Clark School Researchers Represented on Four 2017 MURI Awards

Clark School researchers are members of four 2017 Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) awards, making the University of Maryland one of the top universities represented among the highly competitive grants awarded this year. The Department of Defense (DoD) announced it will issue 23 awards totaling $163 million to academic institutions to perform multidisciplinary basic research.

The MURI program complements other DoD basic research efforts that support traditional, single-investigator university research grants. By supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards in carefully chosen and timely research topics identified for their long-term importance, DoD and the military services enhance the potential for significant and sustained advancement of the research in critical areas.

The Clark School researchers represented on the 2017 grants are:

Professor Ichiro Takeuchi (MSE) is a member of the team that will investigate “New Phase Change Materials for Photonics: from In‐silico Design to Novel Device Concepts.” This effort, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), is led by Professor Ritesh Agarwal of the University of Pennsylvania.

Professors Howard Milchberg (PHY/ECE/IREAP), Kiyong Kim (PHY/IREAP), and Phil Sprangle (PHY/ECE/IREAP) are members of a team that will investigate “Fundamental Studies of Nonlinear Optics and Laser‐plasma Phenomena in Gases and Solids using High‐Power LWIR Lasers.” This effort, also sponsored by ONR, is led by Chandrashekhar Joshi of UCLA.

Professor Edo Waks (ECE/IREAP/JQI), Professor Chris Monroe (PHY/JQI), and Adjunct Associate Professor Yi Kai Lu (UMIACS) are members of a team that will investigate “Scalable Certification of Quantum Computing Devices and Networks.” This effort, sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is led by Professor Thomas Vidick at the California Institute of Technology.

Distinguished University Professor and Chair Rama Chellappa (ECE/UMIACS) is a member of the team that will explore “Semantic Information Pursuit for Multimodal Data Analysis.” This effort, sponsored by the Army Research Office, is led by Professor Rene Vidal at Johns Hopkins University.

Over the past 30 years, DoD’s MURI program resulted in significant capabilities for our military forces and opened up entirely new lines of research.

Key to Departments, Institutes, and Centers

MSE = materials science and engineering
PHY = physics
ECE = electrical and computer engineering
IREAP = Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics
JQI = Joint Quantum Institute
UMIACS = University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies

Published May 1, 2017