Waks, Chellappa, Milchberg and Sprangle Participate in Different Department of Defense MURI Projects

Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Faculty members will be conducting research in three new Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) recently announced by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Prof. Edo Waks (ECE/IREAP/JQI), Prof. Chris Monroe (Physics/JQI), and Adjunct Associate Professor Yi Kai Lu (UMIACS/Staff Scientist/NIST) are members of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) MURI, “Scalable Certification of Quantum Computing Devices and Networks.” The project will contribute to the understanding of the Foundations of Interactive Protocols for Quantum Computation and Communications. The lead institution for this MURI is the California Institute of Technology, and the principal investigator is Thomas Vidick. Additional team members are from UC Berkeley and University of Southern California.

Prof. and ECE Department Chair, Rama Chellappa (ECE/UMIACS), is a member of the MURI team that will explore the Characterization of Information Content in Data for Multimodal Analysis. The MURI, “Semantic Information Pursuit for Multimodal Data Analysis” is sponsored by the Army Research Office (ARO) and is led by Rene Vidal at Johns Hopkins University. Additional team members are from Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Southern California. This MURI Award also has a UK component with partners drawn from Oxford University, the Imperial College, University of Surrey and the University College London.

Profs. Howard Milchberg (ECE/IREAP/Physics), Kiyong Kim (IREAP/Physics), and Phil Sprangle (ECE/IREAP/ Physics) are part of an Office of Naval Research (ONR) funded MURI team led by Chandrashekhar Joshi at UCLA entitled "Fundamental Studies of Nonlinear Optics and Laser‐plasma Phenomena in Gases and Solids using High‐Power LWIR Lasers." Their research will explore the use of high power lasers in the long wave infrared to better understand plasma phenomena for future DoD applications. Additional team members are from University of Michigan, University of Arizona, University of Central Florida, and State University of New York, Stony Brook.

The highly competitive 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 research topics identified for their potential for significant and sustained progress in security and military capabilities.

Published April 25, 2017