The Multiscale Systems Center

The information-technology platform is being radically transformed as we speak. A new generation of applications is emerging that are destined to run in distributed form on a platform that meshes high-performance compute clusters with broad classes of mobiles, surrounded in turn by even larger swarms of sensors. The broad majority of these new applications can be classified as distributed sense and control systems that go substantially beyond the "compute" or "communicate" functions traditionally associated with information-technology. They have the potential to radically influence how we deal with a broad range of crucial problems facing our society today: power delivery in emerging micro-grids, emergency response to natural and man-made disasters, wireless healthcare with individualized monitoring, national infrastructural monitoring and adaptation, detection of anomalous events and behaviors in physical or cyberspace for security, or real-time situational awareness on the battlefield, etc. In fact, the opportunities are limited only by our imagination.

The grand goal of the Multiscale Systems Center is to create a comprehensive and systematic solution to the distributed multi-scale system design challenge. While addressing the full portfolio of needs, we have specifically selected as grand challenge the development of "energy-smart" distributed systems: that is, distributed systems that are deeply aware of the balance between energy availability and demand, and adjust their behavior in response through dynamic and adaptive optimization through all scales of the design hierarchy.