Four CACS faculty members, Drs. Nian-Feng Tzeng, Magdy A. Bayoumi, Hongyi Wu, and Dmitri Perkins, lead a multi-million project funded recently by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Louisiana Board of Regents Support Fund, entitled "Ubiquitous Computing and Monitoring System (UCoMS) for Discovery and Management of Energy Resources." Together with other 8 researchers from UL, Lafayette (lead institution), Louisiana State University, and Southern University at Baton Rouge, they intend to address various research issues and to arrive at technical solutions and software implementations useful for the energy industry. According to Dr. Tzeng, the Principal Investigator of this $3.9 million project, "UCoMS integrates the state-of-the-art technologies in sensor networks, wireless communications, and grid computing to address technical challenges related to discovery and management of energy resources. A wireless networked system is to be deployed on the Gulf oil/gas platforms for drilling and production data collection and for control and display information delivery. Grid computing and storage are created out of the scattered computer resources through the Internet to provide massive computation power needed for UCoMS applications."

A wide array of computing and communication gear housed in CACS serves as basic equipment necessary for this 3-year project, which could be extended to six years. For more details about UCoMS, please visit http://www.ucoms.org. A recent news release from Louisiana Board of Regents is here. The following photos were taken during UCoMS presentaiton and exhibition on Sept. 2, 2004.