February 18, 2004

Lockheed Funds Cornell Research

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Two Cornell Engineering professors recently received prestigious grants from the Lockheed Martin Corporate University Research Grants Program. Each received grants of $50,000 for their research proposals.

Alyssa B. Apsel, the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the award for her proposal to research merging complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits with photonics devices.

Apsel’s proposal involved research in several of the eleven topics that Lockheed identifies as its top priorities. Her expertise with high-speed CMOS, in the research proposal, was integrated with photonics devices and relates to data transmission and communication.

The research will, according to Apsel, allow for the construction of high-speed interconnects in circuits.

“We’re trying to build photonic elements with a low-cost to integrate into CMOS devices,” Apsel explained.

“This is research in progress,” said Apsel. “We expect to have some good results by the end of the year.”

Lockheed Martin also awarded funding to Prof. Mark Campbell for his, “Cooperative Information Seeking for Uninhabited Vehicles,” project. This project uses flying vehicles which communicate and work together. Through working cooperatively they can perform surveillance on certain subjects from different perspectives.

“It is a compliment between Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at Cornell and at Lockheed Martin,” Campbell said.

“This research compliments a program at Lockheed Martin,” Campbell explained. Lockheed Martin has a similar project called Unmanned Combat Armed Rotorcraft (UCAR) which uses an unmanned helicopter for surveillance and other combat applications.

According to Nader Mehravari Ph.D. ’82, a senior technical staff member at Lockheed Martin and an adjunct professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, this program has existed for more than five years. Cornell professors have won grants in each of the last three competitions.

Each year, over 200 research proposals are submitted to the program. This year, about 20 were funded, with two from Cornell receiving $50,000 grant awards. It is unusual for Lockheed Martin to fund more than one grant proposal at a given university.

Janet Gottfredsen, a public relations representative from Lockheed Martin in Owego, N.Y. explained that funding for the research program comes from Lockheed Martin’s Corporate Engineering and Technical Services at the company’s Bethesda, Md. headquarters.

This year, Lockheed Martin was particularly interested in grant proposals related to radar and telecommunications, advanced materials, electro-optic sensors, advances software, data transmission and communication, information fusion, low observables, photonics, virtual environments, information assurance, and unmanned vehicles.

Archived article by Chris Mitchell