and trustworthy Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI). The project officially started on June 1, 2025, and is set to run for 36 months with a total budget of € 9.3 Mio including an Austrian share of around 1.36 Mio. The funding approval is a great success for the consortium of RobustifAI, given that only three of the 131 proposals submitted were accepted in response to the call for proposals. The consortium gathered on June 5, 2025, at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna premises for an official kick-off, defining initial steps of the project work.
Austria plays a key role in RobustifAI by involving two prominent institutions – the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and TU Wien. AIT is represented in the consortium by Priv.-Doz. Dr. Dejan Nickovic, who serves as the project’s Technical Manager. Prof. Ezio Bartocci, a professor for Formal Methods in Cyber-Physical Systems at the Faculty of Informatics, represents TU Wien. AIT brings to the project its world-class expertise in applied formal methods for AI-based systems and in shaping future AI policies. TU Wien brings its expertise in rigorous development and analysis of learning-enabled autonomous systems to the consortium. The two institutions have a longstanding collaboration in ensuring the safety of AI-based and autonomous systems, with joint contributions over the past decade in areas such as deep neural network verification, trustworthy system engineering, and runtime monitoring of AI-driven technologies.
Project goal
GenAI, such as foundation models, represents a powerful and transformative class of AI capable of learning patterns from data and generating new content. However, GenAI has notable shortcomings that can lead to misuse or hinder its widespread adoption and positive societal and economic impact. These shortcomings stem from three key areas: technical, operational, and user robustness. RobustifAI focuses on foundation models used in the context of human cyber-physical systems (HCPS), which are complex systems that combine computation, networking, humans, and physical processes to monitor and control real-world environments with applications in many sectors.
HCPS represent the most demanding systems to address the robustness of GenAI due to their immediate physical impact, criticality, real-time, and human interaction requirements. By tackling GenAI robustness in HCPS, RobustifAI will propose solutions applicable across various domains, ultimately unlocking the full potential of GenAI.
Partnership
The RobustifAI consortium comprises eighteen partners from twelve countries, with seventeen European partners and one partner from India.
The consortium is well-balanced with the following partners:
- Seven universities: University of Liverpool, Chalmers University of Technology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Masaryk University, Oldenburg University, TU Wien, and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur;
- Two RTOs: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology and German Aerospace Center (DLR);
- Five SMEs: CSX-AI, L-up, PPM Robotics, CertX, and LOXO.
- Four large companies: Collins Aerospace, Siemens, Thales, and Thales SIX GTS FRANCE.
Further information: www.robustifai.eu or on LinkedIn at @RobustifAI project
Contact:
Michael W. Mürling, MA AI4Gov
Marketing and Communications
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
Center for Digital Safety & Security
T +43 (0)50550-4126
michael.muerling(at)ait.ac.at I www.ait.ac.at
Michael H. Hlava
Head of Corporate and Marketing Communications
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
T +43 (0)50550-4014
michael.hlava(at)ait.ac.at I www.ait.ac.at