2009

NSF Collaborative Research: Next-Generation Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation with a Focus on Embedded Control and Systems Biology

Professor Rance Cleaveland (CS/ISR) is the principal investigator and Professor Steve Marcus (ECE/ISR) is a co-PI for the University of Maryland’s portion of a major new National Science Foundation collaborative research grant, “Next-Generation Model Checking and Abstract Interpretation with a Focus on Embedded Control and Systems Biology.” The five-year, $10 million project is part of NSF’s “Expeditions in Computing” initiative. Maryland’s part of the project is worth $1.8 million. Along with Marcus, Tongtong Wu of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health is also a co-PI. The consortium will develop new computational tools to help scientists and engineers analyze and understand the behavior of the complex models they develop for application domains ranging from systems biology to embedded control. Building on the success of model checking and abstract interpretation (MCAI), two well-established methods for automatically verifying properties of digital circuit designs and embedded software, this research project will extend the MCAI paradigm to systems with complex continuous dynamics and probabilistic behaviors. The research will include: understanding the precursors and course of pancreatic cancer; predicting the onset of atrial fibrillation; and obtaining deep design-time insights into the behavior of automotive and aerospace control systems. Ultimately, the project is expected to provide vital tools that will enable health care researchers to discover better treatments for disease and will allow engineers to build safer aircraft and other complex systems.

NSF CIF Small: Information Theoretic Multi-Core Processor Thermal Profile Estimation

Associate Professor Ankur Srivastava (ECE/ISR) is the PI and Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) is co-PI for a three-year, $450,000 NSF grant for “Information Theoretic Multi-Core Processor Thermal Profile Estimation.” This research will provide a new approach to the problem of managing multi-core processor thermal sensors and processing their measurements. It will rely on fundamental information theoretic principles, new problems in information theory that capture the salient features of on-chip thermal profile estimation. The associated new formulations are inspired notably by rate distortion theory and also bear a similarity to compressed sensing. Furthermore, the approach has wider applicability to general problems of parameter estimation based on limited sampled and quantized measurements. The research will improve the performance and reliability of multicore processors; and introduce new models and problem formulations in the fields of information theory and compressed sensing.

NIH DCCPS: Predictors of Speech Quality after Tongue Cancer Surgery

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson is a co-PI for an NIH grant from the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) for "Predictors of Speech Quality after Tongue Cancer Surgery." Prof. Espy-Wilson's portion of the five-year, $2.8 million grant is $422,761. Tongue cancer surgery is a life saving procedure, but it typically leaves patients physically and mentally damaged, with speech communication difficulties that are in play every day. This research will improve the speech outcome of tongue cancer surgery by minimizing the impact of the tongue reconstruction and understanding the contributions of patient and surgical factors, so patients can communicate more clearly and confidently. Espy-Wilson will develop 3-D vocal tract models based on cine-MRI data to perform acoustic analysis of patients' speech signals to understand the effects of the tongue surgery on speech quality. The ultimate goal is to develop a procedure to help surgeons choose the best placement of a flap of tissue that is taken from elsewhere in the body to replace the removed cancerous tissue to maximize patients' speech quality.

NSF CIF Medium Collaborative Research: Cooperative Networking across the Layers

Professor Tony Ephremides is the principal investigator (PI) on an NSF grant, "Cooperative Networking Across the Layers." The three-year, $371,166 grant is part of a larger collaborative project. The research will go beyond the physical layer in defining and analyzing cooperative techniques for wireless networks. By incorporating higher layer properties such as traffic dynamics and access control Ephremides and his fellow researchers will develop a new theoretical framework for analyzing and designing cooperative networking algorithms across the layers.

DARPA: Adaptive Environment for Supercompiling with Optimized Parallelism (AESOP)

Associate Professor Rajeev Barua (ECE/ISR) is the PI and Professor Rance Cleaveland (CS/ISR) is a co-PI for a DARPA research grant, Adaptive Environment for Supercompiling with Optimized Parallelism (AESOP). The University of Maryland will collaborate with BAE Systems Inc and Princeton University on this four-year, $11.5 million program; Maryland’s share is $2.53 million. Reflecting the belief that serial programs will continue to represent the vast majority of programs in the world, AESOP will develop a state-of-the-art compiler that can automatically compile serial programs into parallel programs to a wide variety of platforms. Unlike existing efforts which have focused on regular, scientific programs alone, the AESOP project will use an aggressive suite of existing methods and new techniques that the researchers have developed to extract large-amounts of scalable parallelism even from seemingly serial irregular programs. This will enable software to exploit the full potential of the hardware in the modern multi-core era. Further, the compiler will accurately characterize and compile to a wide variety of computer systems without any manual effort.

NSF: Nanofabrication Using Viral Biotemplates for MEMS Applications

Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the PI for a three-year, $401,712 NSF grant, "Nanofabrication Using Viral Biotemplates for MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) Applications." The research will make use of the self-assembly and metal-binding properties of a biological nanostructure, the Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), in the development of novel functional materials and fabrication processes for energy microsystems applications. The TMV is a high aspect ratio cylindrical plant virus that can be genetically engineered to include amino acids with enhanced metal-binding properties. These genetic modifications facilitate electroless plating of the molecules as well as self-assembly onto various substrates. The developed processes will be incorporated in the fabrication of new, nanostructured small-scale energy storage devices.

NSF Theoretical Foundations: Network Pricing with Uncertainty: Risk Aversion and Incomplete Information

Associate Professor Richard La (ECE/ISR) received an NSF Theoretical Foundations grant for "Network pricing with uncertainty: risk aversion and incomplete information." The three-year, $300K grant will begin to identify suitable frameworks for designing efficient and fair network pricing mechanisms. The research will take the first step towards identifying suitable frameworks for designing efficient and fair network pricing mechanisms. It will help service providers identify more suitable pricing schemes that will encourage the deployment of new services through fair profit sharing and improved efficiency. This will promote collaboration among selfish service providers and bring more network services and lower prices to the consumers, while increasing the overall social benefits/welfare.

NSF Collaborative Research: Knowledge Representation and Design for Managing Product Obsolescence

ISR-affiliated Professor Peter Sandborn (ME) received an NSF collaborative research grant for Knowledge Representation and Design for Managing Product Obsolescence. The two-year, $105K grant will investigate two novel research approaches to understanding and managing technology obsolescence challenges. Sandborn will build a knowledge representation scheme and management system that can facilitate information sharing and collaboration for obsolescence management and mitigation efforts between existing tools and across different organizations. He also will develop fundamental principles, teachable methods, and guidelines for designing product architectures that can evolve with changing requirements, enabling proactive obsolescence management across the entire product life cycle. The research will provide an opportunity to create cost-effective, and environmental friendly products at faster pace.

NSF Collaborative Research: Combining Gradient and Adaptive Search in Simulation Optimization

Professor Michael Fu (BMGT/ISR/ECE) is the principal investigator and Professor Steve Marcus (ECE/ISR) is the co-PI for a three-year, $350K NSF collaborative research grant, Combining Gradient and Adaptive Search in Simulation Optimization. The researchers will develop new simulation optimization algorithms based on different sequences of the so-called "reference distributions" in a recently developed approach called model reference adaptive search, and new hybrid global-local search algorithms integrating local gradient search and problem structure. They also will conduct rigorous theoretical analysis of the resulting algorithms, both finite-time behavior using an adaptive search framework and asymptotic behavior using a novel connection to stochastic approximation methods. A wide variety of applications from supply chain management to financial engineering will be tested to investigate specific gradient search algorithms and problem structure, and evaluating the effectiveness in terms of empirical behavior. This line of research fills an important part of the "analytics" computational tool kit that has led to increased competitiveness for US businesses from manufacturers and retailers with global supply chains to financial services managing complex risk factors.

NSF: Tribologically-Enhanced Encapsulated Microball Bearings for Reduced Friction and Wear in High-Performance Rotary Microactuators and PowerMEMS Devices

Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) received a three-year, $330,000 NSF grant for research on microball bearing systems with an emphasis on material interfaces for MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) applications. Ghodssi is the PI for "Tribologically-Enhanced Encapsulated Microball Bearings for Reduced Friction and Wear in High-Performance Rotary Microactuators and PowerMEMS Devices." The research will develop high-performance rotary ball bearings for MEMS using special, tribologically-enhanced thin-film coatings. Particular emphasis will be placed on the design, fabrication, and experimental characterization of the thin films as hard coatings to reduce friction and wear in microscale rolling contacts. The research will be implemented in a low-friction, low-wear, and long-lifecycle microball bearing for rotary microactuators and PowerMEMS devices.

Maryland Nanobiotechnology Research and Industry Competition Grant: A Micro-Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with Nanostructured Platinum Catalysts Using the Tobacco Mosaic Virus

Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a $250,000 FY2009 Maryland Nanobiotechnology Research and Industry Competition Grant for “A Micro-Direct Methanol Fuel Cell with Nanostructured Platinum Catalysts Using the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.” The research will develop fuel cells with surface area nano-structured electrodes using the Tobacco mosaic virus. The TMV is a high aspect ratio plant nanostructure which can be genetically modified to include functional groups that facilitate electroless metal deposition and self-assembly onto gold surfaces. This biotemplating process has been integrated with standard micro-machining for the development of micro-fabricated batteries.

DOE EFRC: Science of Precision Multifunctional Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage

Former ISR Director and Professor Gary Rubloff (MSE/ISR) will lead a new Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) as part of a major new U.S. Department of Energy program. Rubloff, who directs the Maryland NanoCenter, will draw faculty groups from three colleges—The A. James Clark School of Enginering; Chemical and Life Sciences; and Computer, Math and Physical Sciences. EFRCs enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to U.S. energy security. The University of Maryland EFRC will address the "Science of Precision Multifunctional Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage." Its objective is to understand how nanostructures formed from multiple materials behave and their potential for a new generation of electrical energy storage technology. By using materials in precisely built nanostructures, energy storage devices will hold more energy, will charge or deliver electricity faster, and remain stable for longer lifetimes, while reducing space and weight.

AFOSR MURI: Distributed Learning and Information Dynamics in Networked Autonomous Systems

Professor John Baras (ECE/ISR), ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Nuno Martins (ECE/ISR) will be participating in an Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI, "Distributed Learning and Information Dynamics in Networked Autonomous Systems." Maryland's portion of the award is $2.7 million. Georgia Tech is the lead institution, and Jeff Shamma, who was an ISR Distinguished Lecturer in February 2009, is the principal investigator. This award was made in MURI category 16: Learning Decision Architectures for Intelligent Cooperative Control of Autonomous Systems. The research will set a foundation that enables advanced operations of teams of autonomous vehicles to learn and adapt in uncertain and hostile environments while effectively using communications resources. The research will include studies of learning under sparse communications, game theoretic learning, and on-line formation of desirable network architectures. There will be implications for key problems in social, economic and biological networks.

ONR MURI: Figure-Ground Processing, Saliency and Guided Attention for Analysis of Large Natural Scenes

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) will contribute to an Office of Naval Research (ONR) MURI, "Figure-Ground Processing, Saliency and Guided Attention for Analysis of Large Natural Scenes." Maryland's portion of the award is $1.3 million. This award was made in MURI category 5: Bio-inspired Autonomous Agile Sensing and Exploitation of Regions of Interest within Wide Complex Scenes. The research will advance the computational architecture of sensors in large acquisition systems so that surveillance tasks in large natural scenes with complex imagery can be better accomplished. Shamma's contribution will be to define regions of interest both spatially and perceptually; to describe how visual and auditory search on the perceptual objects is guided by bottom-up saliency and by top-down knowledge of target features; to to search among these potential targets with a specific goal in mind; and to transfer the knowledge obtained from the neurophysiology, perceptual psychophysics and neural modeling into algorithms and architectures for solving problems of relevance.

AFOSR: Quantifying and Assuring Information Transfer in Dynamic Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

ISR-affiliated Professor Christopher Davis (ECE) and Civil Engineering Research Professor Stuart Milner have been awarded a three-year grant worth $1,048,279 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). The grant will support "Quantifying and Assuring Information Transfer in Dynamic Heterogeneous Wireless Networks." Milner will serve as the Principal Investigator (PI) while Davis will serve as Co-PI. The research will focus on network architectures and protocols that support information transfer. The researchers will address information-centric topology management and control vis-à-vis network topology management and control, with the intent of providing new analytical and mathematical tools to understand the factors affecting communications in complex wireless networks and their effect on network performance.

MIPS: Advanced speech enhancement software

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is working with Baltimore-based Juxtopia LLC on a $168,960 grant to develop advanced speech enhancement software for Juxtopia's augmented reality products that need speech recognition to work in noisy environments.

MIPS: Hand-held disagnostic instrument

Associate Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR) is partnering with the Rockville-based company Innovative Biosensors Inc. on a $235,596 grant to develop a hand-held diagnostic instrument for Group B Streptococcus, a type of bacteria that causes illness in newborn babies, pregnant women and the elderly. The device will enable rapid, automated detection for clinicians at the point of care.

NSF: Theories and algorithms to perform non-intrusive forensic analysis on multimedia devices and digital content

ISR-affiliated Associate Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS) is the co-PI for a three-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for theories and algorithms to perform non-intrusive forensic analysis on multimedia devices and digital content. Former ISR faculty member K.J. Ray Liu is the principal investigator (PI). The goal is to develop a holistic forensic framework to gather traces of evidence and answer who has done what, when, where, and how.

2008

NSF: Towards Modeling Mobile Wireless Networks—When Connectivity Meets Mobility

Professor Armand Makowski (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator, and Associate Professor Richard La (ECE/ISR) is the co-PI for a new National Science Foundation grant, Towards Modeling Mobile Wireless Networks—When Connectivity Meets Mobility. The three-year, $260K grant will explore how different notions of network connectivity shape resource allocation in the presence of node mobility. The researchers will explore how different notions of network connectivity shape resource allocation (e.g., energy) in the presence of node mobility.

NSF CDI-Type 1: High-Performance Simulations and Interactive Visualization for Automated Nanoscale Assembly

Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation CDI-Type 1 grant, High-Performance Simulations and Interactive Visualization for Automated Nanoscale Assembly. The three-year, $550K grant will develop a fundamental understanding of the interaction of nanocomponents with trapping fields. Amitabh Varshney (CS) is the co-PI. The research will lead to a reliable, efficient, and automated assembly process for fabricating nanocomponent-based devices. This assembly process will enable nanotechnology researchers to explore new design possibilities in nano electronics, nano photonics, and bio-inspired sensors.

NSF: Common Randomness, Multiuser Secrecy and Tree Packing

Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation grant, Common Randomness, Multiuser Secrecy and Tree Packing. The three-year, $400K grant will take a multiuser information theoretic approach to investigate innate theoretical connections that exist between multiuser source and channel coding, information theoretic network security, and combinatorial tree packing algorithms in theoretical computer science.

NSF Collaborative Research: Multivariate positive definite polynomials and their applications via SDP

Professor Alexander Barg (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation Collaborative Research grant, Coding for Nano-Devices, Flash Memories, and VLSI Circuits. The three-year, $299K grant will explore applications of coding theory to digital circuit design. Over the past 50 years, error-control coding has been employed with spectacular success by the communications and data storage industries to achieve performance trade-offs that would have been otherwise impossible. What has been recognized only recently is that coding theory could be just as useful in applications other than communications and storage. The research will address a spectrum of technologies ranging from nanoscale circuits and memory chips to more conventional VLSI architectures. Problems in each technology are inherent to the physics of the underlying medium or system.

Navy STTR: Speech Separation

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is a subcontractor for a Navy Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award to Signal Processing, Inc. of Rockville, Md., A Novel Speech Separation Approach for Enhanced Speaker Identification and Speech Recognition. This is an 18-month award for $103,066. In this grant, Signal Processing, Inc. will use a speech enhancement algorithm developed by Espy-Wilson in a noise suppression system it is developing. Espy-Wilson’s algorithm is based on modified phase opponency (MPO) and does not require noise estimation.

NSF: Multipitch Tracking

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a one-year, $125,000 NSF award, Robust Intelligence: Extension of the APP Detector for Multipitch Tracking and Speaker Separation. The research will extend an existent periodicity and pitch estimation process to higher dimensions, arriving at a multi-dimensional periodicity function which is not susceptible to the harmonic interaction artifacts. This will help users of cochlear implants encounter problems in separating speakers in multi-speaker environments.

NSF Collaborative Research: Multivariate positive definite polynomials and their applications via SDP

Professor Alexander Barg (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation Collaborative Research grant, Multivariate positive definite polynomials and their applications via SDP. The three-year, $114K grant will study point allocations on the real sphere and related configurations using methods of distance geometry, coding theory, and semidefinite programming. Applications of the point sets studied include communication theory, numerical analysis, the meshing problem, data representation, and localization in sensor networks.

NSF: Compiler-Directed System Optimization of a Highly-Parallel Fine-Grained Chip Multiprocessor

Associate Professor Rajeev Barua (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator and Professor Uzi Vishkin (ECE/UMIACS) is co-principal investigator of a three-year, $400,000 National Science Foundation grant, Compiler-Directed System Optimization of a Highly-Parallel Fine-Grained Chip Multiprocessor. This project will study compiler optimizations for the XMT multiprocessor designed in the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland.

AFOSR: Networked guidance and control for mobile multi-agent systems: a multi-terminal (network) information theoretic approach

Assistant Professor Nuno Martins (ECE/ISR) has received a three-year, $270,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for "Networked guidance and control for mobile multi-agent systems: a multi-terminal (network) information theoretic approach." This research will develop computationally efficient methods for the joint design of guidance/control and wireless communication modules for multi-agent networked control systems.

DARPA YFA: Silicon/Elastomer Components for Autonomous Jumping Microrobots

Assistant Professor Sarah Bergbreiter (ME/ISR) has received a 2008 Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The $150,000 award is titled, "Silicon/Elastomer Components for Autonomous Jumping Microrobots." The research will develop the mechanisms necessary to build a robust autonomous jumping microrobot.

MMF: Measurement of Near-Field Energy Absorption from Wireless Devices

Professor Christopher C. Davis, with his colleagues Dr. Quirino Balzano, Professor Robert Gammon, and Dr. Vildana Hodzic, has been awarded a contract by the Mobile Manufacturers Forum (MMF) to develop a new method for measurement of the near-field energy absorption from wireless devices, especially mobile phones. The one year contract is for $293,000 with an optional extension of $115,000.

MASINT Research NCMR: Handheld Cell-Based BioSensor for Complex Samples

ISR professors are partnering with Innovative Biosensors, Inc. (IBI) on a $1.8 million grant to develop a handheld device for detecting pathogens from the National Consortium for Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Research NCMR. Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR), Associate Professor Benjamin Shapiro (AE/ISR), and ECE-affiliated Associate Professor Elisabeth Smela (ME) will be contributing their research on cell-based sensors to the project. "Handheld Cell-Based BioSensor for Complex Samples" will develop a miniaturized analysis system that could be used in industrial, environmental and clinical fields.

2007

AFOSR YIP: Fly ear-inspired sensors on a micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (MOEMS) platform for use in micro air vehicles

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Miao Yu received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Award for her research proposal to study the development of fly ear-inspired sensors on a micro-opto-electro-mechanical system (MOEMS) platform for use in micro-air-vehicles. As a part of this research, a novel bio-inspired localization scheme with adaptive capabilities will be studied by using a single sensor with autonomous position control. The total award is $308K for three years, and supports Professor Yu’s research on bio-inspired small-scale sensors.

NIH: Feedback Control of Respiration Induced Tumor Motion with a Treatment Couch

Professors Warren D'Souza (Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Maryland Medical School), K. J. Ray Liu (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research), and Thomas McAvoy (Emeritus, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; ISR, and Bioengineering) have received a five-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for their proposal titled "Feedback Control of Respiration Induced Tumor Motion with a Treatment Couch." The project, for which D'Souza serves as the principal investigator, is part of an ongoing effort to develop a novel, more accurate means of delivering radiation therapy to cancerous tumors in the lungs and upper abdominal region.

NSF: Systematic Optimization in Wireless Multicasting

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) and former ECE postdoc Jie (Rockey) Luo, now assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Colorado State University, have received a National Science Foundation (NSF) collaborative research grant for their work on Systematic Optimization in Wireless Multicasting. The three-year grant is worth approximately $234,000. The goal of this research is to develop a systematic framework for maximizing a general multicast utility function via the joint optimization of transmission power, rate, and schedule, within the framework of network coding.

NSF: Correlation, Cooperation and Feedback (CCF) in Multi-User Wireless Communications

Associate Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new three-year, $350,000 NSF grant, Correlation, Cooperation and Feedback (CCF) in Multi-user Wireless Communications. This research will develop a fundamental understanding and a comprehensive theory for optimum distributed coding, transmission, creation and exploitation of correlation in multi-user wireless networks.

NSF: Modeling Wireless Networks: Excursions in the Theory of Random Graphs

Professor Armand Makowski (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a three-year, $225,000 NSF grant for "Modeling Wireless Networks: Excursions in the Theory of Random Graphs." Research will focus on three classes of random graph models: random connection graphs, random intersection graphs and a combination thereof known as Kryptographs.

NASA: Advanced Stochastic Network Queuing Models of the Impact of 4D Trajectory Precision on Aviation System Performance

NEXTOR, the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research, has received a two-year, $1.04 million grant from NASA to evaluate methods of relieving the nation’s overburdened aviation system through improvements to its air traffic control system. “Advanced Stochastic Network Queuing Models of the Impact of 4D Trajectory Precision on Aviation System Performance” will build a large-scale stochastic queuing model of the national airspace system that will allow the Federal Aviation Administration to estimate improvements in performance metrics and reliability afforded by individual technological enhancements to the air traffic control system. Such enhancements could include time-based metering, performance-based services, and paired operations on closely spaced parallel runways.

The principal investigator for the grant is Mark Hansen, professor of civil and environmental engineering with the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. The University of Maryland, MIT and Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) of Rockville, Md. are the subcontractors. Associate Professor David Lovell (CEE/ISR) is the principal investigator for the Maryland portion. Several ISR alumni hold senior positions at IAI.

NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation-Cellular and Biomolecular Engineering (EFRI-CBE): Biofunctionalized Devices—On Chip Signaling and "Rewiring" Bacterial Cell-Cell Communication

Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) and Maryland NanoCenter Director and Professor Gary Rubloff (MSE/ISR/ECE) are part of a new four-year, nearly $2 million National Science Foundation Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation-Cellular and Biomolecular Engineering (EFRI-CBE) grant. EFRI is NSF's newest and most competitive grant; only 12 were awarded in this cycle. The goal of Biofunctionalized Devices—On Chip Signaling and "Rewiring" Bacterial Cell-Cell Communication is to demonstrate signal translation by employing device-based electrical signals to guide the assembly of biosynthetic pathways, cell-based sensors, and cell-based actuators within a microelectromechnical system (MEMS); and to use on-board electrical, magnetic, mechanical, and optical systems to feedback and guide the cell-based system towards user-specified outcomes.

The principal investigator for the project is Professor William Bentley, chair of the University of Maryland's Fischell Department of Bioengineering. In addition to Ghodssi and Rubloff, the investigative team also includes Gregory Payne, director of the Center for Biosystems Research at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. Ghodssi is the principal investigator for the ECE/ISR portion of the grant.

NSF: Optimal Reference Tracking

Assistant Professor Nuno Martins (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new NSF grant, Optimal Reference Tracking, the Next Step in the Design of Controllers for Markovian Jump Linear Systems. Research coming from the two-year, $85,000 award will develop the first collection of methods for designing controllers that achieve optimal reference tracking for randomly time-varying systems.

NSF: Secure Capacity of Wireless Networks

Associate Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, "Secure Capacity of Wireless Networks." The three-year, $250,000 award is a joint grant with Aylin Yener of Penn State University. This is Ulukus's second joint NSF grant with Yener on wireless security. Their previous award, "Multiuser Wireless Security," was granted in 2005. This project takes an information theoretic approach to provide guarantees on information security and information reliability for wireless networks. The research includes the development of a comprehensive wireless network design framework that aims at achieving high capacity and secure transmission for all users.

NSF Computer Systems Research-Embedded and Hybrid Systems (CSR-EHS): Memory Management as a Run-Time Service

Associate Professor Rajeev Barua (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation Computer Systems Research-Embedded and Hybrid Systems (CSR-EHS) grant, "Memory Management as a Run-Time Service." The three-year award is worth $180,000, and will develop a scratch pad memory allocation strategy that is completely implemented inside a binary rewriter.

NSF Collaborative Research: Automatic Generation of Context-Dependent Simplified Models to Support Interactive Virtual Assembly

Associate Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is the principal investigator for a three-year, $242,765 NSF collaborative research grant for Automatic Generation of Context-Dependent Simplified Models to Support Interactive Virtual Assembly. The research will develop a mathematical theory and computational framework for the automatic generation of context-dependent simplified models to support interactive virtual assembly applications. This will enable interactive virtual assembly with provable performance guarantee on low cost personal virtual environment, leading to a significant increase in the use of virtual assembly technology in design and training applications.

NSF: Nonlinear Problems of Solid Mechanics

ISR-affiliated Professor Stuart Antman (Math) has been awarded a two-year, $288,362 National Science Foundation grant for Nonlinear Problems of Solid Mechanics. The researchers will treat a variety of dynamical and steady-state nonlinear problems for deformable rods, shells, and three-dimensional solid bodies that can suffer large and rapid deformations. They hope to develop powerful new mathematical methods for analyzing the large and rapid deformations of solid bodies.

NSF: Robust Speech Recognition

Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is one of the principal investigators of a three-year, $1.8 million National Science Foundation collaborative research grant for "Landmark-based Robust Speech Recognition Using Prosody-Guided Models of Speech Variability." Mary Harper, an affiliate research professor in the University of Maryland Computer Science Department and professor at Purdue University, is co-principal investigator of the University of Maryland portion of the grant. This collaborative project includes research at four other locations: UCLA (Abeer Alwan, PI); University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Jennifer Cole, PI and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, co-PI); Yale University (Louis Goldstein, PI) and Boston University (Elliot Saltzman, PI). The research will develop a system with performance comparable to humans in automatically transcribing unrestricted conversational speech, representing many speakers and dialects, and embedded in adverse acoustic environments.

NSF: Directional Hybrid Wireless Networks

ISR-affiliated Professor Christopher Davis (ECE) and former ISR Research Scientist Stuart Milner (Research Professor, CEE) have been awarded a three-year, $270,000 National Science Foundation grant for Transceiver and Network Technology Developments for Directional Hybrid Wireless Networks. Davis is the principal investigator; Milner is co-principal investigator. The team's prior research, as well as the research of others, has shown that mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) do not scale. In this research Davis and Milner will create a higher communication tier using autonomously configuring directional links in a flexible backbone network that connects MANET-like small clusters in an architecture that is "base-station-like." This research will address important, unsolved research problems in stabilization, pointing, acquisition, tracking (SPAT), bootstrapping, and topology control algorithms needed to make our "hybrid" directional free space optical (FSO) and radio frequency (RF) networks a reality. The research will help to resolve link physics issues that affect the FSO/RF channel, including: (i) fading of the urban hybrid FSO/RF channel; (ii) measurements of temporal and spatial correlation functions on the channel; and (iii) studies of the performance of non-imaging FSO receivers with regard to amelioration of the tip-tilt and beam break-up problems of the FSO channel. The researchers also will build and study new optical wireless nodes with novel design features that make them potentially valuable in indoor optical wireless applications where RF is not desirable because of interference problems, such as in the healthcare industry.

NSF CAREER: Biology-Inspired Miniature Optical Directional Microphones

MURI: Designing Reliable and Secure Tactical MANETs

MURI: Exploiting Nonlinear Dynamics for Novel Sensor Networks

MURI: Biologically-Inspired Flight for Micro Air Vehicles

AFOSR: Building High-Performance Trusted Computing Platforms

ISR affiliated Associate Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS) and Associated Professor Gang Qu (ECE/UMIACS) received a grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for research on novel applications of data hiding in computer programs. Wu is the principal investigator (PI) and Qu is co-PI for the 3-year, $300,000 effort that aims at building high-performance trusted computing platforms.

Performance and security are two of the most important design requirements for computing systems that carry out critical defense and commercial missions. This research effort will investigate building a high-performance trusted computing platform based on novel data hiding algorithms that embed information into compiled program binaries. The embedded data can be extracted during the program’s execution to facilitate the system in enhancing system-wide performance and providing trustworthy computing.

NSF CAREER: Distributed control of dynamic systems using a wireless communcation medium: two new paradigms

Assistant Professor Nuno Martins (ECE/ISR) is the recipient of a 2007 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for "Distributed control of dynamic systems using a wireless communcation medium: two new paradigms." Dr. Martins' research will introduce two new paradigms for designing distributed control systems with wireless communication capabilities. Because most mobile wireless communication technologies feature interference, fading and power constraints, analyzing and designing these kinds of networked control systems is significantly more difficult than for wire-line systems. His research will introduce two new paradigms to aid in such design. Networked preview control specifies a framework consisting of a wireless network of spatially-distributed sensors and one controller. Given a disturbance field, networked preview control aims at using the remote sensors to provide the controller with disturbance preview information. Design of cooperative control strategies for a mix of mobile and static agents aims to attain pre-specified communication objectives.

2006

NSF: Electrophoretic Displays for Urban Traffic Information and Control

Associate Professor David Lovell (CEE/ISR) has been awarded a three year, $213,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop electrophoretic, retroreflective displays for conveyance of transportation-related information. The project, "Electrophoretic Displays for Urban Traffic Information and Control," will develop and test a novel display technology that is both electophoretic (involves the movement and/or rotation of charged particles in response to electric fields) and variably retroreflective, which means that incident light upon the display device is reflected (when desired) in the direction whence it came.  If successful, these display technologies might lead to such developments as electronically switchable roadway paints and tunnel walls that display messages.

NASA Collaborative Research: Dynamic, Stochastic Models for Managing Air Traffic Flows

Professor Michael Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) and Associate Professor David Lovell (CEE/ISR) are co-principal investigators on a new three-year, $728,000, collaborative research project for NASA, “Dynamic, Stochastic Models for Managing Air Traffic Flows.”  The University of Maryland is the prime institution for the project. Other team members include Berkeley, MIT, Virginia Tech, and Metron Aviation.

NSF Collaborative Research: Digital Fingerprinting: Information-Theoretic Analysis and Code Design

Professor Alexander Barg (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator on a three-year, $278,000 National Science Foundation grant, "Collaborative Research: Digital Fingerprinting: Information-Theoretic Analysis and Code Design." The research involves information-theoretic and code design issues of digital fingerprinting. Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) is co-PI for the project, which also involves collaborative research with the University of California, Riverside.

Digital fingerprinting is a technique designed to protect copyrighted contents, such as software, images, audio signals, and multimedia, from unauthorized distribution by non-compliant users. The primary objective of this research is to use information- and coding-theoretic methods to determine the capacity limit, or the maximum number of users with reliably fingerprinted data, that can be managed by the distributor, and to construct new, large-scale digital fingerprinting schemes.

NSF CI-TEAM Implementation Project: Collaborative Research: Cyber-Infrastructure for Engineering Informatics Education

Associate Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is the principal investigator for a two-year, $225,000 NSF CI-TEAM grant that will create a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach to engineering informatics education. The team will use the domain of biologically-inspired robotic systems as a means of engaging engineering and computer science students in the creation of physically realized systems. These systems have been shown to have important applications in medicine, civil engineering, search and rescue, and homeland security. This project will also develop and deploy the novel cyber-infrastructure and software tools needed to advance the state-of-the-art in bio-inspired robotic systems and biologically-inspired robotics education.

NSF Collaborative Research: NeTS-NBD: Optimal Channel-Aware Access Control in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a one-year, $53,359 NSF Collaborative Research grant that will develop a formal methodology for analyzing channel-aware random access in wireless networks. Models will be developed that incorporate, amongst other parameters, channel state as a central aspect of their formulation, and the use of cross-cutting tools to analyze the performance of such networks. The mathematical backbone from which the model and resulting solutions arise in this project are optimization and game theory. Models will be built that merge channel awareness and capture. In addition, the project will foster a better understanding of the use of opportunism in random access, and of the ways in which degrees of freedom can be allocated in multiple-antenna random access. The impact of the underlying physical medium on the performance of access schemes could be considerable, particularly in wireless settings where the channel is highly dynamic and is impacted by myriad changes in the surrounding environment.

NSF SGER: Integrated InP Microcantilever Biosensors Using Chitosan Interface Layer

Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a one-year, $75,000 NSF SGER grant that will develop a foundation for investigating the selective deposition and opto-mechanical characterization of chitosan biopolymer material on the InP optical MEMS/NEMS detection platform. The proposed design will will enable single-chip portable detection of biohazards. Resulting devices will be small, inexpensive, and will require minimal sample preparation and no external readout equipment. This technology will result in developing microcantilever sensors to screen for diseases and biohazard agents at remote locations without the need for highly qualified laboratory technicians or equipment.

NSF TCHCS: Free Space Optical and RF Wireless Hybrid Communication: Information Theoretic Models, Analysis and Fundamental Performance Limits

Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) has received a three-year, $270,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Electrical and Communication Systems Division to conduct research on free-space optical and radio frequency (RF) wireless hybrid communication systems. Narayan and his students will investigate a new class of information theoretic models for a hybrid wireless RF and optical communication system. The main objectives of their research are to characterize fundamental limits of performance, and to provide qualitative and quantitative guidelines for the design and optimal use of the components of the hybrid models.

NSF ITR CYBERTRUST: Information Theoretic Secret Key Generation in a Network: Principles and Constructions

Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) is principal investigator (PI) of a recent three-year, $480,000 grant from the NSF's Division of Computer and Communication Foundations to study information theoretic network security. Professor Alexander Barg (ECE/ISR) is co-PI of this project. Using ideas from information theory and coding theory, secret keys for network users will be constructed in this project by exploiting connections with distributed multi-terminal data compression. Algorithmic aspects of secret key generation in wireless networks will be supported by InterDigital Communications Corporation located in King of Prussia, PA, through the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) Strategic Partners Program.

NIH NIDCD: Neural Correlates of Streaming of Complex Sounds

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new five-year, $1.57 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. "Neural Correlates of Streaming of Complex Sounds " is sponsored by NIH's National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. Co-PIs are ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology) and Jonathan Fritz, an assistant research scientist at ISR.

The project combines psychoacoustic and physiological investigations of a fundamental perceptual component of auditory scene analysis known as auditory streaming. Auditory streaming is the everyday ability of humans and animals to parse complex acoustic information from multiple sound sources into meaningful auditory "streams." For instance, the ability to listen to someone at a cocktail party or to follow a violin in the orchestra both seem to rely on the ability to form auditory streams.

The researchers believe that streaming in complex environments is based on extracting stimulus regularities at various levels of representation, ranging from simple (peripheral) tonotopy to higher-level temporal and spectral features. They also hypothesize that streaming is reflected in, and can be predicted by, the response properties of neurons in the auditory cortex. The results will be important in developing sensory prostheses and in acoustic-based human-computer interaction. The Clark School team is collaborating with Andrew Oxenham, formerly of MIT, now with the University of Minnesota. 

DoD MURI: Cognitive Architecture for Reasoning about Adversaries

Professor Dana Nau (CS/ISR) and ISR-affiliated UMIACS Director V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/UMIACS) are the principal investigators for “Cognitive Architecture for Reasoning about Adversaries,” a project selected as one of 30 winning proposals in this year's Department of Defense (DOD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) competition. The three-year project is funded at $3.4 million, with an option for two additional years. The cross-disciplinary team also includes Professor Michael Fu (BGMT/ISR). The project is within the “Dynamic, Adaptive Techniques for Adversary Behavior Modeling” MURI category and will be funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). | more |

NSF DDDAS: Dynamic Real-Time Order Promising and Fulfillment for Global Make-to-Order Supply Chains

Professor Michael Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) is the principal investigator and Professor Michael Fu (BGMT/ISR) is the co-principal investigator for a three-year, $633,000 NSF award for "Dynamic Real-Time Order Promising and Fulfillment for Global Make-to-Order Supply Chains." It is part of the new National Science Foundation Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems (DDDAS) program.

NSF DDDAS: Data-Driven Power System Operations

ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) and ISR-affiliated UMIACS Director V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/UMIACS) are co-principal investigators of a new three-year, $320,000 National Science Foundation award for "Data-Driven Power System Operations." The principal investigator is Assistant Professor Alan Sussman (CS/UMIACS). Dr. Priya Ranjan, an ISR research associate, is also participating in the project. This is a collaborative project involving another NSF grant with the same title to the University of Illinois. | Read more about the grants |

2005

NSF: The Development of Low-Level Speaker-Specific Information for Speaker Recognition

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) has received a new National Science Foundation (NSF) grant for "The Development of Low-Level Speaker-Specific Information for Speaker Recognition." This three-year, $431,000 grant investigates properties in the speech signal that can help recognize even people who are trying to conceal their identities. Espy-Wilson will identify these properties and develop automatic algorithms that will reliable extract speaker-specific information from the speech signal. Possible application include diagnostic tools for speech disorders, speech training aids, personalized human-computer interaction, and speech recognition. Espy-Wilson also has received a grant in NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program to support undergraduate students in her "Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge and Speech Recognition" research, which is also supported by NSF.

ONR: High Altitude Relay Router Package: Optical/RF Data Links

ISR-affiliated Professor Christopher Davis (ECE) and his Maryland Optics Group, together with co-principal investigator and ISR-affiliated Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner (CEE), have been awarded a research contract by the Office of Naval Research for "High Altitude Relay Router Package: Optical/RF Data Links." This three-year, $2.7 million contract is shared with a sub-contractor, Techno-Sciences, Inc., of Lanham Maryland. The team will construct novel common aperture hybrid free space optical (FSO)/RF communication transceivers mounted on high-performance gimbal stages. These will point to, acquire, and track directional beam wireless links that are fast and physically secure.

NSF MRI: Development of Energy-Efficient Embedded Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation major research instrumentation (MRI) grant. "Development of Energy-Efficient Embedded Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks" is a three-year, $400,000 grant that will develop experimental prototypes of intelligent, energy-efficient embedded systems for use in nodes of sensor networks. The goal is to translate ongoing research on energy efficiency to development of advanced sensors that incorporate as many energy-saving features as possible, while at the same time remaining light, small, inexpensive and relatively flexible. Co-PIs for this grant are Assistant Professors Rajeev Barua (ECE/ISR), Gang Qu (ECE) and Peter Petrov (ECE). Assistant Professors Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR) and Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR), as well as Associate Professor Bruce Jacob are also investigators for this project.

NSF/NIH CRCNS: An Integrated Locomotion Model for Lamprey Swimming

Professor Avis Cohen (Biology/ISR) is the principal investigator for a five-year project, "An Integrated Locomotion Model for Lamprey Swimming." Dr. Cohen will investigate whether steady locomotion in a predictable environment requires only the neuromechanical system's central pattern generator (CPG) without other input, and whether in an unpredictable environment, sensory feedback combined with strong intersegmental coupling is necessary. This grant in the National Science Foundation/ National Institutes of Health Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program is funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Honda Initiation Grant: Cortical Analysis Audio Scene and Speech

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) has received a Honda Initiation Grant (HIG) for his robotics work, "Cortical Analysis Audio Scene and Speech." This research applies biologically inspired principles of auditory cortical processing to analysis and representation of sound in humanoid robots. Specifically, Shamma will tackle auditory scene analysis, often known as the "Cocktail Party Problem"--how to focus on a single auditory stream in a multistream environment. He will also use the biologically inspired principles to detect and enhance speech signals in noisy and reverberant environments.

Honda Initiation Grant: Probabilistic Framework for Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge Based Continuous Speech Recognition

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) received an HIG for "Probabilistic Framework for Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge Based Continuous Speech Recognition." The program is designed to discover and engage future university research partners for cutting-edge technology in broad areas.

ARL CAPCB: Microball Bearing Technology in Silicon for Power MEMS

Associate Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) has been awarded a three-year, $550,000 grant by the Army Research Laboratory's Cooperative Agreement Power Component Branch under its Sensors and Electron Devices Directorate. The project, Microball Bearing Technology in Silicon for Power MEMS, plans to improve the efficiency and reliability significantly in compact portable power generators and small engines necessary to meet soldiers' energy needs. A key effort is to investigate the use of MEMS air/fuel control to enhance the efficiency and reliability of small liquid- and gas-fueled power sources used in generator sets, UAVs and fuel cells. Dr. Ghodssi's MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab will be developing a design methodology and microfabrication technology for a rotary electrostatic micromotor supported on microball bearings (see illustration above). The micromotor will be integrated with a mechanical micropump capable of delivering heavy liquids to a fuel atomizer for heat engines and fuel cells.

NSF ITR-Cybertrust: Multiuser Wireless Security

Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) has received a three-year, $240,000 ITR-Cybertrust research grant from the National Science Foundation for her work with Penn State's Aylin Yener on wireless security. "Multiuser Wireless Security" investigates the fundamental design principles of high capacity wireless systems that ensure secure information delivery for multiple users. It includes the development of a comprehensive framework for the design of a multiuser physical layer to achieve high capacity and secure transmissions for all users, preventing intruders and eavesdroppers from disrupting or intercepting communications.

TEDCO: Tech Transfer

ISR-affiliated Professor Mark Shayman has received a $50,000 tech transfer award from Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO). The award will enable Shayman to commercialize software he developed that can detect and eliminate "denial of service" (DoS) attacks on Internet sites. These attacks are designed to shut down a network by flooding it with useless traffic. | Story at the Baltimore Business Journal |

NSF: Integrated Transduction, Actuation, and Control for Cell-Based Sensing

Assistant Professor Pamela Abshire (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation award for "Integrated Transduction, Actuation, and Control for Cell-Based Sensing." Assistant Professor Benjamin Shapiro (AE/ISR) and Associate Professor Elisabeth Smela (ME) are the co-principal investigators for this award. The researchers will be developing and demonstrating enabling technology for cell-based sensing, which has a potential for selectivity, sensitivity and speed that far exceeds current chemical and biological sensors. In addition to olfactory sensing and pathogen detection for national security, this technology has applications in health care, pharmaceutical development and environmental monitoring. The researchers' integrated transduction-actuation-control approach also could have an impact on labs-on-a-chip, microfluidics, and nanotechnology by developing basic technology and techniques for sophisticated manipulation of particles at the micro-scale.

ONR Young Investigator

Congratulations to ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS), who has been selected as an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator. The award will support her research in "Digital Fingerprinting for Multimedia Security and Forensics." It is a three-year, $300,000 award. The program is designed to attract young scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for doing creative research and teaching. The Office of Naval Research believes the Young Investigators are the best and brightest young academic researchers in the country. Min is one of only 28 investigators ONR selected for its awards nationwide, and one of only two from its Mathematical Computer and Information Sciences Division. The competition for this award is fierce; ONR estimates that only 10 percent of the proposals submitted result in an award.

DoD MURI: DAWN: Dynamic Ad-Hoc Wireless Networking

Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR), Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR), and Research Professor Leandros Tassiulas (ECE/ISR) are part of a recently announced Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant under Army Research Office topic "Cross Disciplinary Approach to the Modeling, Analysis and Control." The project name is "DAWN: Dynamic Ad-Hoc Wireless Networking." It will address energy efficiency, cross-layer optimization, interaction between physical layer, MAC, routing, compression, and scalability of protocols. In addition, special attention will be given to sensor networks where there is a need to map mission-specific performance measures to classical networking performance metrics. The lead institution is the University of California, Santa Cruz, where J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves is the principal investigator. The grant provides for up to five years and $5 million in funding, and the Maryland team's portion represents about 20 percent of the total. Dr. Ephremides is the principal investigator for the Maryland portion of the MURI. Besides UCSC and Maryland, other participating institutions include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Stanford University; the University of Illinois Urbana-Chamgaign; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of California, Los Angeles. The MURI is one of 26 Department of Defense awards announced at the end of February.

NSF CAREER: A Network Information Theoretic Approach to Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks

Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR), who won a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award for her research, "A Network Information Theoretic Approach to Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks." The research will investigate the capacity regions and capacity achieving transmit/receive coding/decoding schemes of basic network structures that are building blocks of general ad-hoc multi-hop wireless networks, with an emphasis on the interference channel. It will develop principles of communicating correlated and common data.

NASA ROSS-2004: Phase Fresnel Lens

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) has received a NASA ROSS-2004 award for Phase Fresnel Lens development. This three-year award is worth a total of $450K. The program had significant visibility at NASA this year, in part due to important contributions from two of Ghodssi's graduate students, Brian Morgan and Mike Waits (currently working full time at the Army Research Laboratory while also a Ph.D. student in the ECE department). It holds great potential for space applications. The work was done in collaboration with Dr. John Krizmanic and his colleagues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). This is excellent news for the "MEMS-based Gray-Scale Technology" research activity in Ghodssi's research group, which is currently funded by and in collaboration with ARL.

2004

NSF: Broadband Optical/RF Wireless Networks with Topology and Diversity Control

ISR affiliated Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner (CEE) is the principal investigator for a three-year National Science Foundation grant for "Broadband Optical/RF Wireless Networks with Topology and Diversity Control." ISR-affiliated professors Christopher Davis (ECE), and Mark Shayman (ECE), along with Assistant Professor Steve Gabriel (CEE), are the co-PIs. Broadband wireless networks (up to gigabit per second data rates) deployed in metropolitan areas could form a flexible and re-configurable backbone of base stations (routers) and provide service to both fixed and mobile users. As extensions to the wireline Internet backbone, these high data rate systems could enable such multimedia applications as video surveillances of infrastructure (e.g., buildings; bridges; traffic) and remote environmental sensing. The goals of the project are to develop the software for autonomous network reconfiguration in response to signals blocked by atmospheric effects such as fog, clouds, or heavy rain and the hardware techniques for signaling and intelligent switching between optical wireless and RF media in order to assure required communication rates and to minimize delays. The reconfiguration occurs by switching between communication modalities (RF or FSO) for a given link(s), redistribution of communications traffic within the available FSO or RF channels of the network; and/or creation of new links to other nodes by pointing or steering agile transceivers and, thereby, changing the network physical and logical topology.

NSF: Topics in Complex and Harmonic Analysis

Professor Carlos Berenstein (Math/ISR) is the Principal Investigator for a three-year, $120,000 NSF award for his project, "Topics in Complex and Harmonic Analysis." This project will develop sophisticated mathematical techniques that play a central role in tomographic imaging and analysis of communication networks. The results have potential application to improvement of three-dimensional medical imaging and to increased understanding of internet traffic patterns and security threats.

NSF ITR: Profile-Aware Web: Rules, Proofs and Trust on the Semantic Web

ISR-affiliated Professor James Hendler (CS/ISR) is the Principal Investigator for a three-year, $100,000 NSF ITR award for his project, "Profile-Aware Web: Rules, Proofs and Trust on the Semantic Web." The project will investigate policies for the semantic web, such as the web rules language. This will be expanded to include the specification of security and privacy policies. The project will also develop an inference engine to reason about privacy and trust policies for the semantic web and develop algorithms to enforce the policies.

NSF SGER GOALI: Collaborative Research, Forecasting and Proactive Management of Obsolescence for Sustainment-Dominated Systems

ISR-affiliated Associate Professor Peter Sandborn (ME) is the Principal Investigator for a one-year, $50,000 NSF SGER GOALI award for his project, "Collaborative Research, Forecasting and Proactive Management of Obsolescence for Sustainment-Dominated Systems." The project will explore how industry and academia can collaborate to determine how multiple sources of resources and be combined to impact proactive obsolescence of electronic parts through forecasting and management.

NSF: Feasible Point Optimization Methods for Design and Other Engineering Applications

Professor André Tits (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a three-year, $200,000, National Science Foundation grant for "Feasible Point Optimization Methods for Design and Other Engineering Applications." The research will develop, analyze, implement, and test numerical algorithms for the solution of constrained optimization problems with a large number of inequality constraints. Such problems are common in engineering applications. The resulting algorithms and software should have a significant impact in a wide range of application areas.

NSF: Pushing the Boundaries of AI Planning

Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR) is the Principal Investigator for a one-year, $140,000 NSF award for "Pushing the Boundaries of AI Planning." This project has the goal of developing planner-generalization techniques that can be used to modify AI planning algorithms to remove some of the restrictive assumptions found in classical approaches to AI planning, such as: perfect knowledge about actions and objects and history of the planning environment, static planning environment, instantaneous actions, discrete time, determinism, and black-and-white solution criteria.

NSF/NIH: Innovative Technologies Inspired by Biosonar

Professor Cynthia Moss (Psychology/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new four-year, $1.3 million NSF/NIH grant, "Innovative Technologies Inspired by Biosonar." Co-PIs for this grant are Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR), Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) and and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology). The project aims to advance understanding of the transformation of sensory information to motor commands for adaptive behaviors such as tracking, reaching, grasping and steering around obstacles in the natural environment. A more complete understanding of the computations supporting these vital functions of the nervous system will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. The echolocating bat will be used as a model system because it exhibits rich but well-defined adaptive motor patterns that indicate changing behavioral states. This interdisiplinary project brings together biology, neural recording telemetry, and control systems in novel and important ways. This grant in the NSF/NIH Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS) program is funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

Keck Foundation: Keck Laboratory for Combinatorial Nanosynthesis and Multiscale Characterization

The University of Maryland has received a $750,000 award from the W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles to establish the new Keck Laboratory for Combinatorial Nanosynthesis and Multiscale Characterization. Conceived by Professors Ichiro Takeuchi (MSE), Gary W. Rubloff (MSE/ISR), and Ellen Williams (Physics), the Keck Laboratory will be a centerpiece for pioneering research which extends campus strengths in combinatorial materials science, scanning nanoprobes, and highly controlled materials synthesis profoundly into the nanoscale domain to enable fundamentally new insights into the behavior of materials at the nanoscale. It will be located in the new Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, scheduled to open in January 2005. The W. M. Keck Foundation is one of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations. Established in 1954 by the late William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Co., the Foundation's grantmaking is focused primarily on the areas of medical research, science, and engineering. Story

NIH: Dynamic Sensorimotor Control for Spatial Orientation

Professor Cynthia Moss (Psychology/ISR) and Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR) have received a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's Division of Neuroscience and Basic Behavioral Science, part of the National Institute of Mental Health. The grant is for their work in "Dynamic Sensorimotor Control for Spatial Orientation." It will advance understanding of the integration of auditory information with motor programs for spatially-guided behavior in mammals. It will also advance general understanding of auditory information processing and adaptive motor control for spatial orientation. Story

NIH: Spectro-Temporal Plasticity in Primary Auditory Cortex

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new five-year, $1.25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. "Spectro-Temporal Plasticity in Primary Auditory Cortex" is sponsored by NIH's National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders. The co-PI is Jonathan Fritz, a post doctoral researcher at ISR. Auditory experience can cause significant and continuous reorganization and receptive field plasticity in the primary auditory cortex. Auditory cortical cells may undergo rapid, short-term, and context-dependent changes of their receptive field properties when an animal is engaged in different auditory behavioral tasks. This kind of plasticity would likely involve a selective functional reconfiguring of the underlying cortical circuitry to sculpt the most effective receptive field for accomplishing the auditory task. Shamma's research will explore this hypothesis.

NSF: InP-based MEMS-tunable Optical Filters and Switches

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new three-year, $210,000 National Science Foundation grant for InP-based MEMS-tunable Optical Filters and Switches. Madhumita Datta, research associate in the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab, is the co-PI. The objective of the project is to develop and test wavelength-selective widely tunable (1250-1650 nm) resonant microcavity filters and switches by on-chip electrostatic micro-electro-mechanical actuation of indium phosphide (InP) waveguides and highly reflective monolithic horizontal mirrors, for broadband optical networks. A schematic of the in-line static Fabry-Perot filter with InP-air DBR mirrors is shown above.

DURIP: Optical and Radio Frequency Communications Testbed for Scalable Networks

Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR) received a $291,047 DURIP (Defense University Research Instrumentation Program) for “Optical and Radio Frequency Communications Testbed for Scalable Networks.”

DoD MURI: Micro Hovering Air Vehicles: Revolutionary Concepts and Navigation Advancements

Three ISR faculty members are part of a new three-year (with option for two more), $3 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) award from the Department of Defense. Associate Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR), Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Benjamin Shapiro (AE/ISR) will be working on "Micro Hovering Air Vehicles: Revolutionary Concepts and Navigation Advancements." This award focuses on the development of revolutionary concepts and navigation advancements in the emerging research area of micro hovering air vehicles. The principal investigator Dr. Inderjit Chopra (AE). In addition to the ISR faculty, other University of Maryland participants include Ella Atkins, James Baeder, Chris Cadou, Roberto Celi, Alison Flatau, Gordon Leishman, Darryll Pines, Frederic Schmitz, and Norman Wereley from Aerospace Engineering; Elisabeth Smela from Mechanical Engineering; and Rama Chellappa from Electrical and Computer Engineering. | DoD awards announcement |

MIPS: Automobile body panel inspection; biodetector fluidic delivery optimization; indoor location and emergency alerting technology

ISR faculty are associated with three new Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) contract awards. The MIPS program provides matching funding for university-based research projects that help companies develop new products. MIPS projects must deal with innovative technological or scientific concepts and have direct commercial applications. Associate Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is working with Automated Precision, Inc., of Rockville, Md., developing mathematical models, algorithms, and prototype software to facilitate the inspection of automobile body panels using a novel, digital micro-mirror device-based inspection hardware system being developed by API. The new auto body inspection sensor system would significantly reduce the time it takes to inspect automobile body panels, and enable near 100 percent accuracy. Assistant Professor Benjamin Shapiro (AE/ISR) is working with Protiveris of Rockville, Md., on biodetector fluidic delivery optimization. This project will model, develop and optimize a micro fluidic sample delivery system for Protiveris’ VeriScan 3000 instrument (shown above), an advanced biological or chemical detector combining Micro-Electro-Mechanical (MEMS) and micro-fluidic technologies. ISR-affiliated Professor Neil Goldsman (ECE) is working with TRX Systems, Inc., Lanham, Md. on indoor location and emergency alerting technology. He will design and develop technology to wirelessly track the location of firefighters, police, and other public personnel inside buildings and structures.

NASA ASTEP: Dexterous robot arm for deep submergence activities

ISR-affiliated Associate Professor Dave Akin (AE/ISR) is the Principal Investigator for a three-year NASA Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring the Planets (ASTEP) award valued at $3,075,094. NASA's ASTEP program combines the science and technology communities to enable future space missions to determine whether life exists or has existed outside Earth. Through a detailed, collaborative analysis of Earth's extreme environments, NASA believes it can better prepare to understand analogous systems elsewhere. The focus of ASTEP projects is to validate and improve existing technology, preparing it for future flight missions to test for life in the solar system and beyond. In the project, Akin's Space Systems Laboratory will adapt its space robotics technology to build a dexterous robot arm for deep submergence activities. It will integrate this manipulator onto the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute's SeaBed autonomous underwater vehicle and send it under the Arctic ice cap to sample marine life around hydrothermal vents at a depth of 4,000 meters. Story

2003

NSF ITR: Parallel Random-Access Model (PRAM)-On-Chip

Assistant Professor Rajeev Barua (ECE/ISR) is a co-principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant. Parallel Random-Access Model (PRAM)-On-Chip is a five year, $700K grant that addresses the concrete open problem, "Can a breakthrough high-end parallel computer be built, through truly designing a machine that can look to a programmer like a PRAM?" Electrical and Computing Department Professor Uzi Vishkin is the principal investigator. Other co-PIs along with Barua are Bruce Jacob, Manoj Franklin and Gang Qu, all of the ECE Department. The magnitude of the algorithmic knowledge base that has been developed for the PRAM (Parallel Random-Access Model, or "Machine") algorithmic model makes it a serious alternative to the serial algorithmic theory. Eluding a solution for several decades, the problem of building a general-purpose parallel computer that is significantly faster than its serial counterpart has been a major open problem for computer science since the inception of the field. This research will provide the backbone in the development of a holistic computation framework, called Explicit Multi-Threading (XMT) that seeks to resolve this long-standing problem.

Honda Initiation Grant: Probabilistic Framework for Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge Based Continuous Speech Recognition

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) has received a one-year, $50,000 Honda Initiation Grant for "Probabilistic Framework for Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge Based Continuous Speech Recognition." The program "discovers and engages Honda's future research partners in academia."

NSF: SENSORS: Optical Wireless Sensor Networks for Critical Infrastructure Surveillance

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the principal investigator of a new three-year, $1.2 million National Science Foundation award. "SENSORS: Optical Wireless Sensor Networks for Critical Infrastructure Surveillance" will extend research in optical wireless and other technologies to provide a robust, advanced sensor-communication network. This will include the development of autonomous, solar-powered optical wireless transceivers that can point and track, handle continuous or bursty data, and function in a dynamic, self-configuring network environment. The goal is to advance the development of portable, secure, reconfigurable and high availability networks for surveiling roads, water, electrical, rail and other infrastructure systems as well as for first responders in various kinds of incidents. These networks will be rapidly deployable and provide an instant communications infrastructure.

NSF SGER: Optimal Stochastic Unit Response Subject to Ramp and Network Constraints

ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) is the co-PI of a new National Science Foundation SGER grant, "Optimal Stochastic Unit Response Subject to Ramp and Network Constraints." This one-year grant will address the optimal response of a power utility's thermal plant to price and network uncertainties. The principal investigator is Professor Chung-Li Tseng of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department.

NSF NIRT: Nanofabricated All-Optical Computing, Switching, and Signal Processing Devices Based on Single Photon Tunneling

ISR-affiliated Professor Christopher Davis (ECE) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation award, "NIRT: Nanofabricated All-Optical Computing, Switching, and Signal Processing Devices Based on Single Photon Tunneling." This is a four-year, $1.2 million award. Co-PIs are ECE Professor John Melngailis; ECE Assistant Research Scientist Igor Smolyaninov; Alexei A. Maradudin from the University of California, Irvine; and Andrei V. Stanishevsky from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

AFRL DDET: A Collusion-Resistant Multimedia Fingerprinting Framework for Information Forensics

ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor Min Wu (ECE/UMIACS) and Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) are the principal investigators for a new Air Force Research Laboratory Digital Data Embedding Technologies (DDET) award. The initial one-year grant is for $220,000. Their research, "A Collusion-Resistant Multimedia Fingerprinting Framework for Information Forensics," is focused on designing efficient and effective digital fingerprints for plain text and multimedia content that can withstand collusion attacks, allow for gathering forensic evidence of guilt and identify colluders. Co-PIs for the project are ISR Research Associate Z. Jane Wang and ISR alumnus Wade Trappe, a former student of Dr. Liu, who is now an assistant professor in Rutgers University's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and WINLAB. | Story |

NSF: Distributed Signal Design and Optimum Transmit Strategies for Wireless Networks

Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) has been awarded a three-year, $235,647 grant by the National Science Foundation for her project, "Distributed Signal Design and Optimum Transmit Strategies for Wireless Networks."

NSF: Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge and Speech Recognition

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) has received a three-year, $407,549 National Science Foundation grant for "Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge and Speech Recognition." This project will develop a robust automatic speech recognition system, including acoustic parameters that target the linguistic information in the speech signal and a new paradigm for recognition that integrates current speech knowledge with a powerful statistical framework. The knowledge-based speech recognition system will serve as a model of the early stages of speech perception, and will aid in understanding and coping with variation in speech that occurs within and across speakers due to differences in gender, age and emotional states. Different components of the system will serve as speech analysis tools for applications such as speech coding, automatic speech transcription, speech enhancement, and speech training aids for speech pathologists and their clients.

NSF: Research Experiences for Undergraduates

ISR has received a five-year, $688,702 grant from the National Science Foundation for its Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. The grant supports 15 students for a 12-week period in the summer. Students at colleges, universities and community colleges are recruited nationwide through a process involving efforts to reach students who would otherwise not have access to a research experience. S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is the Principal Investigator; co-PIs are Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR), Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR), and Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR). The program is directed by ISR Educational Programs Coordinator Lee Harper.

NSF: International Materials Institute

ISR Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Ichiro Takeuchi (MNE) are two of the four Principal Investigators for a new National Science Foundation International Materials Institute. The Combinatorial Sciences and Materials Informatics Collaboratory (CoSMIC) is being funded by a five-year, $3.5 million grant to the University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (lead institution), and Florida International University. Nearly half the award comes to Maryland. CoSMIC's research focus is combinatorial experimentation and materials informatics, systematic approaches that represent a profound qualitative change in how materials R&D can be practiced. | Story |

ARO DURIP: High-Speed Modeling and Simulation Testbed for Networked Systems

Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award from the Army Research Office. The $264,000 award, one of 125 granted nationwide, is for a high-speed modeling and simulation testbed for networked systems that will be used by the Systems Engineering and Integration Laboratory. The DURIP program supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments current university capabilities or develops new university capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research.

2002

DARPA THOR: Agile Tracking Receivers and Software

Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR), ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner, and Professor Uzi Vishkin (ECE/UMIACS) of the Maryland Optics Group (MOG) have received a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant under its TeraHertz Operational Reachback (THOR) program. The THOR program is developing optical wireless links that will form an "Internet in the Sky" and allow very high data rate transfer to anywhere in the world in a secure way, without the need for installed fiber optic infrastructure. MOG researchers will be working on the development of 1) agile, tracking transceivers and software for node acquisition, tracking, and efficient data transfer; 2) topology control algorithms for rapidly reconfigurable networks to accommodate groups of point-to-point transmission requests in the face of node failures and irrecoverable link failures; and 3) communication protocols to provide reliable data transfer and error correction to mitigate the effects of obscuration in the path between moving nodes. The nine-month first phase of the grant is worth $300,000.

NSF ITR: Nonlinear Dynamics-Based Robust Congestion Control

ISR Director Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a three-year, $447,408 National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) award. The project, "Nonlinear Dynamics-Based Robust Congestion Control," tools from nonlinear dynamical systems and from bifurcation and chaos control will be harnessed for the analysis and control of congestion in networks with one or several bottlenecks with TCP-type and/or UDP-type traffic. It will develop an understanding of Internet network congestion dynamics and address some of the difficult systems issues that are at the heart of the congestion avoidance and control problem.

NIH: Machinable Ceramics: Optimizing Performance and Properties

Associate Professor Guangming Zhang (ME/ISR) is participating in a five-year, $5.9 million National Institutes of Health grant, "Machinable Ceramics: Optimizing Performance and Properties." This grant is funded through NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).The program will develop fundamental understanding of damage initiation and accumulation in all-ceramic layered dental crowns as a function of materials, crown and tooth preparation design, and fabrication variables. | Story |

NASA SCP: Flexible and Secure Access for High Data Rate Space Communications

ISR Assistant Research Scientist Michael Hadjtheodosiou is the principal investigator for a NASA Space Communications Project in Computing Information and Communication Technologies award. The project proposal, "Flexible and Secure Access for High Data Rate Space Communications," was submitted through The Maryland Hybrid Networks Center (formerly the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks)/ISR. Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR) is Co-Principal Investigator. The research will evaluate alternatives for more efficient and dynamic ways to communicate with NASA missions. The objective is to enable scientists to access data "anytime, anywhere" through the Internet. It focuses on issues such as dynamic multiple access techniques for an "on-demand" operational scenario and required modifications of the Ground Network that will enable more efficient access. It also looks at security, traffic analysis and QoS support issues for this architecture.The two-year award carries a possibility of renewal for a third year. It will enhance activities already under way at HyNet related to supporting communications for NASA missions and developing a new space communication architecture for the future. NASA Space Communications Project web site

NSF: Micro-Ball Bearing Technology for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new three-year, $270,000 NSF grant, "Micro-Ball Bearing Technology for Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS)." The research investigates the use of micro-ball bearing technology for MEMS and micro-machinery applications. Story

NSF: Rapid Response Electronic Markets for Time-Sensitive Goods

Professor G. "Anand" Anandalingam (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Professor Michael Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Professor V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/ISR) and ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor S. Raghavan (Robert H. Smith School of Business) are part of an eight-member University of Maryland team that has received a three-year, $2 million National Science Foundation grant to study electronic markets for "time-sensitive" goods. Professor Anandalingam is the principal investigator."Rapid Response Electronic Markets for Time-Sensitive Goods" will be conducted at the Center for Electronic Markets and Enterprises. Researchers will analyze a variety of e-markets with particular focus on those where buyers and sellers have little time to make decisions on finalizing the deal. Goods that fall into this "time-sensitive" category include tickets to sporting and entertainment events, airline tickets, hotel room reservations, and landing time slots at airports. Story

NSF ITR: Vertical Protocol Integration in Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks

Professor Tony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR); Assistant Professor Richard La (ECE/ISR); and Assistant Professor Sennur Ulukus (ECE/ISR) have received a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant.The project is titled "Vertical Protocol Integration in Ad-Hoc Wireless Networks." It seeks to exploit inter-layer dependencies in network protocols for improved network performance. In particular, the researchers will focus on ad-hoc wireless networks, in which these interdependencies are more pronounced and in which the network will benefit significantly by crosslayer designs. Dr. Ephremides is the Principal Investigator. Story

NSF: Observation and Modeling of Variability in Car-Following Behavior

ISR-affiliated Assistant Professor David Lovell (CEE); his student, Mr. Taehyung Kim; and visiting professor Dr. Yongjin Park from Daegu, Korea, have received a new National Science Foundation award. "Observation and Modeling of Variability in Car-Following Behavior" is a $143,554 grant that runs for two years. The researchers will observe and analyze car-following behavior and develop a model that can explain the stochastic effects across and within drivers, as well as those caused by factors such as human, traffic and road, and environmental characteristics. Story

NSF PREMISE: Applying Decision Production Systems to Improve Environmentally Responsible Product Development

Associate Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR), Associate Professor Linda Schmidt (ME/ISR) and Associate Professor Peter Sandborn (ME) are the principal investigators for an NSF Product Realization and Environmental Manufacturing Innovative Systems (PREMISE) grant, "Applying Decision Production Systems to Improve Environmentally Responsible Product Development." The project begins January 1, 2003, and runs until June 30, 2004. The research will examine how product development organizations use environmental information in their decision making and create a novel, systems-level paradigm to develop new insights into their behavior. Unlike many existing approaches, this perspective will examine the entire organization, not just individual product development projects. Story

NSF ITR: Spatially Programmable Equipment: A New Design Paradigm for Semiconductor Manufacturing Enabled by Information Technology

Associate Professor Ray Adomaitis (ChE/ISR) (PI) and Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) are partners in a new National Science Foundation Information Technology Research (ITR) grant," Spatially Programmable Equipment: A New Design Paradigm for Semiconductor Manufacturing Enabled by Information Technology." The $500,000, three-year project starts in September. Adomaitis and Rubloff will develop a new paradigm for semiconductor manufacturing equipment -- flexible equipment design enabled by information technology. The project has the potential to fundamentally change the design paradigm of the industry to one that directly exploits a broad spectrum of information technology.
| Story | Project information |

MIPS: Advanced Transceiver Acquisition and Tracking for Optical Wireless Communications

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the project director for a new Maryland Industrial Partnerships grant. The project is titled "Advanced Transceiver Acquisition and Tracking for Optical Wireless Communications" and the industrial partner is Rockville-based LumenLink, Inc.

NASA URETI: Third Generation Reusable Launch Vehicles

Associate Professor Dave Akin (AE/ISR) is part of a 10-person University of Maryland team that has won one of seven NASA University Research, Engineering and Technology Institutes (URETI) awards. URETI is a new program to strengthen NASA's ties with academia.The new institute will address "Third Generation Reusable Launch Vehicles" and is funded at $3 million per year for a minimum of five years.Professor Mark Lewis (AE) is the principal investigator. Besides Akin, AE faculty include Norman Wereley, Darryll Pines, Ken Yu and Christopher Cadou. They are joined by Ashwani Gupta and Steven Buckley from Mechanical Engineering, Carol Smidts (MNE) and Andre Marshall (FPE). NASA press release on the URETI program
Trenton Times story

NSF ITR: Children's International Digital Library

Assistant Professor Allison Druin (EDU/UMIACS/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant worth $3 million over five years.The project will develop the Children's International Digital Library, addressing related research issues such as acquisition and rights management and searching /browsing /sharing technologies for children. It will also develop a testbed using large amounts of digital information.Co-PIs for the project are Human-Computer Interaction Lab Director Ben Bederson (CS) and Professor of the Practice Ann Weeks (College of Information Studies). The University of Maryland is partnering with The Internet Archive on the grant. This public nonprofit was founded to build an "Internet library" offering permanent access to historical collections that exist in digital format for researchers, historians, and scholars. Story

Air Force MURI: Scalable Multilayer Control of Joint Battlespace Networks

ISR Senior Research Scientist Stuart Milner is the principal investigator for "Scalable Multilayer Control of Joint Battlespace Networks," a $4.3 million Air Force Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI). Co-PIs are Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR) Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR) and ISR affiliated Professor Mark Shayman (ECE). The research looks to develop network architectures that circumvent the fundamental limitation on performance scalability of ad hoc, RF wireless networks.The award was one of 26 announced by the Department of Defense in March. The MURI program is designed to address large multidisciplinary topic areas representing exceptional opportunities for future DoD applications and technology options. Story

DURIP: Chemical Mechanical Planarizer

Assistant Professor Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award from the Army Research Office. The $180,000 award will be used to purchase a chemical mechanical planarizer tool (CMP). Co-PIs for this award are past ISR Director and Professor Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) and Assistant Professor Elisabeth Smela (ME). Story

NIH NIDOCD: Acoustics of Vocal Tract Shapes for Liquids

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) is one of the recipients of a new $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The research, "Acoustics of Vocal Tract Shapes for Liquids," will aid understanding of vocal tract acoustics and articulatory variation in speech, and should improve speech recognition technologies and the implementation of articulatory and acoustic biofeedback therapy techniques. Story

2001

Univ of Md Block Grant Fellowship

ISR has won a $16,000 block grant fellowship award from the University of Maryland graduate school. The grant will allow ISR to recruit an outstanding MSSE student for next year early in the recruitment season. Lee Harper, Coordinator of Educational Programs, prepared the winning proposal.

NSF: An Information Theoretic Approach to Secret Key Generation for Encrypted
Communication in a Network

Professor Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a $371,049 National Science Foundation award, "An Information Theoretic Approach to Secret Key Generation for Encrypted Communication in a Network." The award is one of 309 Information Technology Research awards NSF announced October 1, 2001. Story

NSF: Stability Monitoring and Control of Power Systems

Professor Eyad Abed (ECE/ISR) is the principal investigator for a $150,000, three-year National Science Foundation award. "Stability Monitoring and Control of Power Systems" will apply progress in the theory of bifurcation control and stability monitoring to the detection and control of impending instability in stressed electric power networks.

NSF: RISE

Associate Professor Linda C. Schmidt (ME/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new, three-year, $900,000 National Science Foundation grant. The Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE) program is designed to encourage the participation and persistence of women students in engineering and the sciences. Schmidt is joined in the project by Anne M. Spence (acting director of Women in Engineering at the A. James Clark School of Engineering) and Dr. Janet Schmidt. Story

Army Communications and Electronics Command: Omni-Directional Optical Wireless Networks

Professor Christopher Davis (ECE/ISR), Professor Armand Makowski (ECE/ISR) and ISR Senior Research Scientist Dr. Stuart Milner have been awarded a contract for Omni-Directional Optical Wireless Networks by the U.S. Army Communications and Electronics Command. Story

NSF MRI: Aligner/Bonder for MEMS Research

ISR researchers have won a $239,405 NSF Major Research Instrumentation Award (MRI) to purchase an aligner/bonder for MEMS and Microsystems research. This state-of-the-art MEMS microfabrication equipment patterns features in photosensitive polymeric materials, aligns multi-stack silicon (and other materials like glass) wafers with micron scale accuracy and bonds these wafers permanently to form structures and devices of different shapes and forms.

ARL CTA

ISR faculty are involved in four new Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Collaborative Technology Alliances (CTA) Program awards. Each is an eight-year contract with project values ranging from $49 to $76 million. The four awards and the ISR faculty involved in each are: Communications and Networks -- John S. Baras (ECE/ISR) (Maryland PI); Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR); Haralabos Papadopoulos (ECE/ISR); Armand Makowski (ECE/ISR); Carlos Berenstein (Math/ISR); Nicholas Roussopoulos (CS/ISR). Advance Sensors -- K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR); and Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR). Power and Energy -- Reza Ghodssi (ECE/ISR) (Maryland PI). Advance Decision Architectures -- V.S. Subrahmanian (CS/ISR).

NSF Instrumentation Grant: Specialized Computing Environment for Distributed and Virtual Design and Manufacturing

Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR), Assistant Professor S.K. Gupta (ME/ISR) and Assistant Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR) have received a $38,445 National Science Foundation instrumentation grant for a specialized computing environment for distributed and virtual design and manufacturing.

NSF: Developmental Curriculum in Team Training for Engineering Project Teams

Assistant Professor Linda Schmidt (ME/ISR), Professor David Bigio (ME), Dr. Janet Schmidt, and Professor Robert W. Lent (College of Education) have been awarded a three-year, $400,000 National Science Foundation grant to create a developmental curriculum in team training for engineering project teams.

DoD URI: Distributed Immune Systems for Wireless Networks Information Assurance

Five ISR faculty are members of a team that has won a $4 million, five-year Department of Defense University Research Initiative (URI) award. "Distributed Immune Systems for Wireless Networks Information Assurance" is one of only 20 successful proposals selected for funding during fiscal year 2001. The team includes Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), the Principal Investigator; Professor Carlos Berenstein (Math/ISR); Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR); Professor K.J. Ray Liu (ECE/ISR); Assistant Professor Haralabos Papadopoulos (ECE/ISR) and Professor Nicholas Roussopoulos (CS/UMIACS). Professor Virgil Gligor (ECE) is also a member. Story

NSF: Telluride Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR), Associate Professor Avis H. Cohen (Biology/ISR), and Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR) have been awarded a three year, $180,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue the Telluride Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop. This three-week summer workshop focuses on both neurobiological and engineering aspects of sensory systems and sensory-motor integration. It brings together an international group of young investigators and more established researchers from academia, industry and national laboratories.

DoD MURIs

ISR faculty are participating in three just-announced Department of Defense 2001 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program (MURI) grants: ISR participants in the Integrated Control and Communication for Networked Systems project include Principal Investigator P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR), John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Prakash Narayan (ECE/ISR), and Gregory Walsh (ME/ISR). Former ISR student, Assistant Professor Dimitrios Hritsu-Varsakelis (ME) is also one of the investigators. ISR-affiliated Ramamoorthy Ramesh (MNE) is one of the investigators in the Hybrid Smart Materials and Adaptive Structures project. ISR-affiliated Neil Goldsman  (ECE) is on the team for The Effects of Radiofrequency Pulses on Electronic Circuits and Systems project. Story

DURIP: Deep Reactive Ion Etcher

Assistant Professor Don DeVoe (ME/ISR) is the principal investigator for a new Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) award. DeVoe's award is for a Deep Reactive Ion Etcher, a critical component of ISR's capability for Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) fabrication and nanotechnology. The award is one of six recently announced DURIP awards for the University of Maryland. Story

2000

NSF: Digital Libraries for Children

Assistant Professor Allison Druin (EDU/UMIACS/ISR) is the principal investigator for a two-and-a-half year, $600,000 NSF grant for Digital Libraries for Children. Other members of the team are Professor Ben Shneiderman (CS/ISR), HCIL Director and Professor Ben Bederson (UMIACS/CS) Glenda Revelle (UMIACS) and Dana Campbell (Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard). Story

NSF: Combined Research and Curriculum Development in Systems Engineering

ISR has received a three-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation grant for Combined Research and Curriculum Development in Systems Engineering. ISR's faculty team includes Principal Investigator Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Co-Principal Investigator Associate Professor Mark Austin (CEE/ISR), Professor Michael O. Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR), Assistant Professor Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR), and Assistant Professor Linda C. Schmidt (ME). Story

DARPA: Intelligent and Noise-Robust Interfaces for MEMS Acoustic Sensors

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR), Assistant Professor Timothy Horiuchi (ECE/ISR), Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Professor P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) and Professor Cynthia Moss (Psychology/ISR), are part of a $ 2.2 million, three-year Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract for "Intelligent and Noise-Robust Interfaces for MEMS Acoustic Sensors." The goal of this contract is to formulate, design, and implement signal processing systems and technology that can adapt, control and utilize the noisy MEMS sensor signals. Story

DARPA: Integrated Security Services for Dynamic Coalition Management

Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR), Professor Virgil Gligor (ECE) and Assistant Research Scientist Radha Poovendran (ISR) have been awarded a $2 million, three-year Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract for "Integrated Security Services for Dynamic Coalition Management." The goal is to realize the vision of an integrated access control, authentication, and secure group-communication architecture to support dynamic coalitions consisting of varied members with diverse interests and multiple administrative domains. Story

NASA Ames Research Center: Air Traffic Management System, Development, and Integration

The University of Maryland, the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and Professor Michael O. Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) are part of the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) team, which has been chosen as one of the two winning contractors of the "Air Traffic Management System, Development, and Integration" award by the NASA Ames Research Center. Story

DARPA: Active Templates

Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR) has been awarded a $1.4 million, four-year research contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA's Active Templates (AcT) Program will develop an easy-to-use planning tool based on a spreadsheet user interface for template manipulation. Story

1999

NSF: ERC for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing

ISR Director Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR) and the NSF/SRC ERC for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing (CEBSM) at the University of Arizona, Tucson, have been awarded a three-year NSF grant. The award will enable the development of a portfolio of interactive, computer-based simulator learning modules to support education in the design for environment. The project is entitled "Simulation-Based Learning Systems for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing."

NSF: Formulating Redesign Strategies for Product Evolution: A Proactive Approach to Managing Technological Innovation

Assistant Professor Satyandra K. Gupta (ME/ISR), Professor Michael O. Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) and Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR) have been granted a three-year NSF award for "Formulating Redesign Strategies for Product Evolution: A Proactive Approach to Managing Technological Innovation." The award focuses on the development of an intelligent product representation for evolvable designs that can determine when new innovation indicates that a change in a previous decision is warranted.

Air Force: Information Push Pull on the Digital Battlefield

Professor Dana S. Nau (CS/ISR) has been granted a three-year award by the Air Force to study "Information Push Pull on the Digital Battlefield."

NSF: Control and Performance Tradeoffs in the Design of Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Professor Anthony Ephremides (ECE/ISR), Associate Professor Leandros Tassiulas (ECE/ISR), and Assistant Research Scientist Scott Corson have been awarded a three-year NSF grant to investigate "Control and Performance Tradeoffs in the Design of Multi-Hop Wireless Networks."

NSF SGER: Feasibility Study on the Design of Hybrid Kinematic Machines

Professor Lung-Wen Tsai (ME/ISR) has won a one-year NSF Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) award. Dr. Tsai will perform a feasibility study on the design of hybrid kinematic machines. The goal of the design is to attain the advantages of both a serial kinematic machine and a parallel kinematic machine. The knowledge base developed by this work will not only benefit the machine tool industry but also the robotics community.

NSF: From Medium Access to Physical Layer: An Integrated DSP Framework for Wireless Packet Networks

Associate Professor Leandros Tassiulas (ECE/ISR) has been granted a two-year NSF award for "From Medium Access to Physical Layer: An Integrated DSP Framework for Wireless Packet Networks." The goal of this research is an integrated approach to wireless packet network design that cuts across the medium access and physical layers. This research involves advanced signal processing, factor analysis, optimization, and queueing tools.

ONR: Testbed for Real Time Implementation of Auditory Process

Professors Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) and P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) have won a one-year award from the Office of Naval Research to investigate a "Testbed for Real Time Implementation of Auditory Process."

NIST: Multi-Level Integration of Design and Process Planning

Assistant Professor Satyandra K. Gupta (ME/ISR) is working on a one-year grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology for "Multi-Level Integration of Design and Process Planning."

NSF: Scalable Supply Chain Infrastructures: Models and Analysis

Professor Michael O. Ball (Robert H. Smith School of Business/ISR) and his colleagues Vallabhajosyu Sambamurthy, Sandor Boyson and Louiqa Raschid have won a three-year NSF award to study "Scalable Supply Chain Infrastructures: Models and Analysis." This research addresses a number of challenges related to the full realization of the potential of supply chain infrastructures (SCIs), which include those software systems used to support enterprise requirements planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM). Practical contributions are anticipated in improvements in the understanding of how information technology impacts organizations and the how organizations should adapt to take advantage of new SCI technology; the development of decision models that both explain how supply chain decision making should take place in organizations and provide new techniques for supply chain decision support; new methods for efficiently implementing scalable web-based applications.