Defense Department Funding Supports Research Instrumentation

Three Clark School professors have won Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) funding to support the purchase of research instrumentation.

Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering Bala Balachandran received an award for his project "Opto-acoustic characterization of micro-air-vehicle wings."

Professor and Interim Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering Rama Chellappa received an award for "Opportunistic sensing research."

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research Shihab Shamma received an award for "Research in audio-visual saliency and attention."

The awards are expected to range from $50,000 to $990,000 and average approximately $230,000.

The Defense University Research Instrumentation Program supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments current university capabilities or develops new university capabilities to perform cutting-edge defense research. The program meets a critical need by enabling university researchers to purchase scientific equipment costing $50,000 or more to conduct DoD-relevant research. Researchers generally have difficulty purchasing instruments costing that much under research contracts and grants.

Published June 9, 2011