Research Team Wins DoD/MoD International Technology Alliance Contract

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Dr. Virgil Gligor (left) and Dr. James Hendler (right)

An IBM research team that includes representatives from the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering won the International Technology Alliance (ITA) contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

ECE Professor Virgil Gligor is the principal investigator (PI) for the University of Maryland project, while Professor James Hendler (CS/ISR/UMIACS/ECE) is co-PI. The University of Maryland team's role will be in the areas of Security in Systems of Systems (Technical Area 2) and in Distributed Coalition Planning and Decision Making (Technical Area 4)—areas in which the University of Maryland has been a clear leader for the past few decades. The group will receive $3.5 million over the lifetime of the contract, which will last approximately 10 years.

The ITA is a new bilateral, cooperative technology concept created by the U.K. MoD and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which will bring together a consortium comprised of industry and academia on both sides of the Atlantic. The purpose of this new collaborative initiative is to tackle some of the complex information network issues that will be crucial to future coalition military operations and take full advantage of the joint development of emerging technologies. The ITA will be drawing on the MoD's experience with Defense Technology Centers and the ARL's Collaborative Technology Alliances (CTA) Program. The ITA business model will be based heavily on the CTA model, an effort led in part by Clark School Professor John S. Baras (ECE/ISR).

Under the ITA, research will be conducted in network theory, network security for highly mobile ad hoc networks, sensor and information fusion, and distributed coalition planning and decision making, with emphasis on the synergistic combination of these technologies in support of a tactical coalition force. The ITA program will also provide a mechanism that will allow for the transition of the fundamental research results to military and commercial applications. An ITA Program Bulletin is available at the ITA website.

Further information on the CTA program can be found on the ARL website, and information on the DTC program can be found at: http://www.dtc.mod.uk.

Published May 31, 2006