Six-year grant worth up to $30 million awarded to Rutgers- and Purdue-led partnerships; covers research in information technologies to protect nation
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has selected Rutgers University as the co-lead for a new DHS Center of Excellence to conduct research into the technological issues involved with maintaining homeland security.Rutgers and its co-lead, Purdue University, will together receive up to $5 million per year over a period of six years, for an anticipated total of as much as $30 million.
The center is formally known as the DHS Center of Excellence for Command, Control, and Interoperability (CCI). It will conduct research and develop technologies, tools and advanced methods for information analysis, situational awareness, decision support, information sharing and cyber infrastructure protection.Rutgers will be the lead institution for research in the data sciences, and Purdue will be the lead for research in the visualization sciences. Leading the Rutgers effort is the university’s Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS).
"Homeland Security’s selection of Rutgers for the new grant was the result of an intensive competition and evaluation process.” said Fred Roberts, professor of mathematics, head of DIMACS and the Rutgers principal investigator for the CCI Center of Excellence. “It speaks to our expertise in critical, multidisciplinary areas of research and to our innovative educational programs.”Roberts noted that Rutgers will lead a team of partner institutions participating in the new center’s data analysis activities.
In 2006, DHS awarded Rutgers a $3 million grant to lead a research consortium to develop computing technologies that find patterns and relationships in public data that could quickly identify emerging diseases, indicate possible terrorist activity, lead to more efficient inspection procedures at ports or help prepare for natural disasters. At the same time, DHS also asked Rutgers to coordinate a team of four university-based centers managing $10 million in grants covering a range of information analysis and computational technologies to protect the nation.After that, the National Science Foundation and DHS awarded Rutgers two grants to lead research on detecting smuggled nuclear materials. DHS also has awarded Rutgers two grants to provide fellowships to graduate students planning careers related to homeland security.
The new grant to Rutgers will continue the work begun under the 2006 grants. In its award notification, DHS said the Center of Excellence “will create the scientific basis and enduring technologies needed to analyze massive amounts of information from multiple sources to more reliably detect threats to the security of the nation and its infrastructures, and to the health and welfare of its populace.”
Media Contact: Carl Blesch
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