NRT: A Graduate Traineeship in Cyber Physical Systems

通过高效、安全和可靠的工程系统，我们能够感知、分析并对我们的世界采取行动，可以增强资源可用性、健康、安全性和幸福感。要实现这样的系统，需要深入了解网络世界和物理世界之间的接口，从而建立网络物理系统(CPS)领域。虽然CPS作为一门学科和应用程序的推动者在过去十年中有了巨大的发展，但目前的研究生培训没有为CPS的基础发现和创新做好充分的准备，也没有为有效地将研究转化为应用程序开发做好准备。这项授予弗吉尼亚大学(UVA)的国家科学基金会研究培训(NRT)奖将通过培训研究生从事基本的CPS发现和创新，并与应用领域专家合作实现更智能的地球，特别是在智能健康、智能城市和自主系统领域，来满足这一需求。培训计划预计将培训158名硕士和博士生，其中包括33名资助的博士生，他们来自土木工程和环境工程、计算机科学、电气和计算机工程、机械和航空航天工程以及系统和信息工程。目前CPS的研究生培训在三个关键方面缺乏，这将在本项目中得到解决。首先，目前的课程没有灌输CPS领域新的科学发现和翻译应用所需的综合知识。其次，作为培训的一部分，大多数学生没有足够强大的融合活动体验。这种缺乏不仅存在于传统的工程和计算教育中，而且还延伸到对目标应用领域和相关重大挑战的分析中。第三，大多数研究生培训缺乏明确的职业发展。鉴于该领域在我们不断发展的智能世界中的强大作用，这种接触在CPS中至关重要，CPS从业者必须关注与道德、安全、隐私、沟通和政策有关的社会问题。此次培训将解决这些问题，并通过开发一种新颖的、全面的研究生培训计划在全国范围内推动CPS研究生教育，该计划包括定向、标准化模块、选修课、经验汇聚研究活动、专业发展研讨会以及以动手为基础、以试验床为导向的教育课程。学生将获得技术深度和对CPS及其相关应用领域的跨学科综合理解，以在CPS相关职业中取得成功。在项目期间，学员将从事与智能医疗、智能城市和自主系统挑战相关的项目的跨学科CPS研究。这些研究努力有可能产生重大的科学和应用影响，从而实现一个更智能的世界，并解决相关的社会重大挑战。NSF研究培训(NRT)计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的、具有潜在变革性的STEM研究生教育培训模式。该计划致力于通过创新的、基于证据的、与不断变化的劳动力和研究需求保持一致的综合实习生模式，在高度优先的跨学科研究领域对STEM研究生进行有效培训。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Enhancing resource availability, health, security, and a sense of well-being can be enhanced by our ability to sense, analyze, and act on our world with efficient, safe, and secure engineered systems. To realize such systems requires a deep understanding of the interfaces between the cyber and physical worlds, leading to the establishment of the field of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). While CPS as a discipline and application-enabler has evolved tremendously over the past decade, current graduate training does not sufficiently prepare students for fundamental discovery and innovation in CPS nor for effective translation of research to application development. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to the University of Virginia (UVA) will address this need by training graduate students to pursue fundamental CPS discovery and innovation and to collaborate with application domain experts to realize a smarter planet, specifically in the areas of smart health, smart cities, and autonomous systems. The traineeship anticipates training one hundred fifty-eight (158) master's and doctoral students, including thirty-three (33) funded PhD trainees, from civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical and computer engineering, mechanical and aerospace engineering, and systems and information engineering.Current CPS graduate training is lacking in three critical ways that will be addressed in this project. First, current courses do not instill the integrative knowledge needed for new scientific discovery and translational applications in the field of CPS. Second, most students do not have a sufficiently robust experience of convergence activities as part of their training. This lack exists not only in traditional engineering and computing education but also extends into analyses of target application domains and associated grand challenges. Third, explicit professional development is absent in most graduate training. Such exposure is critical in CPS given the field's potent role in our ever-evolving smart world, and CPS practitioners must attend to social issues regarding ethics, safety, privacy, communication, and policy. This traineeship will address these issues and drive CPS graduate education nationwide by developing a novel, comprehensive graduate training program that involves orientation, normalization modules, elective courses, experiential convergence research activities, professional development workshops, and a hands-on, testbed-driven educational curriculum. Students will acquire both the technical depth and the integrative transdisciplinary understanding of CPS and its associated application domains to be successful in CPS-related careers. During their time in the program, trainees will engage in transdisciplinary CPS research on projects related to challenges in smart health, smart cities, and autonomous systems. These research efforts have the potential for significant scientific and application impact, such that a smarter world can be achieved and associated societal grand challenges can be addressed.The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.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.