This IUCRC planning project will establish the feasibility of a multi-site Center for High-Assurance Secure Systems and Internet-of-Things (CHASSI) that will focus on areas where both security and high assurance are necessary to support operations of high mission criticality, due to safety or economic impact. Examples include medical devices, manufacturing, the energy grid, real-time financial markets, construction, and defense. Combining security and high-assurance is hard, however, intentionally combining them will lead to new models, techniques, designs, architectures, and systems that will be applicable across of range of important U.S. industries.
CHASSI has five sites: University of Kansas (KU), University of Minnesota, Syracuse University, Case Western Reserve University, and Indiana University. CHASSI research falls into four main thrusts: (1) Architectures, design and formal modeling for systems-level security, privacy, stability, and performance; (2) Secure communication, sensing, and devices; (3) Scalable trust and privacy; and (4) Human behavior for privacy and security. In addition to expertise in security and cyber-physical systems, Minnesota brings considerable expertise and experience in safety critical systems, high assurance, and medical devices, areas nicely complementing the expertise at the partner institutions.
The planning grant will generate significant impacts on both research and education; researchers will understand the interests and needs/barriers in industry, industrial members will understand the research capabilities of faculty member at each Site, and companies will benefit from exposure to cutting-edge university research across all Sites. Minnesota will continue its engagement of student groups in organizing the various events associated with center activities and maintain the established close connection with the Bakken Medical Device center to enable translational research efforts and sustained continuous-education and tech-transfer events. Educational program offerings are also planned.
The collaborators from this multi-university-industry Center will host a single Center-wide repository at: https://chassi.ku.edu. This shared repository will include meeting materials, program information, publications, etc., and will be made available for a minimum of 5 years after conclusion of the award or until the Center transitions to the next phase.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
