Five Clark School faculty members are part of a team that was recently awarded a $4 million, five-year University Research Initiative (URI) Award from the Department of Defense (DoD). The team, which includeds Professors John Baras, Anthony Ephremides, K.J. Ray Liu, Haralabos Papadopoulos and Virgil Gligor, were one of only 20 from 16 different academic institutions to be awarded grants. Total awards for URI Grants by the DoD for FY 2001 were $9.3 million.

The team’s research project, which will be conducted in conjunction with the Army Research Office, is entitled “Distributed Immune Systems for Wireless Networks Information Assurance.” The team participated in a targeted competition in the Critical Infrastructure Protection and High Confidence, Adaptable Software (CIP/SW) Research Program of the URI BAA.

The URI Program was designed to enhance universities' capabilities to perform science and engineering research and related education in science and engineering areas critical to national defense. The targeted competition for both critical information protection (CIP) and high confidence, adaptable software is in addition to the fiscal 2001 URI competitions in the areas of multidisciplinary research, nanotechnology, and high-energy laser technology.

Subject to the successful completion of negotiation between DoD and the academic institutions, the 20 awards will provide long-term support for research, graduate students, and the purchase of equipment supporting specific science and engineering research themes in the fields related to CIP and software. The competition drew 115 white papers, from which 74 proposals were received. After a thorough evaluation by technical expert teams, 20 of these proposals were selected for funding.

Read the DoD announcement.