Computer Science and Engineering

A $10,000 National Science Foundation planning grant will allow the University of North Texas, to expand its current partnerships in a Net Centric Software Consortium that also involves UTD, UTA and SMU. UTD and SMU also received $10,000 from NSF to collaborate with UNT as well as Arizona State University, University of California in Irvine and Southern Illinois to form an Industry/University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC).

Each University partner has one year to recruit at least 5 industrial members, paying annual membership dues, before the I/UCRC can be established. The DFW universities will concentrate on developing high-quality software for new generation applications that involve systems on a network (Net Centric systems). The US Department of Defense expressed a strong interest in the research.

Dr. Krishna Kavi, the Principle Investigator of the grant who also is the chair of UNT's department of computer science and engineering, says the grant will allow planning for additional industries and businesses to join I/UCRC. "We are inviting about 200 companies here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to join the consortium. In February 2008, a meeting will be held to explain the I/UCRC concept, benefits for industry and how they can join the center. In short, by joining the consortium, industry will have royalty-free access to the research we are conducting in the center," he says. Kavi is also the initial director of the Net Centric software consortium that was established with the four major universities in the DFW area.

Kavi predicts the consortium will be known as a leading research alliance in the United States, conducting significant research projects for the federal government and industrial customers and attracting the best research faculty and students from all over the world. The consortium also helps in creating trained workforce to meet the needs of US industries.

Dr. Oscar Garcia, Founding Dean of the UNT College of Engineering says, "This award culminates a long collaborative effort of UNT and other universities partnering with regional industry in bringing academic work into an application environment. It will facilitate industry/university projects, and the students will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this timely work. It also will advance the state of the art in software engineering and embedded systems in the net-centric environments of today's activities resulting in economic development. We applaud the leadership that UNT and its collaborators have shown in involving many entities in this laudable project."

More information on the consortium can be found at http://www.csrl.unt.edu/~kavi/NetCentric/. Kavi can be reached at (940) 565-2767.