Hendler part of DoD/MoD International Technology Alliance contract

An IBM research team that includes ISR-affiliated Professor James Hendler (CS) and other University of Maryland faculty recently were awarded an International Technology Alliance (ITA) contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

ECE Professor Virgil Gligor is the principal investigator for the University of Maryland project, while Hendler is co-PI. The team will work in "Security in Systems of Systems" and "Distributed Coalition Planning and Decision Making." The group will receive $3.5 million over the lifetime of the contract, which will last approximately 10 years.

ITA is a new bilateral, cooperative technology concept created by MoD and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL). It will bring together a consortium of industry and academia from both sides of the Atlantic to tackle complex information network issues crucial to future coalition military operations. The consortium will take full advantage of the joint development of emerging technologies. ITA will draw on MoD's experience with defense technology centers and ARL's Collaborative Technology Alliances (CTA) program. ITA's business model is based heavily on the CTA model, an effort led in part by Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR).

Research will be conducted in network theory, network security for highly mobile ad-hoc networks, sensor and information fusion, and distributed coalition planning and decision making, with emphasis on the synergistic combination of these technologies in support of a tactical coalition force. The ITA program also provides a mechanism that helps transition fundamental research results to military and commercial applications.

| ITA program bulletin | Information on the CTA program |

Published May 31, 2006