Members of the CRISP Grand Challenges Workshop organizing committee from left: Muhammad Shahbaz, the Kevin C and Suzanne L Kahn New Frontiers Assistant Professor in Computer Science; Somali Chaterji, assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering; Vishal Shrivastav, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Saurabh Bagchi, CRISP director and professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Aravind Machiry, assistant professors of electrical and computer engineering; Zahra Ghodsi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Santiago Torres-Arias, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Missing from the picture is Jing Gao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The Purdue Center for Resilient Infrastructures, Systems, and Processes (CRISP) is holding the Grand Challenges in Resilience Workshop 2023 on Nov. 14-15 in Purdue’s recreational sports center. The workshop, made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is bringing together federal, industry and academic leaders who focus on resilient and adaptive cyber-infrastructures, resilient cyber-physical systems and scientific foundations of resilient socio-technical systems. 

“This workshop will reflect on the current state-of-art and state-of-practice of resilient system design,” said Saurabh Bagchi, CRISP director and professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of Computer Science (by courtesy). “It will also lay out the broad research and translation challenges that need to be addressed to make our infrastructures truly resilient to natural failures.”

Participants are thought and action leaders in the area of resilient systems, drawn from external academic researchers and industrial practitioners. The two keynote speakers are Ramesh Govindan, the Northrop Grumman Chair in Engineering and professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, and Christian Maciocco, principal engineer and director of telecom systems research in Intel Labs. The workshop will highlight the synergies among the domains and salient research. Practice challenges will be presented that can serve as a call-to-arms for the respective technical communities. Vision papers will come out of the deliberations at the workshop.

Three panels will discuss hot topics of the day:

• AI: Where the Virtual and the Physical Converge
• The Role of Resilience in Cyber-Physical Systems
• Bridging the Gap between Academic and Industrial Research

Federal program officials from NSF, Army Research Lab and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also will make announcements about their programs. Purdue academic leaders speaking at the workshop are Arvind Raman, the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering, and Karen Plaut, executive vice president for research.

The event is sponsored by NSF’s Directorates of Engineering and Computer and Information Science and Engineering. Purdue co-sponsors include the colleges of Engineering, Science and Agriculture; the electrical and computer engineering and Computer Science departments; and the Purdue Office of Research.