Funding Agency Session I:
The Department of Defense (DoD)
AND
The National Science Foundation (NSF)
Tuesday, 6:00pm-7:30pm – Ballroom B
Speakers:
- Marc Steinberg (Office of Naval Research)
- George Chiu (National Science Foundation)
- Thomas F. Russell (National Science Foundation)
Science of Autonomy and Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) Autonomy Research (Office of Naval Research)
Dr. Marc Steinberg represents the Office of Naval Research. In this part of the session, he will discuss the role of control theory in autonomy research. In addition, he will make special note of program emphasis and priorities. Dr. Steinberg will also discuss proposal mechanisms at ONR for researchers.
New NSF Opportunities for Interdisciplinary Research
The National Science Foundation has introduced or is introducing several new initiatives for solicited and unsolicited interdisciplinary research. The presentation will outline some of these, including Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES), Cyberinfrastructure Framework for the 21st Century (CIF21), and Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE). In addition, we will also summarize the dynamic systems and control systems programs and the National Robotics Initiative (NRI).
Marc Steinberg is a program officer at the Office of Naval Research, where he manages basic and applied research programs in autonomy. At the basic research level, he focuses on highly multi-disciplinary autonomy research that cuts across fields such as control theory, computational intelligence, human factors engineering, and related fields such as biology/animal behavior/cognition, economics/game theory, cognitive science/psychology, and neuroscience. At the applied research level, he focuses on autonomous air systems and on multivehicle collaborative systems that cut across multiple domains. Prior to coming to ONR, he was a technical fellow and principle investigator on a wide range of basic and applied research projects within the naval laboratories. Research areas included robust, adaptive/nonlinear, and reconfigurable control, applications of computational intelligence to control, control allocation, prognostics and health management, control system optimization, and autonomous control for unmanned vehicles. He has also worked on a number of systems development programs to help transition and mature advanced technologies into real systems. He has authored or co-authored a wide range of papers on these subjects and has received numerous professional society awards for his technical contributions including the Dr. George Rappaport Best Paper Award (IEEE/AIAA National Aerospace Electronics Conference), the Derek George Astridge Award for Contribution to Aerospace Safety (British Institution of Mechanical Engineers), the 2nd Best Paper of Conference Award for the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, and has twice-won Pathfinder Best Paper awards for AUVSI Unmanned Systems North America. He received the B.S. and M.S degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University and has since received a second M.S. degree in Human Factors Engineering.
George Chiu is a Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering with a courtesy appointment in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He is currently on leave from Purdue and is serving as the Program Director for the Control Systems Program in the Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation Division of the Engineering Directorate at the National Science Foundation. He received the B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1985 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1990 and 1994, respectively. Dr. Chiu’s current research interests are mechatronics and dynamic systems and control with applications to digital printing and imaging systems, digital fabrications, human motor control, motion and vibration perception and control. He is the Editor Elect for the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology and serves on the Executive Committee of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division (DSCD). He is a Fellow of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and a member of IEEE and ASME.
Thomas F. Russell came to the National Science Foundation in 2003 as a program director for computational mathematics and applied mathematics in the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS). In 2008, he joined the Office of Integrative Activities to coordinate the planning and execution of NSF’s Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program, and he now serves as co-chair of the working group that is implementing the forthcoming Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) initiative. Previously, Dr. Russell was a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Denver from 1987 to 2003, and served as department chair from 1996 to 2001. From 1980 to 1987, he was a research mathematician at the Petroleum Technology Center of Marathon Oil Company in Littleton, CO. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1980. His interdisciplinary professional service includes a term as the chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Activity Group on Geosciences from 1998 to 2000, chair of the organizing committee for the 2001 SIAM Conference on Geosciences, associate editor of Water Resources Research from 2001 to 2004, and membership on the scientific council of the French Research Group for Numerical Simulation and Mathematical Modeling of Underground Nuclear Waste Disposal since 2002. His interdisciplinary interests at the interface of mathematics and geosciences relate to environmental and energy issues. These research interests are in the numerical solution of partial differential equations, particularly with applications to subsurface flows in porous media, including groundwater flow and transport and petroleum reservoir simulation.
Funding Agency Session II: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Funding Opportunities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Wednesday, 12:00pm-1:30pm – Ballroom B
Speaker: Grace C. Y. Peng
The mission of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering is to improve human health by leading the development and accelerating the application of biomedical technologies. The Institute is committed to integrating the physical and engineering sciences with the life sciences to advance basic research and medical care. The Institute plans, conducts, fosters, and supports an integrated program of research and research training that can be applied to a broad spectrum of biological processes, disorders and diseases across organ systems. The Institute coordinates with other agencies and NIH Institutes to support imaging and engineering research to facilitate the transfer of such technologies to medical applications.
Discussion topics will focus on programs relevant to dynamic systems and control. These programs include the NIBIB program for modeling, simulation and analysis; the NIBIB program for surgical systems; and the NIBIB program for rehabilitation engineering. The NIBIB coordinates the trans-NIH Neuroprosthesis Group and the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG). IMAG in turn coordinates the Multiscale Modeling (MSM) Consortium. These efforts are highly relevant to the topics discussed at this conference. The presentation will describe several trans-NIH and interagency initiatives and funding opportunities. Of particular focus will be the latest initiative for Predictive Multiscale Models for Biomedical, Biological, Behavioral, Environmental and Clinical Research (PAR-11-203), and the National Robotics Initiative (NRI).
Grace C.Y. Peng received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana, the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University. She performed postdoctoral and faculty research in the department of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University. In 2000 she became the Clare Boothe Luce professor of biomedical engineering at the Catholic University of America. Since 2002, Dr. Peng has been a Program Director in the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), at the National Institutes of Health. Her program areas at the NIBIB include mathematical modeling, simulation and analysis methods, and next generation engineering systems for rehabilitation, neuroengineering, and surgical systems. In 2003, Dr. Peng led the creation of the Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group (IMAG), which now consists of program officers from ten federal agencies of the U.S. government and Canada (www.imagwiki.org/mediawiki). IMAG has continuously supported funding specifically for multiscale modeling (of biological systems) since 2004. IMAG facilitates the activities of the Multiscale Modeling (MSM) Consortium of investigators (started in 2006). Dr. Peng is interested in promoting the development of intelligent tools and reusable models, and integrating these approaches in engineering systems and multiscale physiological problems.
