The UTC-IASE is pleased to announce the initiation of the “UTC-IASE” breakthrough award. The priority of the UTC-IASE Breakthrough Award is to provide an award to recognize innovative, transformational and disruptive contributions in the field of advanced systems engineering. The amount of the Award shall be $50,000 in the first year the prize is awarded, and may be adjusted with time.

 

Background

The UTC-IASE provides financial support to extend the impact of the UTC-IASE through educational and programmatic activities in advanced systems engineering. Such uses may include, without limitation, the creation of curricula, certificate programs, short courses, lecture series or distance learning opportunities.

 

Objectives & Requirements

• The Award shall be used to promote innovative research in Advanced Systems Engineering
• Qualified nominees must match the Breakthrough Award with an existing research project managed by UTC-IASE
• Qualified nominees must be at the early stages of their career (Assistant or Associate)

 

Application Process

Request for nominations to be announced on the UTC-IASE Website and email to the UTC-IASE affiliated faculty

Qualified nominees should submit a 2-page document with:

• A brief description of the proposed use of the Breakthrough Award funds
• A brief description of how these funds will be used to match an existing grant managed by UTC-IASE
• An outlook of how the Breakthrough Award will strengthen the visibility of the nominee, as well as the UTC-IASE
• A brief description of the collaboration opportunities the Breakthrough Award will generate for the awardee and the UTC-IASE

Qualified nominees must submit a brief biosketch (NSF-style or equivalent – 3 pages max).

Please, submit applications as ONE pdf file at utc-iase@uconn.edu

 

Application Window

Applicants should submit applications by 10/21/2016.

Selection Criteria

The Dean of SoE and the Director UTC-IASE will select the awardee based on the following criteria:

• Alignment of the matching project with the research roadmap of the UTC-IASE
• Potential of the project to enhance the awardee’s career
• Potential for future funding
• Awardee’s academic and scientific credentials
• Awardee’s prior service to the UTC-IASE

 

Award Ceremony

The award ceremony will be public (may be done as part of the UTC-IASE seminar series). The UTC-IASE GC Chair will present the award followed by the awardee making a presentation on the topic of interest

UTC IASE welcomes new Assistant Professor Dr. Abhishek Dutta with a joint appointment in electrical and computer engineering and mechanical engineering departments. Abhishek Dutta’s research interests lie in the area of control systems and optimization with application to mechatronic systems amongst others. He has made fundamental contributions to the theory of model predictive control with implementation over various industrial systems and more recently in the field of cyber physical systems security. He is the author of numerous journal papers and has delivered many invited talks. He is currently involved in teaching related to systems engineering for UTC.

Prior to joining UConn, he was a postdoctoral research associate at aerospace engineering in coordinated science lab of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Cedric Langbort. He holds a PhD in electromechanical engineering (model predictive control) under the supervision of Robin De Keyser at Ghent University and under the advise of Jan Maciejowski as a junior member of Wolfson College Cambridge. He has a MSc with distinction from the University of Edinburgh including an informatics prize for outstanding thesis and an European masters from the University of Trento with final mark 110/110. He has held research positions at Technical University Munich (electrical engineering) and Nanyang Technological University (mechanical and aerospace).

George Bollas from UTC-IASE will be taking part as one of the members of the Systems Engineering Education Panel Discussion on September 28th from 1:30pm – 3:30pm. Representatives from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Worcester Polytechnic Institute will also be in attendance. This Conference will take place in the Hartford Convention Center Monday September 26th – Friday September 30th. Please stop by and visit the UTC booth for more information.

http://www.sae.org/events/pdf/astc/2016_astc_glance.pdf

 

Led by Professors George Bollas, Krishna Pattipati, Parasara Duggirala, and Ming-Hui Chen, the Bayesian Design of Tests for Fault Detection and Isolation in Complex Systems project has been awarded $200,000. This project aims to seed interdisciplinary and collaborative work on active methods for hard to detect and isolate faults in complex systems generating large amounts of heterogeneous data. In collaboration with United Technologies Aerospace Systems and with applications inspired by the aerospace industry, the investigators’ aim is to enable the cost-effective and safe operation of modern cyber-physical systems, such as transportation, commercial buildings, manufacturing, energy systems, and emergency response systems, which are all critical to the growth of the State’s industrial base. This project illustrates the indication of the penetration of the activities of UTC-IASE in the priorities of the University of Connecticut. The priorities of Level 1 Academic plan Projects are “to support strategic areas of emphasis that have already demonstrated promise and potential (metrics for success include number of students who may benefit from new educational and outreach programs, significant extramural funding support that involves inter-disciplinary groups of faculty partners, national recognition, etc.).” More information can be found here: http://academicvision.uconn.edu/

Drs. Bollas and Jahangir attended the 2016 International Symposium of the nternational Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). INCOSE’s Annual International Symposium is the largest annual gathering of people who do systems engineering for four days of presentations, case studies, workshops, tutorials and panel discussions. The program attracts an international mix of professionals at all levels, and includes practitioners in government and industry, as well as educators and researchers. More info can be found here: http://www.incose.org/symp2016/home

UTC-IASE has been named part of a new national coalition to coordinate research and development in smart manufacturing and energy efficiency, and will play a leading role in those efforts in Connecticut. The coalition, known as the Smart Manufacturing Innovation Institute, has been awarded $70 million from the U.S. Department of Energy that will be matched by private investments and is part of the administration’s effort to double U.S. energy efficiency by 2030. Find more info here: http://today.uconn.edu/2016/06/uconn-joins-national-smart-manufacturing-initiative/

Dr. Ebad Jahangir chaired the Education mini symposium at the MathWorks Research Summit where leading educators from across the globe presented and discussed future directions of computational education and thinking in university curricula.

UTC-IASE was invited by MathWorks to the fourth annual MathWorks Research Summit held June 4–6 at the Newton Marriott in Newton, Massachusetts. This invitation-only event serves to bring together inspiring peers from adjacent research areas and set directions that redefine the frontiers of research with impact and value. This multidisciplinary summit provides a forum for candid exchange with highly acclaimed thought leaders, industry and government experts, and MathWorks senior management about technical challenges, opportunities, and solution attempts to help focus and collaborate on promising research efforts.

The summit features lively discussions interspersed with exciting technical talks to disseminate knowledge, germinate ideas, inspire applications, discover successes in related fields, recognize trends, and identify research needs. Participants can also socialize and network with people who govern professional organizations, have experience in organizing research programs and projects, and share guidance on workforce teaching and training.

Professors George Bollas and Ebad Jahangir will be attending the INCOSE International Symposium 2016. They will engage with colleagues from the Systems Engineering community and share lessons learned on state-of-the-art methods and essential skills for Systems Engineers. UTC-IASE is a member of the INCOSE Corporate Advisory Board as well as its Academic Council.

INCOSE’s Annual International Symposium is the largest annual gathering of people who do systems engineering for four days of presentations, case studies, workshops, tutorials and panel discussions. The program attracts an international mix of professionals at all levels, and includes practitioners in government and industry, as well as educators and researchers.

Professor Krithi Ramamritham from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and formerly of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, presented a distinguished lecture on smart technologies. Smart Energy solutions promise cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy. Smart Cities promise better quality of life for its citizens. He argued that for a “system” to be SMART, it should Sense Meaningfully, Analyze and Respond Timely. Using real-world examples from the domains of Smart Energy and Smart Cities, this talk illustrated the central role of data in being SMART.

To view more details or a video of the lecture, please visit http://advancedsystems.engineering.uconn.edu/events/lec-lib/dll2016/.

Professor Calin Belta from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Division of Systems Engineering at Boston University, presented a seminar on formal method for dynamical systems at the UTC-IASE. Professor Belta, who is also affiliated with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE) and the Bioinformatics Program, talked about an increasing need for computational tools for verification and control of complex systems from rich, temporal logic specifications. In control theory, complex models of physical processes, such as systems of differential equations, are usually checked against simple specifications, such as stability and set invariance. In formal methods, rich specifications, such as languages and formulae of temporal logics, are checked against simple models of software programs and digital circuits, such as finite transition graphs. The formal verification and synthesis problems have been shown to be undecidable even for very simple classes of infinite-space continuous and hybrid systems. The focus of this talk was on discrete time linear systems, for which it was shown that finite abstractions can be constructed through polyhedral operations only. By using techniques from model checking and automata games, this allows for verification and control from specifications given as Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) formulae over linear predicates in the state variables. The usefulness of these computational tools was illustrated with various examples.

To view more details or a video of the seminar, please visit http://advancedsystems.engineering.uconn.edu/events/sem-lib/sl2016/.