Gligor, Ott Win DoD MURI Awards

Clark School faculty have been awarded two Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awards from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and are participating in three others as subcontractors.

Electrical and computer engineering (ECE) professors Virgil Gligor and Edward Ott each received awards—Gligor for the project "Designing Reliable and Secure Tactical MANETs" (with ECE's John Baras); and Ott for "Exploiting Nonlinear Dynamics for Novel Sensor Networks" (along with ECE's P.S. Krishnaprasad, Thomas E. Murphy, and Tom Antonsen; and John Rodgers and Daniel Lathrop from the Institute for Research in Engineering and Applied Physics).

The University of Maryland is listed as a subcontractor on three other projects awarded MURIs.

The awards are among 36 announced by the DoD totaling $19.4 million in fiscal 2007 and $207 million over five years.

The awards are subject to the successful completion of negotiations between the academic institutions and DoD research offices that will make the awards including the Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The MURI program supports multi-disciplinary research in areas of DoD relevance that intersect more than one traditional science and engineering discipline. A MURI effort typically involves a team of researchers with expertise in a variety of disciplines in order to accelerate both research progress and transition of research results to application.

By supporting multi-disciplinary teams, the MURI program complements other DoD basic research programs that support traditional, single-investigator university research. Typically, MURI awards are larger and longer in duration than traditional awards.

The awards are for up to five years—a three-year base period with a two-year option contingent upon availability of appropriations and satisfactory research progress.

The list of projects selected for fiscal 2007 funding can be viewed at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/MAR2007/d20070307muri.pdf.

Published March 8, 2007