Research Centers & Labs

Research Centers

Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA)

CARTA is an NSF sponsored IUCRC center focused on cutting edge inter-disciplinary research in real time analytics using next generation accelerated hardware.

Real time analytics is the leading edge of a smart data revolution, pushed by Internet advances in sensor hardware on one side and AI/ML streaming acceleration on the other. CARTA explores the realm streaming applications of Magna Analytics. The center works with next-generation hardware technologies, like the IBM Minsky with onboard GPU accelerated processors and Flash RAM, and smart cyber-physical sensor systems to build cognitive analytics systems and active storage devices for real time analytics. This will lead to the automated ingestion and simultaneous analytics of Big Datasets generated in various domains including cybersecurity, gealthcare, Internet of Things (IoT) and the scientific arena, and the creation of self learning, self correcting “smart” systems.

Center for Real-time Distributed Sensing and Autonomy (CARDS)

The vision of CARDS is to advance AI-based autonomy in order to deliver safe, effective, and resilient new capabilities across a variety of complex mission types, including search-and-rescue, persistent surveillance, managing, adapting and optimizing smart, connected robots and machinery, and augmenting humans in performing complex analytical and decision-making tasks. These systems are continually getting better, but to achieve their potential, there are still numerous developments required to improve their capability, command and control, interoperability, resiliency and trustworthiness. Inaugural Funding for CARDS is from the  Army Research Lab for the period 2021-2026.

Research Labs and Groups

Cyber Defense Lab

Director: Dr. Alan Sherman
Office No. : ITE 224, Lab No. : ITE 228

The Cyber Defense Lab (CDL) is the primary cybersecurity research lab within the CSEE department led by Dr. Alan Sherman.  Among other things, CDL hosts an isolated environment where students can research topics that would normally be considered too dangerous or disruptive to network and system resources or to be investigated in other computer labs. CDL meets bi-weekly to host student/faculty presentations on current research and trends.

DAta Management & Semantics (DAMS) Research Group

Director: Dr. Roberto Yus
Office No. : ITE 342, Lab No. : ITE 230

The UMBC DAMS Research Group focuses on four main areas of research: Data Management, AI, Privacy, and the Internet of Things. We deal with research challenges in bridging the gap that exists between raw data (e.g., data captured by sensors) and semantically meaningful data that is easily understood by people (e.g., inferences extracted from sensor observations). We incorporate semantics and privacy-awareness to data management to design smarter and more responsible systems. Also, we develop prototypes of the approaches/systems designed as part of the research tasks and deploy them in the real world.

Discovery, Research, and Experimental Analysis of Malware Lab (DREAM)

Director: Dr. Charles Nicholas
Office No. : ITE 356, Lab No. : ITE 366

The DREAM lab looks at ways of applying machine learning to cybersecurity, and malware analysis in particular. Recent projects involve using tensor decomposition and innovative measures of string similarity to solve practical problems. The lab is also home to UMBC’s very active cyberdefense competition team, AKA the ‘CyberDawgs’.

ebiquity

Director: Dr. Anupam Joshi
Office No. : ITE 328, Lab No. : ITE 332

Director: Dr. Tim Finin
Office No. : ITE 329, Lab No. : ITE 332, ITE 338

ebiquity’s research explores the interactions between mobile and pervasive computing, the (semantic) web and web 2.0/3.0/4.0, multi-agent systems and artificial intelligence, security/privacy/trust, and services. Group members have research interests in areas such as distributed systems, wireless networking, pervasive/mobile systems, ad-hoc networks, knowledge representation and reasoning, data management and databases, information retrieval, machine learning, personalization, security and privacy, web/data-mining, multi-agent systems and HPCC. Lab research is driven by applications in the e-sevices area — context aware environments (meeting rooms, surgical suites), social media and blogosphere, wireless web, VANETs, e-commerce and m-commerce, etc.

ECLIPSE Cluster

Director: Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee
Office No. : ITE 362, Lab No. : ITE 351

Director: Dr. Ryan Robucci
Office No. : ITE 319, Lab No. : ITE 317

The ECLIPSE Cluster comprises groups with shared laboratories, projects, and students: the Mobile, Pervasive, & Sensor Systems Laboratory led by Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee, and the Covail Analog & Digital Systems Research Laboratory, led by Dr. Ryan Robucci.

ESNET – Embedded Systems and Networks Laboratory

Director: Dr. Mohamed Younis
Office No. : ITE 325 G, Lab No. : ITE 391

Design and management of wireless sensor networks, network architecture and protocols, underwater communication, MAC and routing protocols for ad-hoc and sensor networks, energy-aware system design, secure communication, fault tolerance, topology management, and applications of sensor and actuator networks.

Knowledge, Analytics, Cognitive And Cloud Lab (KnACC)

Director: Dr. Karuna Pande Joshi
Office No. : ITE 424, Lab No. : ITE 4C7B

KnACC lab in the Information Systems Department aims to address challenging issues at the intersection of data science and cloud computing, to include cybersecurity.

Trustworthy and Intelligent Computing Lab (TAIC)

Director: Dr. Keke Chen
Office No. : ITE 360

TAIC focuses on security and privacy issues in AI, data mining and scalable learning algorithms; social data analytics; and cloud computing and distributed systems. Its research projects have been supported by NSF, NIH, Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute, Air Force Research Lab, AFOSR, Yahoo!, Amazon, and the Ohio Board of Regents.