NSI Core Capability Research Areas

Hypersonics

Hypersonic vehicles travel faster than five times the speed of sound (about 3,500 mph) and are used to deliver tactical and strategic payloads. The very high speed generates physical phenomena that are unique to hypersonic vehicles such as chemistry, plasma, and ablation. NSI hypersonic research capabilities involve a suite of computational tools for analysis of:

  • Hypersonic flow and chemistry including plasma and radiation
  • Hypersonic material response including detailed surface chemistry processes such as ablation
  • Hypersonic vehicle trajectory optimization
  • Hypersonic propulsion systems
  • Hypersonic thermal management approaches such as transpiration cooling
  • Hypersonic jet interactions
  • Hypersonic vehicle signatures
  • Missions: Strike, defense, ISR 
  • Challenges: Strongly coupled physics materials, testing, validation 
  • CU Strengths: Aerothermodynamics, high-temperature materials, structures, GNC
  • NSI Research Leader: Iain Boyd, Daniil Andrienko, Nathan Miller

RF Engineering

Radio frequency (RF) engineering involves the application of transmission line, waveguide, antenna and electromagnetic field principles to the design and application of devices that produce or utilize signals within the radio band, the frequency range of about 20 kHz up to 300 GHz. It is incorporated into almost everything that transmits or receives radio waves, including mobile phones, radios, Wi-Fi and two-way radios. RF engineering is an important component for those working in aeronautics, telecommunications, military services, commercial radio, television and space-related professions. People use radio waves to communicate on their cell phones, and RF engineers design and implementing the technology that supports 4G and 5G networks.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is the protection of critical or sensitive information in electronic systems and communications technology from unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized manipulation, and loss of use. In our information-driven world, information protection is crucial for national security and global stability. Since cybersecurity is a multidisciplinary endeavor that includes microelectronics, hardware, software, network, and systems engineering, a holistic approach must also include fundamental expertise in physics, materials science, mathematics, statistics, engineering, and human behavior.

  • Missions: Cybersecurity cuts across many national security missions. We work closely with industry, universities, national laboratories, DOD, and DOE to develop more secure and more resilient information systems that impact not only military preparedness and operations, but also global commerce and daily civilian life.
  • Challenges: Information systems are dynamic, distributed, interconnected, complex systems that span many domains and disciplines. The challenge for a cyberdefender is to analyze a system across all domains and disciplines, identify critical or sensitive areas with respect to weaknesses, and create a web of protection against exploits.
  • CU Strengths: NSI cybersecurity research includes computational and experimental efforts to understand and develop physics-based roots of security at the hardware level, as well as protect against physics-based mechanisms of information leakage. We develop novel microelectronic materials and devices used in computing, storage, and communications technologies.
  • NSI Research Leader: Calvin Chan

Space Domain Awareness

Space Domain Awareness (SDA) is the mission to detect, track, characterize, and classify resident space objects around the Earth to ensure safe and responsible space operations for all. Access to space is proliferating for countries and industry. This proliferation is leading to greater congestion and contests in the space environment. As nations acting in hostile or uncooperative fashions are developing effects and capabilities to dominate outer space, the US has expanded its position and now considers space a domain of warfare, like air, sea, or land. The United States Space Force (USSF) has SDA as one of its core competencies to ensure outer space is a domain with free action and common utility. Enhancing SDA capabilities is a benefit for all. NSI partners and collaborates with government organizations, industry, FFRDCs, and other academic institutions to enhance SDA capabilities. The SDA research at NSI is multidisciplinary and therefore includes collaboration across CU Boulder’s campus with many academic departments.

Missions: Space and counterspace operations; defeat and deter space operational surprise; space traffic management; uncooperative space launches; defeat and deter anti-satellite engagements; Cis-lunar and XDA.

Challenges: Event and target perception; Event prediction; anomaly detection; disparate information fusion; persistent monitoring; optimal asset tasking; human factors for space operators; space environment; information resiliency; data proliferation.

CU Strengths: Astrodynamics; sensor tasking; mission and constellation autonomy; dim target detection; target tracking and state estimation; target characterization and typing; Guidance, navigation, and control (GNC); Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT); space weather. · NSI Research Leaders: Greg Furlich

NSI Research Leader: Greg Furlich