Teaming for Interdisciplinary Research Pre-Seed Program

The past decade has witnessed the explosive growth of mobile devices capable of onboard communication, control, and computing. Often referred to as the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), these devices play an essential role in human-machine interaction and sensing capabilities and can provide extensive societal benefits. Large-scale CPS systems make centralized control optimization very challenging. Hence the scientific community is moving toward a paradigm shift to distributed and collaborative solutions powered by the joint coordination of communication and computing. However, the traditional model-based approaches and the recent innovations in the literature reveal significant limitations due to high system complexity.  

UGA D3C3 team plans to address the above challenge with data-driven and model-free approaches. Generally, the extant classical models are abstracted as a more general input-output relationship tackled by advanced learning methods. The proposed research requires synthesizing the interdisciplinary knowledge of control theory, communication, and computing. The results will advance the capability of CPS in a more complex unstructured environment, leading to enhanced adaptability, resiliency, and efficiency. We envision a growing application that can benefit from our research, for example, networked robotics, collaborative machine learning, beyond 5G wireless systems, smart grids, autonomous vehicles, distributed computing, etc. Besides, we advocate for education, training, and outreach activities across UGA in the future.   

The D3C3 team is composed of 10 researchers from six disciplines at UGA. Their research expertise fits one of the as follows. 1) Communication and Networking; 2) Control Theory; 3) Robotics and Computing; 4) Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence; 5) Data Science; 6) Engineering Education and Outreach. The overall goals of the D3C3 team are: 1) To have regular in-person workshops and brainstorming meetings; 2) To enrich the our research portfolio by inviting members with complementary expertise; 3) To discuss strategies for forming sub-teams towards collaborative grant proposals; 4) To reach out to colleagues from other institutions as well as local industries to form a southeastern hub for communication, computing, and control research; 5) To promote collaborative research and education activities at UGA, including joint publications and co-supervising students.  

Team Lead

Haijian Sun 
hsun@uga.edu 
College: College of Engineering 
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Team Members

Wenzhan Song 
wsong@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Guoyu Lu 
guoyu.lu@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Tianming Liu Liu 
tianming.liu@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Computing 

Xiaoqiao Wang 
xqwang@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Environmental, Civil, Agricultural and Mechanical Engineering 

Jin Sun 
jin.sun@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Computing 

Jin Ye
jin.ye@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Ramviyas Parasuraman 
ramviyas@uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Computing 

Xiaoming Zhai 
xiaoming.zhai@uga.edu
College: College of Education
Department: Department of Mathematics and Science Education 

Lakshmish Ramaswamy 
laks@cs.uga.edu
College: College of Engineering
Department: School of Computing