IUCRC: Planning Grant: RIT: Center for Smart Spaces Research (CSSR)

Smart spaces are characterized by the presence of smart services built on emerging sensing, computing, and communication technologies. This planning grant will create a multi-university Center for Smart Space Research (CSSR) involving Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI). CSSR takes an integrated approach to make them versatile and adaptable to situations by ensuring the availability and accessibility of data, knowledge, and services.

This planning grant will identify research challenges to build application-focused smart spaces. Applications encompass health and disease monitoring systems, smart buildings, public spaces and cities, mission critical systems, transportation, and others.

The center’s focus will be on four main areas of relevance to industry, university, and society: creation of adaptive computing and communications infrastructure; trustworthy acquisition, processing, interpretation and sustainability of data and knowledge; and applications that span all aspects of life and the environment. RIT researchers will engage in collaborations with industrial organizations, technology developers, and users, with an objective to create proactive, scalable, secure, and efficient smart spaces.

The planning grant will identify challenges and research tasks to make smart spaces adaptable to multiple applications. Collaborations with industry will lead to the emergence of new applications of smart spaces.

The planning phase of CSSR will significantly impact research directions and pedagogical activities at RIT. The research activities will be fine-tuned to enable effective transfer of research artifacts to the collaborating industries with an emphasis on applications to improve quality of life, enhance public health, conserve energy, and sustainability.

Workshops and interactions with industry collaborators will be leveraged to recruit and mentor diverse groups of students. At RIT, students from diverse backgrounds, including those from the National Institute for the Deaf (NTID) will be exposed to challenges and solutions in the research and development of smart spaces.

In the near future, access to smart spaces and smart infrastructure will impact every individual and will greatly improve quality of life. CSSR activities in fostering innovation in accessible smart spaces will play a major role in the future world. Planning phase will serve as a platform for meetings, discussions, and workshops, to identify critical research to guide the development of smart spaces.

CSSR will maintain a publicly-accessible repository comprising meeting materials, workshop information, research topics and details, and publications. This repository will be maintained at a publicly accessible URL at RIT for the lifetime of the center.

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.