Research Labs

The BRICLab aims to develop advanced robotic systems using novel sensing, actuation, and decision making approaches. In particular, the lab focuses on research areas in dynamics, control, machine learning, and mechatronics and their applications in bioinspired robots and autonomous underwater/aerial vehicles. Director: Feitian Zhang

The CNL Lab, under director Bijan Jabbari, focuses on com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works and sys­tems, with an em­pha­sis on:

• The­ory
• Ar­chi­tec­ture
• Mod­el­ing
• Per­for­mance analy­sis
• Mutli-ac­cess
• Mo­bil­ity
• Rout­ing and switch­ing
• Tele­traf­fic
• Pro­to­cols

Cur­rent ar­eas of re­search in­clude:

• Rout­ing and path com­pu­ta­tion in op­ti­cal net­works.
• Op­ti­mal re­source al­lo­ca­tion in wire­less net­works.
• High-per­for­mance com­puter net­works and ap­pli­ca­tions.

The CERG Group, under directors Kris Gaj and Jens-Peter Kaps, covers all as­pects of im­ple­ment­ing cryp­to­graphic al­go­rithms in hard­ware and/or soft­ware, ranging from:

• High-per­for­mance im­ple­men­ta­tions to ul­tra-low power im­ple­men­ta­tions of pub­lic key and se­cret key al­go­rithms.
• Fault-tol­er­ant im­ple­men­ta­tions.
• At­tack-re­sis­tant im­ple­men­ta­tion.
• Im­ple­men­ta­tions of at­tacks.

This lab, under director Peter Pachowicz, focuses on hands-on engineering of ultra-small CubeSats and satellite communications systems by combining research and educational objectives. Lab facilities include:

• CubeSat Development and Testing Lab.
• SatCom Ground Station (VHF/UHF/S-band antenna system).
• Space Communication Station (9.1m dish).

Most hardware and software is designed and built though multiple undergraduate, graduate, and student club projects. Researchers' work covers a broad spectrum of topics such as:

• Development of ultra-small CubeSats.
• Resilient satellite bus architectures.
• Hybrid power systems.
• Rad-hard embedded software.
• Low-noise antennas, signal and data fusion.
• Custom software defined radios.

Directors: Daniel M Lofaro.

Lab

The GATE Lab, under director Avesta Sasan, study the following computer engineering topics:

• Hardware Security and Trust.
• Machine learning security.
• Machine Learning model and Neuromorphic accelerator (HW/SW) co-design (Advance Computer Architecture).
• Low power methodologies and physical design.
• Approximate computing.

Researchers in the HArt lab, under director Sai Manoj Pudukotai Dinakarrao, study computer architecture security using machine learning to create, detect, and defend emerging security threats on computing systems, including side-channel attacks and malware threats in stand-alone and connected IoT devices.

They are also investigating:

• In-memory computing for deep learning architectures.
• Accelerator design for machine learning applications.
• Architecting advanced adversarial threats and defenses for convolutional neural networks.
• Graph neural networks.
• Deep neural networks.

The Intelligence Fusion Lab, under director Xiang Chen, fo­cuses on mo­bile com­put­ing, wear­able de­vices, and em­bed­ded sys­tems. Re­search top­ics can in­volve:

• Deep learn­ing ap­pli­ca­tion and ac­cel­er­a­tion.
• Dis­trib­uted mo­bile com­put­ing.
• Ma­chine learn­ing se­cu­rity.
• Mo­bile dis­play.
• Graph­ics.
• VR/AR tech­nolo­gies.

The NAPL Lab, under director Brian L. Mark,  con­ducts re­search on the de­sign, ar­chi­tec­ture, and per­for­mance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works, en­com­pass­ing wire­line, wire­less, and het­ero­ge­neous net­works. Studies cover all as­pects of net­work ar­chi­tec­ture, from the phys­i­cal layer to the ap­pli­ca­tion layer. Re­search in­volves:

• De­vel­op­ment of the­o­ret­i­cal re­sults.
• Al­go­rithm de­sign.
• Nu­mer­i­cal com­pu­ta­tion.
• Com­puter sim­u­la­tion.
• Hard­ware and/or soft­ware de­vel­op­ment.

The Neural Engineering Lab, under director Nathalia Peixoto, focuses are the de­vel­op­ment of pros­thetic de­vices (or parts of de­vices) to help peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly with patholo­gies of the ner­vous sys­tem. The lab also studies neu­ronal cell cul­tures and biosen­sors.

The Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing Group, which is a team of graduate students led by Pro­fes­sor Kath­leen Wage, works on multi-dis­ci­pli­nary prob­lems that re­quire a syn­the­sis of ar­ray pro­cess­ing, acoustics, and oceanog­ra­phy. The group focuses on:

• Ran­dom ma­trix the­ory.
• Sparse ar­ray de­sign.
• Deep-wa­ter am­bi­ent noise.
• Mode prop­a­ga­tion.

The work is funded by the Of­fice of Naval Re­search.

The WICL Lab, under director Kai Zeng, conducts research in wireless security and cyber-physical system security and privacy. Current research areas include:

• 5G cybersecurity.
• Cyber-physical system/Internet of Things security.
• Wireless physical layer security.
• Spectrum-sharing system security and privacy.
• Edge-computing security and privacy with applications of machine learning.
• Cryptography.
• Information theory.
• Optimization techniques.

The In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Biomedical Imaging Lab conducts translational research using imaging to investigate pathophysiology and function. One overarching focus is the investigation of brain-body interactions through imaging. In particular, we are studying the interactions between the central and peripheral nervous system and the musculoskeletal system in a number of clinical conditions of major public health significance, such as chronic pain, stroke, spinal cord injury, and amputation.

This interdisciplinary group conducts pre-clinical research for developing new technology and translational research on human subjects. The group uses state-of-the-art ultrasound and laser instrumentation for developing new ultrasound, optical, and hybrid imaging techniques.

Our research has potential applications in noninvasive diagnosis, screening, and treatment monitoring for a number of diseases, as well as for understanding underlying mechanisms of disease. Principal investigators: Siddhartha Sikdar and Parag Chitnis. Peterson Family Health Sciences Hall, Room 3300.