The University of Florida; the University of Arizona; Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; and Mississippi State University invite industry representatives to join the Center for Autonomic Computing (CAC), a center funded by the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center program of the National Science Foundation, CAC members from industry and government, and university matching funds. Operation of the center began in January 2008, having received more than 15 commitments from industry members; the Mississippi State University site was added in July 2010. Companies and government agencies interested in participating in the center are invited to become members. To download a PDF image of this prospectus, please click here. Goals
Benefits of Membership CAC members are afforded access to leading-edge developments in autonomic computing and to knowledge accumulated by academic researchers and other industry partners. New members will join a growing list of founding members that currently includes Citrix, the US Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Intel, Microsoft, Raytheon, Xerox, Imaginestics, Avirtec, and ISCA Technologies. Benefits of membership include:
Technical Scope Autonomic computing (AC) denotes a broad area of scientific and engineering research on methods, architectures and technologies for the design, implementation, integration and evaluation of special- and general-purpose computing systems, components and applications that are capable of autonomously achieving desired behaviors. AC systems use self-management techniques to enable independent operation, minimize cost and risk, accommodate complexity and uncertainty, or command systems of systems with large numbers of components. Hence, system integration and automation of management are important areas of research whose contexts subsume other AC research topics. These might include, to varying degrees, self-organization, self-healing, self-optimization (e.g., for power or speed), self-protection and other so-called self-* behaviors. CAC research activities involve several disciplines that impact the specification, design, engineering and integration of autonomic computing and information processing systems. These include design and evaluation methods, algorithms, architectures, information processing, software, mathematical foundations and benchmarks for autonomic systems. Solutions devised through CAC research are applicable to multiple levels of both centralized and distributed systems, including the hardware, network, storage, virtualization, middleware, service, and information layers. Collectively, the CAC universities have research and education programs whose strengths cover the technical areas of the center. Within this broad scope, the specific research activities will vary over time to adapt to the needs of center members and the evolution of the field of autonomic computing. Personnel Research at the CAC universities is undertaken by faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers from multiple disciplines including electrical engineering, computer engineering/science, and mechanical engineering. Industry and government partners are welcome to have researchers in residence at the Center or as temporary visitors to campus making use of its facilities. Administrative StructureThe Director of the Center is Dr. José A. B. Fortes, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Florida (UF), and the Co-Directors are Dr. Salim Hariri, Professor of ECE at the University of Arizona (UA) and Dr. Dario Pompili, Professor of ECE at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The Site Director at the University of Florida is Dr. Renato Figueiredo, Professor of ECE. The Site Director at Mississippi State University is Dr. Ioana Banicescu of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) for CAC is comprised of representatives from the industry and government members and is responsible for oversight of center activities, review of ongoing and completed projects, as well as resource assignments for new projects. The center is fully supported by dedicated staff at each university site, and by the University Policy Committee, composed of administrators from each school. Finally, NSF provides for an independent evaluator drawn from outside the participating academic departments, who is responsible for formal evaluation of the Center, its operations and processes, and its partnerships with industry and government.Facilities
Funding Per NSF guidelines, industry and government contributions in the form of annual CAC memberships ($35K/year per regular membership), coupled with baseline funds from NSF and university matching funds, directly support the Center's expenses for personnel, equipment, travel, and supplies. Memberships provide funds to support the Center's graduate students on a one-to-one basis, and thus the size of the annual membership fee is directly proportional to the cost of supporting one graduate student, while NSF and university funds support various other costs of operation. Multiple annual memberships may be contributed by any organization wishing to support multiple students and/or projects. The annual operating budget for CAC is over $1M, including NSF and universities' contributions, in an academic environment that is very cost effective. Thus, a single regular membership is an exceptional value. It represents less than 3% of the projected annual budget of the Center yet reaps the full benefit of Center activities, a research program that could be significantly more expensive in an industry or government facility. |
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