The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before
sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.
The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official
website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
Center Overview
The Center for e-Design is a cooperative research center to accelerate product realization by developing and applying intelligent strategies and tools that integrate, leverage, and enable the processes, personnel, and data of design and manufacturing enterprises.
The Center for e-Design integrates innovation and creativity with fundamental principles of science, mathematics, and engineering in the development, testing, and implementation of new methods and technologies for the design of products and systems focused on faster time-to-market, better product quality, and significantly reduced costs. It focuses its efforts in three major areas to deliver value to its industry and government partners:
- Fundamental research focuses on creating methods, tools, and technologies to address industry needs in e-tools-enabled product development and realization, including integrating design information and knowledge; enhancing information structure; enhancing design innovation through collaborative design and manufacturing; and incorporating intelligence into the product development life cycle.
- Research test bed focuses on the integration of interdisciplinary research activities to validate developed tools, methods, and technologies.
- Engineering education and technology transfers focus on educating a new generation of engineers and scientists proficient in e-design and rapidly transferring results into usable applications for industry and government.
Universities
- Northeastern University
- University of Connecticut
- University of California, Davis
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Texas, Dallas
- University of Virginia
Center Personnel
Research Focus
Design education
The objective of design education research is to prepare and support students and practitioners to take on current and future challenges in engineering design. Research focuses on improving design pedagogy through training on new design tools and methods, integrating design thinking into engineering design processes, and providing training on and understanding decision-making under uncertainty in local, distant, and distributed learning environments. The ultimate goal is to prepare individuals for careers in intelligent product and system design, development, and realization.
Information infrastructure
The objective of information infrastructure research is to explore and develop new software, hardware, information modeling approaches (e.g., ontologies), and secure data handling processes and storage necessary to improve the product development processes that corporations and their supply chains use.
Innovation
The objective of innovation research is to develop new engineering design processes and methodologies to improve creativity and innovation in the design of products, systems, production systems, and supply chains. This research focuses on collaboration tools, measuring and improving creativity in the designs of products and service systems, and social-centric design processes.
Integration
The objective of integration research is to develop new methods and tools that more closely integrate engineering design with engineering analysis, manufacturing, supply chain, maintenance, sustainability, and the end user. Research focuses on the integration of information, knowledge, tools, and models across the product life cycle to enable innovative designs, decreased time to market, and reduced total life cycle costs.
Intelligence
The objective of intelligence research is to develop methods that enable better and faster decision-making through intelligent, data/information-driven, and model-based systems. Research in this area focuses on the development of tools, methods, and algorithms that enhance capabilities of the designers through collaboration with computing resources such as artificial intelligence, cloud-based digital design, data mining, sensor and sensor networks data science, and machine learning.
Awards
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design and operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits and boards. Among the universities, the University of Cincinnati will lead CHEST efforts for hardware and embedded system security and trust at the circuit level. Topics include methods for designing, detecting, avoiding, mitigating, and protecting against malicious attacks: (i) side channel attack avoidance and mitigation; (ii) split manufacturing and additive components for HW integrity monitoring; and (iii) hardware acceleration for enhancing encryption/obfuscation, camouflaging, split manufacturing, Trojan detection, reverse engineering, and watermarking applications.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to the reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, is the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all projects led by the University of Cincinnati (UC) will be permanently archived in digital format on the UC file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival UC computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design and operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits and boards. Among the universities, the Northeastern University (NU) leads CHEST efforts for designing, mitigating, and protecting hardware and embedded systems against malicious attacks at the levels of architecture and embedded devices. Topics include: (i) clean-slate secure architecture to balance performance and information security on CPUs and accelerators; (ii) lightweight hardware primitives for security at the edge of Internet-of-Things; and (iii) hardening techniques for deep learning systems on edge computing under adversarial attacks.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to the reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, is the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all CHEST projects that are led by NU are permanently archived in digital format on the NU file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival NU computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design and operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits (ICs) and boards. Among the universities, The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) will lead the research efforts for addressing hardware security and trust aspects of analog and Radio Frequency (RF) ICs and systems, as well as at the microprocessor architecture level. This will include research topics embodying (i) covert channel attack detection and mitigation in standards-compliant wireless networks, (ii) design obfuscation techniques to protect analog/RF ICs against counterfeiting and Intellectual Property (IP) piracy, (iii) transistor-level reconfigurable hardware solutions for design obfuscation, and (iv) statistical and machine learning-based methods for hardware Trojan detection, provenance attestation, and hardware-based workload execution forensics.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, is the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all projects led by UTD will be permanently archived in digital format on the UTD file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival UTD computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design, operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits and boards. Among the CHEST universities, the University of Virginia (UVA) leads in identifying testbeds for improving security and trust at the level of integrated systems. UVA develops methodology for systemic risk, resilience, reliability, logistics, data analytics, and systems engineering. Research topics include (i) resource allocation and priorities of large-scale systems; (ii) tracking emergent and future conditions of supply chains; and (iii) aggregating trust and security of devices to quantification of system resilience.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, provides the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all CHEST Center projects that are led by UVA are permanently archived in digital format on the UVA file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival UVA computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design and operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits and boards. Among the universities, the University of California Davis (UC Davis) will lead CHEST efforts for hardware and embedded system security and trust at the system, architecture and circuit levels. Topics include : (i) Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design flow for security, digital logic reverse engineering, hardware trojan detection and prevention, (ii) Detecting and preventing malicious and side-channel attacks, preventing IoT malware epidemics, secure processor architecture to prevent side-channel attacks and (iii) Security at the system/application levels including secure deep learning and artificial intelligence, cryptography and secure web browser for embedded system and hardware based rootkit.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to the reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, is the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all CHEST projects that are led by UC Davis are permanently archived in digital format on the UC Davis file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival UC Davis computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
The Center for Hardware and Embedded Systems Security and Trust (CHEST) coordinates university-based research with needs of industry and government partners to advance knowledge of security, assurance, and trust for electronic hardware and embedded systems. Interests of CHEST include identification, detection, monitoring, mitigation, and elimination of vulnerabilities that affect hardware and embedded systems. The CHEST Center addresses a range of attack vectors across design, operation, manufacturing, supply chains, and integration of the hardware, software, and firmware to a variety of systems. The Center is inventing and disseminating technologies, practices, and guidelines to stakeholders and educating a next generation of experts.
The NSF CHEST Center addresses security, assurance, and trust across several levels: Large-scale systems, embedded systems, design and operations, requirements, standards, manufacturing, supply chains, and integrated circuits and boards. Among the universities, the University of Connecticut will lead CHEST efforts for hardware and embedded system security and trust at the circuit and systems level. Research topics include (i) anti-tamper technologies that help prevent reverse engineering; (ii) counterfeit detection and prevention in the supply chain of integrated circuits and component subsystems, and (iii) methods to automatically configure hardware components in distributed embedded systems.
Security, assurance, and trust of integrated cyber-physical systems enable meeting fundamental human needs, along with supporting broader social, environmental, and economic progress of the nation. The ability of systems to absorb disruptive shocks and recover with minimal loss is key to protecting human lives and property. The NSF CHEST Center influences the practices of industry, government, and the military in design, protection, and resilience to vulnerabilities associated with hardware and embedded systems. Improving assurance and trust contributes to the reducing the frequencies and severities of adverse events with attention to system missions, performance, schedule, and cost.
The NSF CHEST Center website, www.nsfchest.org, is the repository for all publicly accessible data, code, results, etc. These pages will be maintained for at least as long as the CHEST Center is active. In addition, all projects led by the University of Connecticut (UConn) are permanently archived in digital format on the UConn file servers with sufficient provisions for backup and recovery in case of equipment failure. All archival UConn computers and servers are backed up on a regular basis.
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.
Read More >
Oregon State University (OSU) will be joining the Center for e-Design IUCRC as a full university member research site. The mission and vision of the existing NSF Center for e-Design is to research and develop methods and tools that support the realization of a new design paradigm that can be used to develop new engineered products and systems. This new paradigm allows design and product realization to be customer driven in a collaborative e-design environment that supports transparent analysis, as well as virtual simulation and prototyping. This new design paradigm encompasses consideration of the entire life cycle of the product or system under development. The Center researches and develops a number of enabling technologies to support the proposed e-design paradigm. OSU has faculty and student researchers working in areas that are synergistic with the mission and vision of the existing Center for e-Design. The team is interdisciplinary, including 24 researchers from seven schools and departments across and several university colleges and institutes. Research activities of the OSU team will especially strengthen the Centers efforts in the area of process, product, and complex system design, analysis, and optimization. The specific needs within the Center to be met by the OSU team are focused in the following areas: 1) System Design Analysis and Optimization, 2) Decision Analysis; 3) Computational Design and Innovation. The addition of OSU strengthens the Center for e-Design and its role as a significant national resource capable of the following results: 1) inclusion of a multi-disciplinary viewpoint needed to ensure the development of a new paradigm of excellence in the design of engineered products and/or systems; 2) realization of conceptual modeling tools aimed at reducing design cycle time and ensuring maximum achievement of design goals for human use; 3) realization of an environment for economic and supply chain design optimization; 4) establishment of a critical mass of expertise focused on the development of an e-Design modeling and simulation software platform and virtual prototyping tools, as well as strategies for achieving simulation based acquisition.
The proposed effort will contribute significantly to the successful development and preparation of graduate and undergraduate students across seven schools and departments. Results of this research effort will be integrated into the educational curriculum to enrich the student learning experiences in design, modeling and simulation, decision analysis, rapid prototyping, manufacturing, and simulation based acquisition courses. Students associated with the Center for e-Design will receive career development opportunities, to include laboratory and field studies, attendance and presentations at interdisciplinary conferences and workshops, a design colloquium series, participation in interdisciplinary activities and journal publications, as well as training in the ethical conduct of research. The addition of OSU to the Center contributes to the diversity of the Center. One the co-PIs as well as over 25% of the participating faculty are women, typically underrepresented in engineering. The PI and other OSU faculty will emphasize involvement of women and minority graduate and undergraduate students. Research and educational findings will be shared with the industry and the center will work towards the technology transfer.
Read More >
The Center for e-Design (CED) is an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) that works with its member organizations to research and advance solutions to complex problems associated with the innovation, design, production, distribution, and sustainment of innovative and high quality products and systems, that minimize costs and are responsive to the rapidly changing marketplace. Concurrent design of products and supporting processes; improved integration and collaboration among people, tools, and information; process improvements; knowledge capture and reuse; and automated/assisted decision-making are just some of the strategies employed. The Center for e-Design has research sites in place at six universities (Iowa State University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Buffalo, Brigham Young University, Oregon State University, and Wayne State University). This project adds The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), a seventh university, to the research sites in the Center. Penn State brings expertise from a diverse interdisciplinary team of researchers from several departments, colleges, university centers and institutes. The primary contribution of the Penn State team will include the following areas: crowd-based design, big data analytics, design theory and innovation, collaborative design, design optimization, additive manufacturing, smart manufacturing, and model-based enterprise.
The Center for e-Design's activities are organized around three major efforts which deliver value to its industry/government partners: 1) Fundamental Research focuses on creating tools, methods, and technologies to address industry relevant needs in e-tools-enabled product development and realization including enabling information infrastructure; conceptual design tools; multidisciplinary constraint management and optimization; and virtual prototyping and simulation; 2) Research Test Bed focuses on integration of interdisciplinary research activities to validate developed tools, methods, and technologies and establish a common framework for multiple applications while fostering collaboration between academic and industry research projects; and 3) Engineering Education and Technology Transfer, which focuses on educating a new cadre of engineers and scientists proficient in e-design and rapidly transferring research results into usable applications for industry and government.
Read More >
1338780 Wayne State University (WSU); Kim
Wayne State University (WSU) proposes to join the existing Center for e-Design that is currently comprised of Iowa State (lead), Virginia Tech, Brigham Young University, the University of Massachusetts, and the University of Buffalo. The mission of the center is to create new tools, processes, and methodologies that will assist in generating higher quality products at lower costs.
Wayne States team complements the existing university partners' expertise in the four research thrust areas. The proposed sites relevant, fundamental research includes semantic product design and infrastructure, innovation tools for design fusion, virtual simulation, and human-machine interface tools. Furthermore, Wayne State's team has significant expertise in cultural and anthropological research in design, alternative and renewable energy technology design and optimization, and STEM education. Wayne State's participation can help grow the e-Design centers research to better meet both current and emerging industrial and social needs. Wayne State brings expertise from a diverse interdisciplinary team that draws from multiple departments across academic schools within the university.
Site research from Wayne State's Center for e-Design will be integrated into its broader graduate and undergraduate educational endeavors to enhance students' development and preparation. Research will be integrated into existing educational curriculum, thereby enriching course content and student learning experiences in: design process and problem solving, decision making in engineering design, advanced design theory and computational issues, IT and knowledge engineering for design, and global product development. Wayne State provides excellent industry-driven internship opportunities to its graduate and undergraduate students. The proposed site plans to maintain a policy of strong diversity within the Center, including continued partnership and recruitment of minority and women graduate and undergraduate students.
Read More >
This is a Phase III renewal for the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst) site to continue as a partner institution of I/UCRC for e-Design. UMass Amherst is one of the two founding institutions of the Center for e-Design. The mission and vision of the existing NSF Center for e-Design is to research and develop methods and tools that support the realization of a new design paradigm that can be used to design, develop, and manufacture new engineered products and systems. Research at the Center for e-Design is oriented to application areas where large scale, complex projects are being developed, often involving multiple collaborators at various locations. Application areas include transportation, manufacturing, information technology, and health and safety. Research is categorized into five thrust areas - New Design Paradigms and Processes, Visualization and Virtual Prototyping, Enabling Information Infrastructure, Design Optimization, and Design Education. Research projects address a diverse range of engineering challenges faced by high-tech companies and agencies competing in a global economy. UMass Amherst has a number of faculty and student researchers working in areas that directly support the research thrust areas of the center. The renewal will enable UMass Amherst to continue its research in the advancement of new methods and tools in conceptual design and product innovation, advanced engineering modeling and simulation, digital manufacturing, and medical devices design. UMass ongoing research projects involve projects dealing with integration and application of e-Design methods and tools into commercial design processes, as well as fundamental research projects on sustainability product design and engineering design innovation.
The Center renewal will enable UMass Amherst to contribute significantly to the successful development and preparation of graduate and undergraduate students. Results from research effort will continue to be integrated into the educational curriculum to enrich the student learning experiences in conceptual design and product innovation, advanced engineering modeling and simulation, and digital manufacturing. Students associated with the Center will receive exceptional career development opportunities that include laboratory and field studies, participation at conferences and workshops, design colloquium series, and journal publications, as well as training in the ethical conduct of research. The PI and other UMass Amherst faculty will continue recruiting underrepresented students, including partnering with a number of university programs aimed at providing research opportunities for these students. Research and educational findings will be disseminated nationally and have significant broader impact through industrial collaboration and technology transfer. The industry partners will continue to benefit from first access to research, royalty-free use of the tools, and the opportunity to license and commercialize technologies. Research and educational findings will continue to be disseminated nationally and have a significant impact on U.S. industry as a whole.
Read More >
The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the Center author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.