UMD Awarded Three Department of Defense MURI Grants

The University of Maryland is part of three research teams that have been awarded Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grants by the Department of Defense.

UMD will be leading one of the projects, titled “A New Paradigm in Sources and Physics of High-Power Ionospheric Modification.” The award is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and includes collaborators from Texas Tech University and the University of California at Los Angeles.

A. James Clark School of Engineering Professor Thomas Antonsen will be the principal investigator of the group. Antonsen currently holds a joint academic appointment as Professor of Physics and Professor of Electrical Engineering, and his research is based in the Institute of Research for Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP). John Rodgers, Associate Research Scientist of IREAP; Dennis Papadopoulos, Professor of Physics and Astronomy; and Gennady Milikh, Senior Research Scientist in the Astronomy Department, will serve as co-principal investigators on the project.

UMD will receive $1.2 million for their involvement in a second project, titled “Topological Decompositions and Spectral Sampling Algorithms for Element Substitution in Critical Technologies.” Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) professor Ichiro Takeuchi is serving as a co-principal investigator in the group. The five-year project is led by Duke University and includes the University of North Texas, Brigham Young University, and Central Michigan University.

Professor P. S. Krishnaprasad (ECE/ISR) and Professor Christopher Jarzynski (Chem-Biochem/IPST) are part of a project called "Information Engines: Nanoscale Control, Computing and Communication out of Equilibrium." The project will investigate fundamental principles and algorithms for the creation of synthetic nanosystems that are able to gather, store and manipulate information while immersed in a thermally noisy environment. The research team is led by the University of California, Davis and includes the University of California, Berkeley, Columbia University and the University of Maryland.

A highly competitive program, MURI grants support research by teams of individuals, primarily at academic institutions, whose work spans multiple traditional science and engineering disciplines. In 2013, only 15 teams out of nearly 200 applicants received awards based on their potential for significant and sustained progress. Over the past 25 years, MURI has produced significant capabilities for the U.S. military and opened up entirely new lines of research.