Virtual Organizations for Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart and Connected Communities

The goal of this phase of the Cyber-Physical Systems Virtual Organization (VO) is to sustain and enhance the web-based platform of the research communities of Cyber-Physical Systems and Smart & Connected Communities. The approach is to enable collaboration among PIs, disseminate project results of Principal Investigators (PIs) and their teams, and amplify research outcomes tied to those projects. The project will build on previous efforts to maintain the sites and ensure platform stability. The site will preserve archival access to past and current resources and continue to provide services to the communities. These services include sharing data, tools, publications, educational materials, and events. This phase will strengthen the VO’s ability to help researchers find, understand, and reuse community outputs. The approaches include improved search and data organization. Outreach and engagement activities will continue to gather and highlight new research results. This coordination will foster interdisciplinary participation, and enable new collaborations among academia, industry, and government stakeholders. Through these approaches, the VO will continue to be a stable, trusted hub that responds to sponsor priorities and community needs. Intellectual Challenges addressed by this new phase of the VO include the following. (1) Maintain a resilient, secure, and scalable cyberinfrastructure. This will support long-term community access, while adapting to evolving requirements and threats. (2) Accelerate discovery and reuse of CPS and SCC research outputs. This will be done through incorporating AI-assisted approaches for improved search, metadata enrichment, and resource recommendation across datasets, tools, publications, tutorials, and events. (3) Streamline contributor access through ingestion, update, and other workflows. These enable research teams to efficiently publish and maintain high-value community resources. (4) Preserve and improve archival access. This enables materials from prior and ongoing projects to remain discoverable, interpretable, and useful to the community for existing and emerging research areas. (5) Enable sustained community engagement. This will be through new features that connect investigators, promote collaboration, and amplify the broader visibility and utility of federally funded research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2534626 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Jonathan Sprinkle | Institution: Vanderbilt University, NASHVILLE, TN | Award Amount: $1,000,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2534626 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2534626.html