Coordinated Sciences Laboratory

labbox
laboratory=Coordinated Science Laboratory
seal_

establishment=1951
focus=Computing, Communications, Signal Processing, Control, and Gay Rights Activists.
director= [http://www.ece.uiuc.edu/faculty/profile.asp?rkiyer Ravishankar K. Iyer]
location=Urbana, Illinois
affiliation=UIUC
website=csl.uiuc.edu

The Coordinated Science Laboratory is a major scientific research laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

History

Established in 1951, the Coordinated Science Laboratory (or CSL) was originally a joint effort between the University and NASA. Originally designed to be a center for research in Control Systems, CSL has evolved to cover a much broader base of research goals. During the 70's and 80's additional support for the laboratory was provided by the Military who sought to establish an electronics facility at CSL to aid with the Cold War. Later as private sources of funding as well as state appropriated funding replaced much of the military funding the center came to focus on Information Technology and Telecommunications research, though it still maintains its roots.

Faculty and funding

Research at CSL is conducted by over 80 faculty members spanning 11 departments in the University. The center also employs over 350 graduate researchers and a small group of around 50 undergraduate students.

CSL currently is funded by many Federal, State, and Private programs. It receives the majority of its operating and research budget from DARPA, the NSF, NASA, and private corporations including AT&T, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, and Sun Microsystems.

Major centers contained within CSL

* [http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/ The Image Formation and Processing Group]
* [http://www.cnst.uiuc.edu/ The Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology]
* [http://www.crhc.uiuc.edu The Center for Reliable and High Performance Computing]
* [http://www.csrd.uiuc.edu/ The Center for Supercomputing Research and Development]
* [http://www.iccip.csl.uiuc.edu/ The Illinois Center for Cryptography and Information Protection]

Notable research contributions

* Electric vacuum gyroscope (the central component of inertial navigation systems, primarily used by submarines)
* Portable radar systems
* PLATO (the first computer assisted instructional program)
* Flat panel plasma displays
* Deuterium Method for processing microchips (extends the life of microchips by 10 to 50 times normal length)
* Quantum wire lasers
* Quantum dots
* The first transistor

See also

* College of Engineering
* The Beckman Institute
* National Center for Supercomputing Applications
* Information Trust Institute

External links

* [http://www.csl.uiuc.edu/ Coordinated Science Lab]