Prospective Graduate Students: We will recruit multiple Ph.D. students in the Fall of 2025. Our lab is also looking for a postdoc researcher in agent-based control systems. If you are a prospective graduate student and a postdoc researcher, contact Professor Al Faruque (alfaruqu@uci.edu).
Embedded and cyber-physical systems have transformed the modern world. Embedded computing systems have been integrated with various engineering artifacts, including the power grid, health care devices, automotive and transportation systems, industrial control and manufacturing systems, etc. Modern engineering problems are typically multi-disciplinary and require hard problem-solving skills. The research expertise of the director of the AICPS lab, Professor Al Faruque, is mostly rooted in a long history of embedded systems design, including multi-core processor design, reliable system design, and hardware/software co-design. In 2009, Prof. Al Faruque started looking into the co-design problems of hardware/software and physics (aka, cyber-physical systems), including modeling, simulation, design automation, etc. In terms of CPS applications, over the last decade, his lab has worked on multiple research challenges of various CPS applications, including smart grid, electric vehicles, automotive, transportation systems, manufacturing and industrial control systems, and mobile health.
Currently, the AICPS lab is focusing on solving the following research challenges:
– How can cross-layer cyber-physical vulnerabilities (including IoT) be detected and defended in embedded and cyber-physical systems?
– How do we develop hardware/software/physics co-design methods for low-power and low-energy AI systems (Machine Learning on the edge)?
In summary, our work involves machine learning algorithms, hardware/software security, embedded hardware/software design, and optimization of multi-objective design criteria for numerous cyber-physical systems considering their underlying physics.
Since 2012, the AICPS lab has been funded by various federal and state agencies, including NSF, NIH, DOE, DARPA, ONR, US ARMY, DARPA, AFRL, DOT, DoEd, UCOP, and Caltrans. Moreover, the lab has received generous funding support from various industries. We thank all sponsors for their continuous support. The lab has graduated 13 Ph.D. students and many students with M.Sc. degrees. Out of the 13 Ph.D. students who graduated, 2 went to academia and started as tenure track assistant professors (Geroge Masson University and University of Arizona), and 11 went to industries and national labs, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Qualcomm, Samsung, Palo Alto Networks, Synopsys, Xilinx, MediaTek, and Skyworks. The lab regularly involves undergraduate student researchers.