Dr. Eric Hoang H. Nguyen began working at UTC in August 2025. Photo by Angela Foster.
In the modern world, where digital information is always at risk, security is more important than ever.
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Research Assistant Professor Eric Hoang H. Nguyen has always been interested in protecting information.
“It’s a little bit of my habit,” Nguyen said. “I want to learn about a system, find problems with the system and try to solve the problems. That’s why I chose the topic I did, as it’s most relevant to security.
“It could be the security for software for blockchain technology or it could be improving safety for train operation.”
In addition to his role at UTC, Nguyen serves as CEO of UrbisIQ, a company focused on providing technology for urban safety.
“We have a product called iCityGuardian,” he said. “It’s the UrbisIQ human interactive AI platform that transforms the city camera into proactive city-scale intelligence. It helps public safety and transportation agencies detect and monitor roadway incidents in real time, using natural language instead of complex system configuration.”
The technology is patent-pending.
Nguyen compared the platform’s interface to ChatGPT’s, noting that users ask for what they need and the software finds the answer.
“In the past, if they wanted to find objects using multiple cameras, they needed one investigator to use them one by one,” he explained. “It takes maybe five to six hours to find one vehicle in one camera or another. You need to watch the whole video to find the object that the team is looking for. Our technology allows them to check all of the cameras at the same time, and then we can return the result directly.”
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Through UTC’s partnership with the City of Chattanooga, Nguyen and his team have explored real-world applications of AI-assisted video analytics. Nguyen said that, according to a published analysis of public safety video workflows, processing one hour of video can take five to six hours, while AI-assisted search could help return relevant results in less than two minutes.
When Nguyen started his Ph.D. in Germany, his research focused on two main tracks: blockchain and multi-camera object tracking.
“For the security of blockchain, I developed some technology to identify the variability in blockchain technology,” he said. “At the same time, I also started a collaboration with UTC. I was still in Germany. I signed a collaboration with UTC and began getting results for multi-camera tracking.
“At that time, we could identify only one object, but we needed to do it for multiple objects … For example, we integrated it with our platform and now we can understand the query of the user in the box. We need to do it for all the auto objects, and now we can be more specific.”
He highlighted the similarities in his research on blockchain and mobile security. Both are aiming to make the environment safer.
With that goal in mind, the company’s next phase is to go to market and find other partners.
“We have licenses and we plan to provide that technology, not only in Chattanooga,” Nguyen said. “Everything is for that project, developing new technology, collaborating with industry … trying to sell that product and provide that solution to other partners like public safety organizations and police departments.”
Dr. Eric Hoang H. Nguyen’s research interests include federated learning, graph mining, machine learning, graph learning, social network analysis, program analysis, software security and blockchain smart contracts.
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