Information Sciences Institute

Last updated

ISI headquarters in Marina del Rey, CA Icannheadquarters.jpg
ISI headquarters in Marina del Rey, CA

The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications technologies. It is located in Marina del Rey, California. [1]

Contents

ISI actively participated in the information revolution, and it played a leading role in developing and managing the early Internet and its predecessor ARPAnet. [2] [3] [4] The Institute conducts basic and applied research supported by more than 20 U.S. government agencies involved in defense, science, health, homeland security, energy and other areas. Annual funding is about $100 million. [5]

ISI employs about 400 research scientists, research programmers, graduate students and administrative staff at its Marina del Rey, California headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia, and in Boston, Massachusetts. About half of the research staff hold PhD degrees, and about 40 are research faculty who teach at USC and advise graduate students. [5] Several senior researchers are tenured USC faculty in the Viterbi School.

Research and sponsors

ISI research spans artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, [6] grid computing, [7] cloud computing, quantum computing, microelectronics, [8] [9] supercomputing, nano-satellites and many other areas. AI expertise includes natural language processing, in which ISI has an international reputation, [10] [11] [12] reconfigurable robotics, [13] information integration, motion analysis [14] [15] and social media analysis. Hardware/software expertise includes cyber-physical system security, data mining, reconfigurable computing and cloud computing. In networking, ISI explores Internet resilience, Internet traffic analysis and photonics, among other areas. [16] [17] Researchers also work in scientific data management, wireless technologies, biomimetics and electrical smart grid, in which ISI is advising the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on a major demonstration project. [18] Another current initiative involves big data brain imaging jointly with the Keck School of Medicine of USC. [19]

Federal agency sponsors include the Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other scientific, technical, and defense-related agencies.

Corporate partners include Chevron Corporation in the Center for Interactive Smart Oilfield Technologies (CiSoft), Lockheed Martin in the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, and Sparta Inc., a subsidiary of Parsons Corporation in the DETER Project, a cybersecurity research initiative and international testbed. ISI also has partnered with businesses including IBM, Samsung Electronics, Raytheon, GlobalFoundries, Northrop Grumman and Carl Zeiss AG, and currently is working with Micron Technology, Inc., Altera Corporation and Fujitsu Ltd.

ISI also operates MOSIS, a multi-project electronic circuit wafer service that has prototyped more than 60,000 chips since 1981. MOSIS provides design tools and pools circuit designs to produce specialty and low-volume chips for corporations, universities and other research entities worldwide. The Institute also has given rise to several startup and spinoff companies in grid software, geospatial information fusion, machine translation, data integration and other technologies.

History

ISI was founded by Keith Uncapher, who headed the computer research group at RAND Corporation in the 1960s and early 1970s. [20] [21] Uncapher decided to leave RAND after his group's funding was cut in 1971. He approached the University of California, Los Angeles about creating an off-campus technology institute, but was told that a decision would take 15 months. He then presented the concept to USC, which approved the proposal in five days. [2] ISI was launched with three employees in 1972. Its first proposal was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 30 days for $6 million. [22]

ISI became one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET, [23] the predecessor to the Internet, and in 1977 figured prominently in a demonstration of its international viability. [24] ISI also helped refine the TCP/IP communications protocols fundamental to Net operations, [3] and researcher Paul Mockapetris developed the now-familiar Domain Name System characterized by .com, .org, .net, .gov, and .edu [25] on which the Net still operates. (The names .com, .org et al. were invented at SRI International, an ongoing collaborator.) Steve Crocker originated the Request for Comments (RFC) series, the written record of the network's technical structure and operation that both documented and shaped the emerging Internet. [26] Another ISI researcher, Danny Cohen, became first to implement packet voice and packet video over ARPANET, demonstrating the viability of packet switching for real-time applications. [27]

Jonathan Postel collaborated in development of TCP/IP, DNS and the SMTP protocol that supports email. [28] He also edited the RFC for nearly three decades until his sudden death in 1998, when ISI colleagues assumed responsibility. The Institute retained that role until 2009. Postel simultaneously directed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and its predecessor, which assign Internet addresses. IANA was administered from ISI until a nonprofit organization, ICANN, was created for that purpose in 1998. [29]

Other achievements

Some of the first Net security applications, and one of the world's first portable computers, also originated at ISI. [30]

ISI researchers also created or co-created the:

In 2011, several ISI natural language experts advised the IBM team that created Watson, the computer that became the first machine to win against human competitors on the Jeopardy! TV show. [35] [36] In 2012, ISI's Kevin Knight spearheaded a successful drive to crack the Copiale cipher, a lengthy encrypted manuscript that had remained unreadable for 250 years. [37] Also in 2012, the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) became the first organization to operate a quantum annealing system outside of its manufacturer, D-Wave Systems, Inc. [38] USC, ISI and Lockheed Martin now are performing basic and applied research into quantum computing. [39] A second quantum annealing system is located at NASA Ames Research Center, and is operated jointly by NASA and Google. [40]

The USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering was ranked among the nation's top 10 engineering graduate schools by US News & World Report in 2015. [1] [41] Including ISI, USC is ranked first nationally in federal computer science research and development expenditures. [2]

Organizational structure

ISI is organized into seven divisions focused on differing areas of research expertise: [5]

Smaller, specialized research groups operate within almost all divisions.

ISI is led by Executive Director Craig Knoblock, the previous director to the AI division.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Internet</span>

The history of the Internet originated in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Postel</span> American computer scientist and Internet pioneer (1943–1998)

Jonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards. He is known principally for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) until his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raytheon BBN</span> American research and development company

Raytheon BBN is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Hillis</span> American computer scientist

William Daniel Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and computer scientist, who pioneered parallel computers and their use in artificial intelligence. He founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a parallel supercomputer manufacturer, and subsequently was Vice President of Research and Disney Fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Mockapetris</span> American computer scientist and Internet pioneer

Paul V. Mockapetris is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer, who invented the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard Kleinrock</span> American computer scientist (born 1934)

Leonard Kleinrock is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Kleinrock made several important contributions to the field of computer science, in particular to the mathematical foundations of data communication in computer networking. He has received numerous prestigious awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">USC Viterbi School of Engineering</span> University of Southern California engineering school

The USC Viterbi School of Engineering is the engineering school of the University of Southern California. It was renamed following a $52 million donation by Andrew J. Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm.

MOSIS is multi-project wafer service that provides metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) chip design tools and related services that enable universities, government agencies, research institutes and businesses to prototype chips efficiently and cost-effectively.

Keith Uncapher (1922–2002) was an American computer engineer and manager. At the RAND Corporation Uncapher worked on several pioneering computer projects. He founded the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering. There, he assembled teams of engineers who helped to grow the early Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jawad Salehi</span> Iranian engineer

Jawad A. Salehi, IEEE Fellow & Optica Fellow, born in Kazemain (Kadhimiya), Iraq, on December 22, 1956, is an Iranian electrical and computer engineer, pioneer of optical code division multiple access (CDMA) and named Highly Cited Researcher. He is also a board member of Academy of Sciences of Iran and a fellow of Islamic World Academy of Sciences. He was also elected as a member of Iranian Science and Culture Hall of Fame in Electrical Engineering, October 2010.

Daniel Amihud Lidar is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, physics & astronomy. He is the director and co-founder of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology (CQIST), the director of the USC-IBM Quantum Innovation Center, as well as scientific director of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, notable for his research on control of quantum systems and quantum information processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yannis C. Yortsos</span> Greek-American chemical engineer and academic

Yannis C. Yortsos is a Greek-American chemical engineer and academic, currently serving as Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Cohen (computer scientist)</span> American computer scientist

Danny Cohen was an Israeli-American computer scientist specializing in computer networking. He was involved in the ARPAnet project and helped develop various fundamental applications for the Internet. He was one of the key figures behind the separation of TCP and IP ; this allowed the later creation of UDP.

Chung-Chieh Jay Kuo is a Taiwanese electrical engineer and the director of the Multimedia Communications Lab as well as distinguished professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Southern California. He is a specialist in multimedia signal processing, video coding, video quality assessment, machine learning and wireless communication.

The USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) is a joint scientific research effort between Lockheed Martin Corporation and the University of Southern California (USC). The QCC is housed at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), a computer science and engineering research unit of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and is jointly operated by ISI and Lockheed Martin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shrikanth Narayanan</span> Researcher

Shrikanth Narayanan is an Indian-American Professor at the University of Southern California. He is an interdisciplinary engineer–scientist with a focus on human-centered signal processing and machine intelligence with speech and spoken language processing at its core. A researcher, educator, and inventor, and patent holder, he has worked in research areas including in computational speech science, speech and language technologies, audio, music and multimedia engineering, human sensing and imaging technologies, emotions research and affective computing, behavioral signal processing, and computational media intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Mattmann</span> American data scientist

Chris Mattmann is an American data scientist currently working as the Principal Data Scientist and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. He is also the manager of JPL's Open Source Applications office. Mattmann was formerly Chief Architect in the Instrument and Data Systems section at the laboratory.

Emily Mower Provost is a professor of computer science at the University of Michigan. She directs the Computational Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) Laboratory.

Kristina Lerman is an American network scientist whose research concerns the spread of information on social networks, and fairness in machine learning. She is a research professor at the University of Southern California, in the Computer Science Department of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and a principal scientist in the Information Sciences Institute.

Andrea P. Belz is an American innovation engineer, academic and author. She is a Professor of Practice in Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Vice Dean of Transformative Initiatives in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC).

References

  1. 1 2 "USC Viterbi School of Engineering". USC Viterbi - School of Engineering. Archived from the original on January 2, 2017. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 Bekey, George A. "A Remarkable Trajectory: From Humble Beginnings to Global Prominence, The history of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering." Charleston: CreateSpace, 2015. Print.
  3. 1 2 "TCP/IP 25th Anniversary | Internet Society". Archived from the original on April 3, 2012.
  4. ↑ "Internet pioneers gather in Marina del Rey to honor USC's Information Sciences Institute". Latimesblogs.latimes.com. March 26, 2010. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 "About ISI". Isi.edu. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  6. ↑ Hamedy, Saba (December 2, 2014). "Sony execs' salaries, employee SSNs allegedly leaked in breach". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  7. ↑ Krill, Paul (May 23, 2003). "2003 InfoWorld Innovators: Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman, and Steve Tuecke". Infoworld.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  8. ↑ "Advancing DoD's Ability to Test Critical Microelectronics". Science.dodlive.mil. Archived from the original on April 30, 2019. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  9. ↑ "Stopping Hardware Trojans in Their Tracks". IEEE . January 20, 2015. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  10. ↑ "ACL Member Portal - The Association for Computational Linguistics Member Portal". Aclweb.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  11. ↑ Markoff, John (October 24, 2011). "How 18th-Century Copiale Cipher Was Cracked". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  12. ↑ Hobbs, Jerryr (September 30, 2013). "Influences and Inferences". Computational Linguistics. 39 (4): 781–798. doi: 10.1162/coli_a_00171 . S2CID   11237614.
  13. ↑ "How Tiny 'SuperBots' Will Create Cheap, Modular Satellites". Pcmag.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  14. ↑ Bolch, Ben (October 27, 2013). "Stat-conscious NBA switches to the (advanced) metric system". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  15. ↑ "New Players In The NBA: Big Data, User-Controlled Jumbotrons". Npr.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  16. ↑ "Information Sciences Institute". Isi.edu. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  17. ↑ "Page Not Found - Los Angeles Times". Isi.edu. Retrieved August 13, 2018.{{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
  18. ↑ Radio, Southern California Public (July 1, 2014). "LADWP flips the switch on 52,000 'smart meters'". Scpr.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  19. ↑ Gordon, Larry; Brown, Eryn (May 18, 2013). "USC made its offer to neuroscientists a no-brainer". Articles.latimes.com. Archived from the original on May 17, 2015. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  20. ↑ Hafner, Katie (October 16, 2002). "Keith W. Uncapher, Networking Pioneer, 80". The New York Times. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  21. ↑ Menn, Joseph (October 12, 2002). "Keith Uncapher, 80; Founder of USC Science Institute, Computer Pioneer". Articles.latimes.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  22. ↑ W., Uncapher, Keith (July 10, 1989). "Oral history interview with Keith W. Uncapher". Conservancy.umn.edu. hdl:11299/107692 . Retrieved August 13, 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. ↑ "Iterations: An interdisciplinary journal of software history". Cbi.umn.edu. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  24. ↑ "Internet History of 1970s - Internet History - Computer History Museum". Computerhistory.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  25. ↑ "Paul Mockapetris - Internet Hall of Fame". internethalloffame.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  26. ↑ "Steve Crocker - Internet Hall of Fame". internethalloffame.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  27. ↑ "Danny Cohen - Internet Hall of Fame". internethalloffame.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  28. ↑ "Jon Postel - Internet Hall of Fame". Internethalloffame.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  29. ↑ "SAC067 : Overview and History of the IANA Functions" (PDF). Icann.org. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  30. ↑ "Timeline". Isi.edu. Archived from the original on August 14, 2018. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  31. ↑ Waldrop, M. Mitchell. "Grid Computing". Technologyreview.com. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  32. ↑ "Calit2 : Foster & Kesselman Awarded Lovelace Medal for Grid Leadership". Calit2.net. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  33. ↑ www.cs.sandia.gov https://web.archive.org/web/20220206225304/https://www.cs.sandia.gov/CSRI/Workshops/2009/FaultTolerantSpaceborne/presentations/T-1030-Prager-Raytheon-SpaceComp-Prager-Public.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2022. Retrieved June 30, 2022.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  34. ↑ Granacki, John J. "MONARCH: Next Generation SoC (Supercomputer on a Chip)" (PDF). HPEC. MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 11, 2006. Retrieved June 2, 2015.
  35. ↑ Mankin, Eric (February 18, 2011). "Viterbi School Computer Scientists Contributed to the Development of IBM Watson". USC - Viterbi School of Engineering. Archived from the original on May 23, 2021. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  36. ↑ "IBM's Watson on 'Jeopardy': Computer takes big lead over humans in Round 2 [Updated, with video]". Technology - Los Angeles Times. February 15, 2011. Archived from the original on August 13, 2018. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  37. ↑ Shachtman, Noah (November 16, 2012). "They Cracked This 250-Year-Old Code, and Found a Secret Society Inside". Wired. Vol. 20, no. 12. Archived from the original on August 28, 2018. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  38. ↑ Smalley, Eric (February 22, 2012). "D-Wave Defies World of Critics With 'First Quantum Cloud'". WIRED. Archived from the original on June 19, 2016. Retrieved March 7, 2017.
  39. ↑ Jayakumar, Amrita (May 4, 2015). "Can quantum computing change the world? This start-up is betting on it" . Washington Post. Archived from the original on August 13, 2018. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  40. ↑ Jones, Nicola (May 16, 2013). "Google and NASA snap up quantum computer". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12999. S2CID   57405432 . Retrieved August 13, 2018.
  41. ↑ "Best Engineering School Rankings". Archived from the original on November 18, 2012. Retrieved October 24, 2012.

33°58′49″N118°26′24″W / 33.9802°N 118.440031°W / 33.9802; -118.440031

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.