The Advanced Information Technology Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park

What is the Advanced Information Technology Laboratory?

The Advanced Information Technology Laboratory at the University of Maryland in College Park is one of the leading centers for research in this emerging area of national importance. The focus of laboratory is to perform the research necessary for developing the critical applications mandated by modern information infrastructure advances. In particular, we focus on a systems-oriented methodology to producing critical research and state-of-the-art prototypes for enabling users to appropriately access, modify, and, most importantly, to make specific use of the informational resources available on todays distributed networks and the World Wide Web.

What is Special about the Advanced Information Technology Laboratory?

Although many academic and industrial researchers are working on specific components of information technology, to date surprising little effort has been made to take a systems-oriented approach to developing information and knowledge intensive applications. At the UM Advanced Information Technology Laboratory, we believe that supporting the enterprise-wide, knowledge-intensive needs of NII users requires that information must be available in many forms, wherever needed, and without perceptible delays. This puts significant requirements on the technology throughout the entire system and the supporting network. It is critical to understand how the various aspects of information technology impinge on each other, and how changes in each effects the others. This requires understanding the interdependencies among a number of critical technologies, particularly

• High Speed Networks
• which provide the capability to support, Mobile Computing ,
• which permits a user at any location to access Information Resources,
• either in the form of raw data, or via the use of Multimedia Applications.

By taking a systems approach to the development of these applications, we see the critical interactions between these technologies. Thus, we focus on developing prototype applications, and the supporting theory, for integrating capabilities across this entire spectrum. Thus, our work allows us to identify, analyze, and explore critical interactions between the flow of data (networking/mobile computing) and the access to this information (information resources/multimedia applications).

Who are the Principal Scientists in this Laboratory?

• Ashok Agrawala
• Mark Austin
• Bonnie Dorr
• Christos Faloutsos
• Mike Franklin
• James Hendler
• Steve Marcus
• Dana Nau
• Louiqa Raschid
• VS Subrahmanian
• Amy Weinberg

Who is supporting the work in this lab? Support for research in the Advanced Information Technology Laboratory comes from a wide variety of sources in the forms of Single PI and/or joint grants. Current laboratory funding sources include:

• The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ARPA - The Advanced Projects Research Administration, The Army Research Institute, The Army Research Office, Battelle Corporation, FEMA - The Federal Emergency Management Agency, French Ministere de la Recherche, Hughes Applied Information Systems, Intel Corporation, International Business Machines Incorporated, Illustra Information Technologies, Logos Corporation, Microanalysis and Design, Inc., The National Science Foundation, The Office of Naval Research, Phillips Laboratories, Rome Laboratories, And the University of Maryland.
• In addition, the laboratory is affiliated with the Institute for Systems Research, the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies , and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland.

Where can I get more information about this laboratory and its activities?

For a copy of our brochure, or more information on the laboratory, send email to Prof. James Hendler, the Acting Head of the Laboratory.