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Today, distributed embedded computing systems are everywhere, from web-enabled cellphones to advanced home automation and entertainment to industrial, scientific, and military control and data acquisition. But, they are not often seen as computing systems, let alone as the advanced conglomeration of miniaturization and low-power technology and distributed, real-time embedded advances made over the past 35 years since the 4004 made its debut. Thus distributed embedded computing is "behind the scenes" to the layperson and even the CS/CE-savvy user. Fortunately, the new century has brought with it a surge of research and development in embedded systems, and with the ubiquity of the Internet, distributed computing, thus placing distributed embedded computing up front along with other important CS/CE research areas. The purpose of this talk is to highlight some of the subareas of research within the distributed real-time embedded (DRE) domain and point out some of the research being conducted in the distributed embedded computing systems (DECS) laboratory. Major fields include timing requirements, security/trusted computing within the context of limited-resource devices, energy usage, software/hardware codesign and reuse, low cost, usability, and reliability/fault tolerance under resource constraints.