Engineering Research Centers (ERC)

What is an Engineering Research Center?
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) are a group of interdisciplinary centers located at universities across the United States, each providing a research environment in which faculty, students, and industry partners integrate discovery and learning that reflects the complexities and realities of real-world technology. Because ERCs play critical roles in academe by combining research, education, diversity, outreach, and industrial collaboration, NSF views ERCs as change agents for academic engineering programs and the engineering community at large.

ECE Boasts Two Engineering Research Centers
In 2003 the NSF awarded an unprecedented two ERCs to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department:

• Extreme Ultraviolet Science and Technology Center. This center is developing laser technologies to help create the smallest, most powerful computer circuits ever generated, as well as other advanced nanotechnologies of critical importance to the national economy.
  
• Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA). An interdisciplinary effort with the Department of Atmospheric Science, CASA focuses on improved methods for detecting and predicting dangerous weather using networks of radars.