Fighting Illini to work on data processing technology for DHS

Published 21 July 2006

DHS awards University of Illinois a contract to develop data-mining software

Talking of data-mining research and applications: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s computer science department has received a three-year $2.4 million federal grant to help develop data processing technology for DHS. The grant, issued through DHS’s Institute for Discrete Services, will be used to establish the Multimodal Information Access and Synthesis Center at the Urbana-Champaign campus. The center’s goal is to develop programs to analyze and interpret vast amounts of information and data. “In the next decade, intelligence analysts will need to monitor a huge number of interesting events and entities and formulate and evaluate hypotheses with respect to them,” Dan Roth, an associate professor of computer science and director for the new MIAS center said in a statement. “Altogether, the overarching goal is to use science and technology to reduce threats to our nation’s security by providing new knowledge and cutting edge technology.”

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of four universities sharing in a total $10.2 million grant from DHS. Other recipients are Rutgers University, University of Southern California, and University of Pittsburgh. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will work with the University of Texas at San Antonio, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Kansas State University in establishing and running the center.