Introduction to ISR

ISR is home to more than 60 faculty and other researchers from 13 departments in five colleges across the University of Maryland. We believe teams of researchers with diverse backgrounds are needed to address society’s most important and challenging problems.

Today’s frontiers of engineering and biological system development have expanded because engineers have the tools to support analysis and design. ISR was one of the pioneers creating these tools, which address the need to analyze and simulate new types of automated, distributed, adaptable, resilient, extensible and economically competitive systems.

Our basic research has resulted in many new algorithms and sophisticated models for decision making and control, communications, and the computing needed to model and design highly automated, autonomous and distributed engineering systems. ISR also has developed new approaches to the planning and multi-objective optimization-based design of engineering systems.

Because large-scale science requires systems engineering and, conversely, systems engineering and implementation of modern real-world systems doesn’t occur without good systems science, ISR develops both basic solution methodologies and tools for systems problems in a variety of different areas. Our advances in the system sciences have been driven by a wide range of complex applications, which have changed over time. ISR’s current main research areas are:

• Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Computer Science
• Communications & Security
• Control, Optimization & Modeling
• Energy
• Micro & Nanosystems
• Neuroscience
• Operations Research, Decision Making
• Robotics
• Systems Engineering

ISR research funding comes from federal sources such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; as well as our research partnerships with industry and the Maryland state government.