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WVU Tech to Host First Cyber-Physical Systems Symposium

The Center of Excellence for Cyber-Physical Systems (WVCECPS) at West Virginia University Institute of Technology (WVU Tech) will be hosting the first annual Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Symposium on Thursday, May 2. The event will feature six of the leading CPS researchers. Topics include the applications of CPS in smart grids, landslide detection, underground coal mines, emergency response and environmental monitoring.

Cyber-Physical Systems are engineered systems whose operations are monitored, coordinated, controlled, and integrated by a computing and communication core embedded in all types of objects and structures in the physical environment.

“Emerging CPS will be coordinated, distributed, and connected, and must be robust and responsive. The CPS of tomorrow will need to far exceed the systems of today in capability, adaptability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability,” explained Dr. Houbing Song, WVCECPS founding director and visiting assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at WVU Tech. “CPS will transform the way people interact with engineered systems, just as the Internet transformed the way people interact with information.”

The event will include the following five presentations: “Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things” with Dr. Houbing Song, WVU Tech; “Cyber-Physical Systems: A Smart Grid Perspective” with Joseph Januszewski, WDT; “Automated Analysis of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar Images for Monitoring the Transportation Infrastructure” and “An Enhanced Grid-Based Bayesian Approach to Target Tracking” with Andrea Vaccari and Dr. Qian Sang, University of Virginia; “Protecting Underground Coal Mine Workers and First Responders with Breadcrumb Sensor Networks” with Dr. Hengchang Liu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and “Cyberinfrastructe, Virtual Environments and Getting Physical” with Dr. Jack Smith, WV Higher Education Policy Commission. A total of five West Virginia State Professional Development Hours may be obtained at this conference.

“This symposium is the first step to create a collaborative academy-industry-government program centered around CPS to foster economic development, academic development and scientific innovation in West Virginia,” said Dr. Zeljko “Z” Torbica, dean of the WVU Tech Leonard C. Nelson College of Engineering and Sciences. “The establishment of WVCECPS opens the door to opportunities and will increase the role of WVU Tech in technology-based economic development.”

Registration for the event will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis. Conference fees are as follows: IEEE/ACM members are $80, Non-members are $100, government agency employees are $60 and students are $30. Walk-ins will be accepted provided there is room for a rate of $120.