Viterbi Researchers Part of $10 Million in Defense Projects

In 2006, USC was one of seven universities to win more than one Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the Department of Defense. Viterbi School faculty are heavily involved in both of the research projects, each of which has been funded with up to $5 million over five years.

Florian Mansfeld, professor of chemical engineering and materials science; Paul Ronney, professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering; and Hai Wang, associate professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering are working to develop microbial fuel cells that could act as remote power supplies for a multitude of purposes, ranging from remote sensors to tiny insect-like drones. Kenneth Nealson, professor of earth sciences and biological sciences in the USC College, leads that project. Researchers from Rice University and from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology are also part of the project.

The second project is an attempt to automatically track large groups of moving targets. Isaac Cohen, research assistant professor of computer science (currently at Honeywell); Paul Cohen, deputy division director of the Information Sciences Institute and Christos Papadopoulos, assistant professor of computer science are working with researchers from the USC College, from UCLA and from the University of Illinois-Champaign. That project is led by Boris Rozovsky, professor of mathematics in the USC College who also has an appointment in the Viterbi School’s Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering.

The MURI program is administered by the Department of Defense and funds multidisciplinary projects at U.S. universities with both military and commercial potential. Projects generally intersect more than one traditional science or engineering discipline. A goal of funding the projects is to hasten the transition of research findings to practical application.