VAI-Nova Research Group develops advanced AI systems that integrate multimodal perception, autonomous reasoning, and distributed compute to explore truly adaptive, privacy-preserving intelligence.
VAI-Nova Research Group is an independent AI research initiative focused on the development of next-generation personal intelligence systems. Our work explores multimodal models, autonomous agents, cognitive system design, and frontier compute — including GPUs, neuromorphic processors, edge accelerators, and embedded vision platforms.
We investigate how real-time learning, emotional modeling, voice interaction, and environmental context can combine to create adaptive AI experiences that are both powerful and privacy-preserving. The long-term goal is a unified intelligence architecture that supports autonomy, collaboration, and human-aligned decision systems.
Current areas of interest and development include:
Steve Leonardi is an IT executive and AI systems architect with more than two decades of experience in enterprise infrastructure, cybersecurity, ERP modernization, and crisis-recovery engineering.
His work now centers on building advanced, privacy-preserving intelligence platforms that combine multimodal AI, distributed compute, autonomous agents, and real-time decision architectures. Through VAI-Nova Research Group, Steve explores the evolution of AI cognition, human–AI collaboration models, and the compute substrates that will power the next era of artificial intelligence.
VAI-Nova approaches AI as a long-term systems problem: how intelligence evolves when it can learn continuously, perceive context, and inhabit both physical and virtual environments through a blend of sensors, interfaces, and compute layers.
The research emphasizes robustness, interpretability, and alignment over quick novelty — focusing on architectures that can grow with their operators and environments over years, not just training cycles.