The Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS CTA) is a collaborative research alliance funded by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and focused on fundamental research on the critical scientific and technical challenges that emerge from the close interdependence of several genres of networks such as social/cognitive, information, and communications networks. The primary goal of the NS CTA is to deeply understand the underlying commonalities among these intertwined networks, and, by understanding, improve our ability to analyze, predict, design, and influence complex systems interweaving many kinds of networks. This emerging research domain, termed network science, also has the potential to accelerate understanding of each genre of network by cross-fertilization of insights, theories, algorithms, and approaches and by expanding their study into the larger context of the multi-genre (or composite) network environments within which each must act.
NS CTA The NS CTA is an alliance between ARL, other government researchers, and a consortium of four research centers: an Academic Research Center (ARC) focused on social/cognitive networks (the SCNARC), an ARC focused on information networks (the INARC), an ARC focused on communications networks (the CNARC), and an Interdisciplinary Research Center (the IRC) focused on interdisciplinary research and technology transition. Overall, these centers include roughly one hundred PhD-level researchers from about 30 universities and industrial research labs, engaged with as many graduate students and interns. The Alliance unites research across organizations and research disciplines to address the critical technical challenges faced by the Army in a world where all missions are embedded in and depend upon many genres of networks. The expected impact of its transdisciplinary research includes greatly enhanced human performance for network-embedded missions and greatly enhanced speed and precision for complex military operations. Beyond this vital focus, its research is also expected to accelerate the reach and depth of our understanding of the interwoven networks that so profoundly influence all our lives. The Alliance conducts interdisciplinary research in network science and transitions the results of this fundamental research to address the technical challenges of network-embedded Army operations. The NS CTA research program exploits intellectual synergies across its disciplines by uniting fundamental and applied network science research in parallel. It drives the synergistic combination of these technical areas for network-centric and network-enabling capabilities in support of all missions required of today's military forces, including humanitarian support, peacekeeping, and combat operations in any kind of terrain, but especially in complex and urban settings. It also supports and stimulates dual-use applications of this research and resulting technology to benefit commercial use. As a critical element of this program, the Alliance has created a network science research facility in Cambridge, MA, as well as shared distributed experimental resources throughout the Alliance. The NS CTA also serves the Army's technical needs through an education component, which acts to increase the pool of network science expertise in the Army and the nation while bringing greater awareness of Army technical challenges into the academic and industrial network science research community. In association with the NS CTA research program, there is a separate technology transition component that provides a contractual vehicle for other organizations to fund work focused on transitioning scientific and technical advances into more specific applications. Research projects in the NS CTA are by design, highly collaborative and multi-disciplinary, whether based in one of the three academic research centers, the interdisciplinary research center, or one of the two cross-cutting research initiatives (CCRI).
Core Research Program
Communication Networks Academic Research Center (CNARC) The CNARC's research is focused on characterizing complex communications networks, such as those used for network-centric warfare and operations, so that their behavior can be predicted accurately and networks can be configured for optimal information sharing and gathering. In particular, the CNARC will focus on characterizing and controlling the operational information content capacity (OICC) of a tactical network. OICC is a function of the quality and amount of information that is delivered to decision makers. This includes data delivery and security properties of the network. Thus, it is vastly different than other measures of network capacity that are traditionally modeled. In essence, the CNARC models treat the network as an information source.
Information Networks Academic Research Center (INARC) INARC is aimed at developing the information network technologies required to improve the capabilities of the U.S. Army and providing users with reliable and actionable intelligence across the full spectrum of Network-Centric Operations. INARC will systematically develop the foundation, methodologies, algorithms, and implementations needed for effective, scalable, hierarchical, and most importantly, dynamic and resilient information networks for military applications. The center focuses on Distributed and Real Time Data Integration and Information Fusion; Scalable, Human-Centric Information Network System; and Knowledge Discovery in Information Networks.
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