Initiatives

Initiative Lead: Dr. Robert Leheny, Acting Director

The internal subsystems 'architecture' of today's aircraft is an artifact of the post WWII period that exhibits a federated approach consuming considerable volume, weight, and power. This is largely the result of store-piped, legacy avionic architectures whereby each subsystem is designed separately and often by different contractors. (more information)

Initiative Lead: Dr. Robert Leheny, Acting Director

Many natural (“non-engineered”) systems can be regarded as complex systems, including the weather, celestial mechanics and biological systems. These complex systems tend to have many parts that are highly interconnected through nonlinear interactions, and the influence of these parts on performance may be highly dependent on the states of other parts of the system. Further, the state-space for such systems may be so large as to defy clear definition and comprehensive examination by current techniques. (more information)

Initiative Lead: Dr. Thomas Kenny

The Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is designed to seek out ideas from non-tenured faculty in order to identify the next generation of researchers working in microsystem technology. The funded researchers will focus on concepts that are innovative, speculative, and high-risk. (more information)