Distributed Systems Laboratory

The Distributed Systems Laboratory (DSL) creates innovative, distributed, secure and trusted, highly flexible infrastructures for next- generation command, control, communication, computer , and intelligence systems, including assured real-time systems and Quality of Service. We are applying domain-specific information, transforming technology into scalable and evolving frameworks, and enhancing the performance and capability requirements of decision-driven systems. Domain knowledge allows us to understand user requirements so that we can develop and apply the best technology solution to meet their needs. We establish computing architectures that are pliable and evolve with our customer's changing objectives, and we improve technology to meet the stringent operational requirements of decision-driven systems.

We are creating solutions for next-generation systems for the Department of Homeland Security and for unmanned systems; intelligent systems; and command, control, communication, computers, and intelligence systems. Our software innovation includes neuromorphic computation/learning, polymorphic computation, middleware, ontology translation, reasoning/learning, and data mining/exploitation.

Our laboratory focuses on four business areas:

• Cognitive Computing
• Dynamic, Adaptive Reconfigurable Systems
• Information Exploitation
• Network Mission Assurance

Cognitive Computing

We leverage our university and industry partnerships to cultivate the basis for our cognitive-computing technologies. We are in the forefront of research, development, and evaluation of technologies that automate ontology translation and generation for the semantic integration of heterogeneous information systems and advanced, cognitive-processing architectures, algorithms, and virtual machines.

With the influx of new systems and the rapid cycle of obsolescence, sharing and interoperability between new and legacy systems and between systems of different data formats are important aspects of next-generation warfare. By bridging multiple ontologies, we are able to integrate databases and knowledge bases from contemporary and legacy information sources. Our software automatically determines associations between heterogeneous systems, which will help the military collect and translate information faster and more easily from diverse information systems.

Our advanced, cognitive-processing technologies combine the performance of specialized architectures and the portability of general-purpose architectures to enable linear scalability and efficient processing of computations. We are building demonstrations and technology-transition capabilities so that autonomous, unmanned aerial vehicles can plan missions and analyze intelligence.

We develop infrastructures for large-scale, mission-critical systems to support guaranteed real-time and robust operations. We create computer systems that adjust to support changing missions, sensor configurations, hardware failures, and operation constraints during missions and over the life of platforms. These systems guarantee real-time, reliable, and secure operations, while performing complex functions under dynamic mission and environmental conditions.

With reams of intelligence information pouring into our nation's intelligence agencies and stored in databases worldwide, analyzing and processing terabytes of data each day is extremely time consuming. The result is a lack of time-critical intelligence analysis available to decision-markers. Further, not all of this data is outwardly valuable or understandable, so translating each piece into meaningful information is time consuming and unnecessary. Other difficulties include information links that may be hard to discern and the value hidden within those links hard to uncover. The purpose of our intelligence-exploitation software is to find patterns or links that will help intelligence analysts.

Social-network-analysis technologies uncover evidence in massive amounts of data by "finding the needle in a stack of needles," and they ensure that data processing is scalable and efficient. By paring information to what is relevant, it makes complex computing tractable. After determining relevance, it evaluates the truth of that information. These capabilities allow intelligence agencies to significantly reduce the time it takes to process information.

As threats to computer networks and transmission of information increase, we are focusing our efforts on protecting critical infrastructures. Being able to send and receive accurate, un-tampered information across the battlespace has always been an integral part of warfare. Yet, even in these modern times, opposing forces can easily intercept messages. we are developing technologies to protect information with respect to mission-critical applications. We are working to enable future systems for dynamic coalitions and network-centric warfare by developing our holistic vision of information assurance. Our vision includes asset/trust identification, infrastructure model and control, threat prediction and analysis, and response coordination.