Faculty from the Francis College of Engineering, the Kennedy College of Sciences, and the College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, plus long-running collaborators at partner universities and companies. Each profile links to the person's Google Scholar and ORCID records; citation totals are quoted from Google Scholar where the profile is public.
The center was founded on October 1, 2019 by Vinod Vokkarane, Martin Margala, Yan Luo, Sukesh Aghara, and Yuanchang Xie. Vokkarane served on the founding Board of Directors from October 2019 to July 2021 and has been director since August 2021. Margala, then Professor and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was founding co-director until July 2021 and remains an external collaborator.
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director, Center for Smart Cyber-Physical Systems (SCyPS)
Cyber-physical systems, smart grid cybersecurity and resilience, optical and 6G network optimization, AI/ML for networked systems
6,018 citations, 36 h-index, 89 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
The center was founded on October 1, 2019 by Vinod Vokkarane, Martin Margala, Yan Luo, Sukesh Aghara, and Yuanchang Xie. Vokkarane served on the founding Board of Directors from October 2019 to July 2021 and has been director since August 2021. His group works on secure and resilient cyber-physical power systems, quality-of-transmission-aware multi-band and space-division multiplexed optical networks, and open-source tools for reproducible network research. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, serves on the editorial board of the IEEE/Optica Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, co-authored the Springer book Optical Burst Switched Networks, and has shared best paper awards at IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE ANTS, and ONDM. He is the PI of the NSF MRI SUMMIT testbed award and a technical advisor to the UMass Lowell Applied Research Corporation (UMLARC).
Professor, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering; Senior Advisor to the Chancellor on Nuclear Energy Strategies
Nuclear security and safeguards, cybersecurity of nuclear facilities, advanced reactor modeling, nuclear energy for decarbonization
Co-founder of the center in 2019 and founding co-director for energy. Associate Director for Industry Partnerships; co-leads the resilient energy and infrastructure thrust, and leads the Massachusetts Advanced Nuclear and Fusion Energy Roadmaps; directs the Integrated Nuclear Security and Safeguards Laboratory (INSSL) and co-directs the IAEA-funded Intercontinental Nuclear Institute. Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Nuclear Security (Oxford University Press). Associate Dean for Research of the Francis College of Engineering from 2021 to 2026 and Director of the Nuclear Engineering Program from 2017 to 2025. Chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization for 2024 to 2025, and elected in 2024 to the board of the ASEE Engineering Research Council.
602 citations, 12 h-index, 15 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Hardware security, hardware-software co-design, embedded and microarchitectural security, cyber security
Co-PI on the SUMMIT testbed and the ONR post-disaster restoration project; leads hardware attestation and embedded security for grid devices.
2,015 citations, 13 h-index, 16 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Associate Professor, Philosophy, College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Ethics of emerging technologies and national security, dual-use research, bioethics and public health ethics, military ethics
Ethics lead for the center's people-in-the-loop theme: trust, ethics, and human performance in systems whose failure has physical consequences. PI of the NSF award on ethical algorithms for autonomous vehicles, with Xie as Co-PI, and co-author on its papers; lead investigator on two pending proposals with the director, to Schmidt Sciences and to NSF, that apply AI methods to the history and ethics of health information.
1,876 citations, 22 h-index, 46 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Smart grid and renewable energy: modeling, situational awareness, cyber-physical resilience, machine learning applications
External center member; UMass Lowell ECE faculty 2018 to 2023. NSF CAREER awardee; Co-PI on SUMMIT and the ONR post-disaster restoration project, and a co-author on the center's smart grid papers.
2,523 citations, 26 h-index, 49 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Robotics
Cyber-physical systems, machine learning, computer networks, computer architecture
Co-founder of the center in 2019 and founding co-director for healthcare. Associate Director for Research; co-leads the cyber-physical AI thrust; senior personnel on SUMMIT; PI of the NSF-funded campus science network the center builds on and of the NSF PFI-RP BioSPACE project on pathogen biosensing in aquaculture. Best Paper Award at IFIP/IEEE IM 2021 and Best Experiences Paper Award at IM 2019.
4,856 citations, 34 h-index, 69 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Associate Chair for M.S. Programs
Robotics, human-robot interaction, trust in autonomous systems, multi-robot coordination, field and marine autonomy
Brings robotics and human-robot interaction to the center: trust and transparency between people and the machines they work with, multi-agent coordination, and autonomy for environments people should not enter. Co-leads the people-in-the-loop thrust, and connects the center to the Printed Electronics Research Collaborative and the Raytheon-UMass Lowell Research Institute.
2,463 citations, 22 h-index, 39 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
High performance computing, parallel I/O and data-intensive computing, compiler optimizations, embedded systems
Co-leads the cyber-physical AI thrust. NSF CAREER awardee (2018); brings HPC, silent-data-corruption detection, and on-device stream analytics to the center's data-intensive CPS work.
1,825 citations, 23 h-index, 44 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Fault-tolerant distributed systems and consensus, state machine replication, blockchain systems, and edge computing for cyber-physical systems
NSF CAREER awardee on fault-tolerant edge computing for cyber-physical systems under cyber attack (award #2449640 at UMass Lowell, $342K from Sept 2024); PI of an NSF planning award for federated AI-ready cyberinfrastructure for advanced microscopy (2026); Co-PI on SUMMIT. 2026 ECE Department Teaching Excellence Award. Joined UMass Lowell in 2024 after Clark University, Boston College, and Toyota InfoTechnology Center.
1,912 citations, 18 h-index, 32 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Transportation safety, intelligent transportation systems, connected and automated vehicles, transportation data analytics and AI
Co-founder of the center in 2019 and founding co-director for transportation. Co-leads the resilient energy and infrastructure thrust, carrying its transportation work; PI or Co-PI of the USDOT, MassDOT, and NETC transportation portfolio. Associate Editor of Accident Analysis & Prevention and of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference; Kikuchi-Karlaftis Best Paper Award (TRB, 2020) and the George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2020).
7,514 citations, 39 h-index, 77 i10-index on Google Scholar, Nov. 2026
UMass Lowell faculty who collaborate on center projects and proposals.
Partners at other universities and companies who work with the center on current projects.
