AWS Summit DC 2026 | Faisal Hanafi, AWS & Taylor Johnston, Applied Engineering

Clips
More from AWS Summit DC 2026

Faisal Hanafi

Director of US State and Local Government

AWS

Taylor Johnston

President and CEO

USF Institute of Applied Engineering

play_circle_outline Bridging Academia and Operators: AWS–USF Partnership Accelerating Defense Research to Operational Use

play_circle_outline Emulating AWS’s Public-Sector Higher Education Model: MOUs and Initiatives Unveiled at AWS Summit 2026 Washington DC

play_circle_outline Secure Research Environments: Safeguarding Sensitive Collaborative Research from Exfiltration for National Security and Allied Cooperation

play_circle_outline At the Speed of Need: Rapid Innovation in Operator Health, Electronic Warfare, RF Jamming, and Computer Vision

Info
Transcript

Faisal Hanafi, AWS & Taylor Johnston, Applied Engineering

Faisal Hanafi

Director of US State and Local Government AWS

Taylor Johnston

President and CEO USF Institute of Applied Engineering

In this interview from AWS Summit Washington, D.C. 2026, Faisal Sublaban, executive vice president of AskMD at Sharecare, joins theCUBE + NYSE Wired's Gemma Allen to discuss how a 50-year clinical reasoning engine is being reimagined as an agentic AI health navigation platform built on Amazon Bedrock. Sublaban frames the core challenge not as a shortage of health data but as fragmentation — over 30 billion health-related searches occur on Google each month, yet users receive generic responses regardless of their insurance coverage, medical history or individu... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

How did the partnership between AWS and the University of South Florida come about, and how is AWS helping USF translate cutting‑edge university research into operational capabilities for combatant commands (including meeting high security/FedRAMP and classified requirements)? add

What is the purpose and significance of the MOU/partnership between AWS and USF, and what do you hope it will achieve? add

How are Kiro and secure research environments (SREs) being utilized at the University of South Florida and more broadly? add

How should AWS respond to the "speed of need"—what does that look like in practice, and what are its core needs and current priorities? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Faisal Hanafi, AWS & Taylor Johnston, Applied Engineering

search

Gemma Allen

>> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are here on the ground in Washington DC for AWS Summit 2026 and we are having conversations across all of the next paradigms of this AWS ecosystem, specifically looking at public sector and government and what the road ahead looks like. Joining me now for a conversation on defense technology and how that isn't necessarily going to be written or developed just inside labs, but also inside universities, it's Faisal Hanafi from AWS and Taylor Johnston from USF. Welcome, guys.

Taylor Johnston

>> Thank you so much for having us.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Thank you.

Gemma Allen

>> So a lot happening in the space. Academia, I feel like has had somewhat of a fragmented moment, right, because in one end we hear a lot about the role of technologists, what it means, what the path looks like, what that curriculum should look like, we also know that some of the true genius of this era has been made and developed inside of universities.

Taylor Johnston

>> Yeah. Cutting edge technology happens in the labs inside of a university, those PhDs doing that groundbreaking research at the university. And the trick is now that we figured out, with the iterative cycles, how quickly can we leverage that brand-new research and get it back to the operator and how can we leverage partnerships to go through there. And that's where the University of South Florida and AWS have really found that great memorandum and the great understanding of use and partnership to deliver results back to the operator.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, talk to me about the formation of this partnership. We're at a very interesting time, like we just said, the intersection and the convergence, it's happening hard and fast. We know that technologists, educators, academics, PhDs, like you mentioned, they need access to the best models, the best environments, and there needs to be a level of parameter, right? Talk about how AWS is meeting that moment, I guess, for USF.

Taylor Johnston

>> Well, it started off with USF. We're lucky in Tampa, we're the only place in the world with two combatant commands where really the operator is hitting the ground on the day-to-day basis. So Special Operations command is in Tampa. Same thing with Central Command, both headquartered out of Tampa. And we started our relationship only 10 years ago, really, because they didn't know how to work with academia very well and University of South Florida didn't know how to work with the operators very well. And it started off with those initial conversations with Special Operations command and their demand back to us was we don't just need academics, we need academics that can work at the controlled unclassified level, at the FedRAMP High level, at the IL6 and SECRET and TS/SCI levels, go make it happen. And we turned our partnership at AWS to start those conversations. We've had a couple of years of growing and now we're pretty much diving hand-in-hand into the deep end together to really go after delivering those research capabilities back to those combatant commands.

Gemma Allen

>> And Faisal, talk about that dive into the deep end. What does it mean for AWS and what does it look like right now? You're in government tech. I mean, a lot is changing very fast. Institutions, organizations are coming under huge pressures. Talk about the world of AWS right now, your ecosystem, and how you see it.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Well, it's moving at such an incredible speed. I mean, just look around us here. We have thousands of people that have come to Washington DC to look at what AWS is doing across the public sector, that is in our federal business, in our government business, our education business, and our ed-tech business. And I think when you look at what's happening, we're seeing that customers are wanting to innovate at an accelerated speed like they've never done before. And this is where this partnership with USF is just so unique. I mean, I'm really excited about the announcement we made earlier today, the MOU that we have signed, our focus around the work that we can do to support USF to innovate on behalf of the Department of War. There's some tremendous stuff that's really going to happen here. I think what we're really going to see happen is you're going to see partnerships like this, frankly, continue to evolve. And this is one of the things that we were looking for. We wanted to create a collaboration that we wanted others to emulate. What's happening in Florida right now is very, very unique. And as TJ mentioned just a moment ago, we've been working together for years, but really over the last six months, we realized that we were trying to accomplish the same thing for the same customer and how do we bring the power of USF and AWS together to really accelerate at an unprecedented speed, and here we are today.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, let's go into that announcement. Let's break that down a little bit more. Bring that to life for me. Either of you take this.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Please.

Taylor Johnston

>> Yeah. It starts first with the students. How do they get access to the resources in Bedrock, in Kiro and utilize those resources and be coming out as a technologically literate, not just class literate, but technologically literate playing with those toys once they graduate. Our work with Special Operations Command and Central Command and DevCom's Army Research Lab allows for internships. So our students are actually getting internships with the federal government getting a clearance and getting to work with Kiro, getting work with Bedrock during their undergraduate careers. So they're coming out day one, work with experience with the DOD, with the clearance, experience with AWS products and they are running first day after graduation. They're not coming into it with just a classroom knowledge of cybersecurity, of AI and modeling, they're coming right out of the gate. Same thing with our researchers. Our researchers and our PhDs, they have the experience, they have their PhD in cybersecurity and those tools that were as good as when they did that PhD. But how do you enable that partnership so that they understand the latest technology that Kiro's coming out with, the latest tools that are coming out because the only way to do that is with that industry and academic partnership because we'll never be as fast as them and they'll never have the academic focus that we'll have. And I'm saying that pejoratively. But we both have our own expertise in how do we light the match on both.

Faisal Hanafi

>> That's right.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, you could never really learn technology from a textbook, right? You have to get your hands dirty.

Faisal Hanafi

>> That's right.

Gemma Allen

>> You have to live it, you have to experience it. But I think this moment you're at right now, Faisal, that is more accelerated than ever before, because technology is changing so fast.

Faisal Hanafi

>> It is, it is.

Gemma Allen

>> Talk about the stack here. Talk about Bedrock and Kiro, how they're being utilized in USF and broadly.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Yeah. So if I could take just a moment, when you look at this announcement that we've made, TJ mentioned the experience and what USF does from an academic side and what AWS does from an innovation side, I think really recognizing the strengths of each organization and how they complement each other was at the core of this. The other part that's really foundational to this partnership is the establishment of an advanced, secure research environment at USF and that SRE. I will tell you, we are seeing such a tremendous focus around SREs. Universities are realizing that SREs are allowing their faculty, their students, and their researchers to go from years of creation to just days and months. It just accelerates it dramatically. The other thing that we're finding is universities are really focused on how they can go and think about revenue diversification, how do they actually think about research, more monetization of research as well. I think the SRE also helps to enable that and they're finding it as a way to really accelerate their overall outcomes. Go ahead.

Taylor Johnston

>> And I'll tap in on two of the things from the SRE really is collaboration. So ensuring that if we have a professor at University of South Florida and University of Colorado has a professor and University of Nebraska has a professor that they all have that same collaborative space inside of that Secure Research Environment that has those guardrails on. As we've seen lots of times in the recent years, latest research and the exfiltration of that research and the exfiltration of that knowledge to countries of concern has become an issue. So how do we keep that research and that top-tier talent inside the United States, inside of our AUKUS partners, inside of our NATO partners to make sure that we're getting the best bang out of our buck for our academics.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Yeah, that's right.

Taylor Johnston

>> So those are the two things that are the other parts of that SRE that are really attractive, that collaborative space and the guardrails to ensure that that knowledge stays within the community that we want it to stay in. To Faisal's point on the other economic vehicles, right, grants used to be the foundational part of universities. We do 750 million in grant dollars this year at USF, rapidly growing with a billion dollars in target, but how do we diversify that revenue to look at contracts? Because the government is coming back and DoD, you'll see in the next fiscal year's budget, foundational research and NSF research is actually taking a hit. But where it's actually exploding is that applied research, that component research that's going up and that's all contractual basis. So how do we enable the operator to get a professor who's working on a time and a deliverable that's going to get back to there? So that SRE enables that deliverable and that professor to work on a product to get back to the government.

Gemma Allen

>> It's interesting as someone who has a lot of friends in academia, I know that one of the biggest challenges to grant writing is the actual writing, right? It's the challenge of gathering the data, creating the most compelling argument. And you would hope that AI too could in some ways solve for some of that turn, right? So it's an interesting time where maybe-

Taylor Johnston

>> Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah.

Gemma Allen

>> ... these two worlds will collide in a very positive way.

Taylor Johnston

>> Grant writing's tough a bit and I'd argue that that's a beautiful thing about contracts too because it's all requirements based. The government thinks that they know what they need and AWS and that SRE enables that focusing the research and the topic towards that need. So it's not really going out and finding the brand-new thing. It's taking that requirement and it's just finding a brand-new thing, but enabling that requirement to come back. So it's a slight nuance there.

Gemma Allen

>> So let's talk about this relationship for a second. Academia has always been a very attractive space for hyperscalers and companies like AWS because it embeds the loyalty early on in a technology stack that often continues for decades, right? It's a competitive space too. How do you think about it from the perspective of AWS? I'm sure Microsoft or even Google, they did a great gig a couple of years ago trying to attract folks with Google Classroom, et cetera. How do these two things compete and what do you look for in these relationships? Why is AWS so unique for you, Taylor?

Taylor Johnston

>> For us right now, as Faisal said earlier, it's a meeting of the minds. We're both going after the same things together and it's been a very harmonious relationship of we both have seen what the customers are going after and we just kind of, again, we had basic building blocks, but we didn't really have the lit fuse, I would say, to really go after things together and that's been the best thing. And to your point, that competitive landscape, we often work with small businesses and startups and everything like that and the resources that AWS has been able to bring to the university to help some of these startups too and help them grow, I think is another advantageous part of this relationship.

Faisal Hanafi

>> And I think on the flip side, if I may, one of the things that we're seeing is higher education has really been at the core of innovation for the United States globally and for the economy. And I will tell you, you mentioned Kiro and Bedrock, some of the tools that AWS has really come out with, when you think about the capabilities they have, the simplicity of use, the power that these tools have, I think you're going to see innovation in higher education go at an unprecedented accelerated rate. I think it's going to be very, very exciting. I think in the next three to five years and what we're going to see around the application of AI and the advancement of tools in higher education for the private sector, for the public sector, I think is going to be absolutely tremendous.

Gemma Allen

>> So let's talk about those three to five years ahead, especially from the perspective of priorities, right? USF, very interesting defense space, a lot happening in that space, so much money being put into defense tech, as we well know. What are the priorities for this relationship? Where are you guys truly honing in and what do some of those longer tail opportunities look like too? We don't talk about them enough, I think.

Taylor Johnston

>> Yeah. Well, our medical school at University of South Florida is the number one medical school in Florida. That is really where a lot of our focus goes. We have a great partnership with Tampa General Hospital and the university in a symbiotic relationship that we're hoping to bring and work with AWS on that. And that's not just defense tech, that's operator tech. So that's everything from concussive impacts to the brain and spine issues to just being, I'm a former Air Force guy, making sure that my knees still work after 20 years and helping me, and everything from that to MRIs to radiology and that type of partnership. So it's not really just defense tech, it's everything around that soldier, sailor, airmen, guardian, marine. The other side of that, as we looked at the higher classifications levels, we're looking at everything from electronic warfare to radiofrequency jamming to models and analysis of computer vision for targeting. So there's kind of the two deep wells that we're going to go after and especially on the medical side, that's three, five years out. A lot of the iterative cycle that you're seeing in the Eastern Europe AOR and also in the Central Command AOR, the iterative cycle and how to speed that up and make it at the speed of need is really where we're going to be focusing our efforts.

Gemma Allen

>> Speed of need. That is an interesting-

Faisal Hanafi

>> I like that. I'm going to remember that.

Gemma Allen

>> ... I love that, I can coin that too.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Yep.

Gemma Allen

>> I'll quote you, Taylor. Faisal, talk about the speed of need. What does that look like for AWS? What is the core need right now? Where are the priorities?

Faisal Hanafi

>> Yeah. So I think our mental model is very straightforward and it's been very consistent. Our focus is to work backwards from our customers' business outcomes and do what we can to play a role to accelerate those outcomes. I think you're going to see in the public sector, I think you're going to see more and more interest in wanting to innovate, whether it's on the government side of call it state and local government, where governments are trying to improve citizen experience, improve resiliency, reduce operating costs and then you think about what we could do with the DoW or the DoE and what we can do to enable their mission. When I look at that entire landscape, I think at the core is going to be the innovation that AWS and higher ed institutions like USF can actually go and collaborate with those mission entities to go accelerate those outcomes. So I think you're going to see us really lean in even further with our higher ed partners, think about additional kind of capabilities and partnerships we can create, and figure out how do we just go really, really fast.

Gemma Allen

>> Well, it's certainly an exciting time and at the core of this is a safer and a stronger society.

Taylor Johnston

>> That's right, yes.

Gemma Allen

>> Taylor and Faisal, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE.

Taylor Johnston

>> Thank you so much for having us.

Faisal Hanafi

>> Thanks for having us.

Gemma Allen

>> I'm Gemma Allen here with theCUBE at AWS Summit 2026 in Washington DC. We have some great conversations coming up. We're talking sovereign cloud, cybersecurity, and what AI actually means for a government worker. Don't go away.