Applications

The following are sample applications that MERC staff members are developing. They are from the Core Research Areas and other areas mentioned in the research Overview.

Information Processing and Management

• SocialRank – Developing insights into the structure and attributes of the underlying social network by leveraging online means of communication and collaboration in a networked organization.

• Graph Query Language: Enabling Accelerated Analysis of Semantic Graphs – Accelerating the discovery of relevant information in vast data networks via a query language tuned to analysis.
• Concept Navigator – Going beyond “Googling” in Searching Vast Amounts of Information for Similarities and Relationships.

Materials and Nanotechnology

• Electronic Applications of Carbon NanoTubes – Developing a high-efficiency terahertz radiation source using electrons created by field-emission from a carbon nanotube array.
• Smart Materials – Smart materials are typically defined as materials that undergo desired property changes in response to a given environmental stimulus. For example, electrochromic materials change color in response to an applied voltage, magnetostrictive materials generate a magnetic field in response to shear, and certain hydrogels change in volume in response to a chemical stimulus (pH or salt concentration).
• Bacteriabot – Exploiting bio-inspired locomotion and the response to chemical gradients in nano based bacteriabots to design autonomous systems that detect and communicate detection of chemicals.

Biotechnology

• Host Response – Understanding the survival strategies that pathogens select to avoid or manipulate the host responses.

Cognitive Science and Human Dynamics

• Social Identity in Decision Making

• Effective Distributed Collaboration – Key technical challenges of the research in Distributed Collaboration involves identifying what makes distributed collaboration effective.

Other

• Femtosecond Lasers – Developing high-energy laser systems to defend against conventional weapons such as high-velocity missiles.
• Trustworthy Computing – Developing innovative approaches to improving the confidence that the systems built from components made by untrustworthy sources do what they are supposed to do and no more.