Researchers Earn Leadership Role for Cutting-Edge Work in Embedded Computing

PITTSBURGH-Carnegie Mellon University's Gregory Ganger and Priya Narasimhan will head two new Intel Science and Research Centers (ISTC) based at CMU that will focus on cloud and embedded computing. Each center involves multiple universities and will receive $15 million over the next five years.

"This will be an excellent platform for open collaboration research into underlying technologies essential to allowing cloud computing to reach the promise of dramatically improving efficiency, ubiquity and productivity for large-scale and user-facing applications across so many critical areas of information technology, from social networks to medicine, science and government," said Ganger, the Stephen J. Jatras Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.

Ganger is a co-PI of the ISTC for Cloud Computing along with Phil Gibbons, an Intel research scientist and an adjunct professor in computer science. Narasimhan, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of Carnegie Mellon's Mobility Research Center, is a co-PI of the ISTC for Embedded Computing along with Mei Chen, senior research scientist at Intel.

"These new ISTCs are expected to open amazing possibilities," said Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer. "Imagine, for example, future cars equipped with embedded sensors and microprocessors to constantly collect and analyze traffic and weather data. That information could be analyzed and shared in the cloud so that drivers could be provided with suggestions for quicker and safer routes."

The centers represent the next $30 million installment of Intel's recently announced five-year, $100 million ISTC program to increase university research and accelerate innovation in a handful of key areas. Intel had previously announced ISTCs in visual computing and secure computing, headquartered at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, respectively. CMU researchers are part of the ISTC for Secure Computing.

The ISTC for Cloud Computing forms a new research community that broadens Intel's "Cloud 2015" vision with new ideas from top academic researchers. In addition to CMU, the center includes researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University and Intel. Researchers will explore technology that will have important implications for the cloud from more efficient and effective support of big data analysis to making the cloud more distributed and localized by extending cloud capabilities to the network and client devices.

The ISTC for Embedded Systems forms a new collaborative community to drive research to transform experiences in the home, car and retail environment of the future. In addition to CMU, this center incorporates the expertise of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley and Intel.

For additional information, please see the web sites for the Cloud Computing ISTC www.istc-cc.cmu.edu and the Embedded Computing ISTC, http://www.istc-ec.org/.