All MITRE Projects (with summaries and presentations where available)

Listing of project titles in alphabetical order

Pages: 1234567891011121314151617

Nanosystems Modeling and Nanoelectronic Computers

Primary Investigator:Ellenbogen, James C.

Problems:
Assume technical leadership, worldwide, in developing, applying, and disseminating new design concepts for next-generation computers and systems integrated on the nanometer scale (e.g. nanomemory/nanosensor prototype that fits on a human cell). Develop techniques for more rapid and accurate modeling of nanosystems.

Objectives:
Further development and application of MITRE's simple new "electrical-engineering" approach to the multi-scale modeling and design of materials systems.

Continued design and modeling of small application-specific nanoelectronic circuits for tagging, tracking, and locating (i.e., nanosensing).

Continued laboratory experimentation to demonstrate a proprietary MITRE technique for the bulk separation of carbon nanotubes by their different chiral (twisted) structures.

Continuation of ongoing work on MITRE nanotechnology patent applications.

Student research and mentorship for the cost-effective implementation of this research plan, as well as to help address MITRE and U.S. national technical work force issues.

Activities:
Writing the emerging nanoelectronic devices portion of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. Working on several patents, as well as several journal publications. Participating on other outside technical panels, such the American Chemical Society Committee on Chemistry and Public Affairs.

Impact:
Significant impact in research and in the future direction of nanotechnology, world-wide. Also, the Nanosystems MSR team has continued to show growth in the breadth of its support to the Government.

Public Release No:09-690

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 6, May 7

Natural Language Processing for Anonymization

Primary Investigator:Aberdeen, John S.

Problems:
De-identification can address a number of problems. For example, medical records are largely unavailable to researchers due to privacy constraints. Because of this, medical record processing is labor-intensive and automated techniques have been slow to develop. Removal of personally identifiable information from such records makes them available for research and applications.

Objectives:
Our objective is to create a de-identification system for free text that can be rapidly tailored to multiple domains and record types. The system should be embedded in an interactive interface to allow end-users to refine the performance and inspect the results. We plan to develop metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of de-identification in various real-world settings.

Activities:
We have established prototype de-identification systems at two partner universities to work in the medical record domain. We are identifying additional partners in other relevant domains to understand their de-identification requirements. We are developing and refining interface and workflow management based on partner feedback. We have performed numerous de-identification experiments with partners and we are currently writing up the results for publication.

Impact:
This work will enable MITRE to break through a critical bottleneck in handling records with privacy constraints. It will result in a new set of utility-based metrics to assess emerging technology for privacy protection, enabling MITRE to provide system engineering advice to sponsors. It will build partnerships with key stakeholders in the medical community and surveillance community.

Public Release No:09-0884

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 7

Net-Enabled TFM

Primary Investigator:Brown, Philip L.

Problems:
Current capabilities for sharing information across domains of the National Airspace System, such as terminal, en route, and Traffic Flow Management (TFM), are limited and based on unique pairwise interfaces between systems. To achieve the proposed Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) the Federal Aviation Administration faces the challenge of building a robust information-sharing infrastructure. This research is exploring the use of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and net-centric information technologies to exchange such information in powerful new ways.

Objectives:
Using MITRE's TFM simulation infrastructure, we will develop a flexible, scalable, and extensible framework to meet NextGen research needs. We will explore ways this architecture can demonstrate agility in research and capability deployment through rapid integration of reusable, discoverable service interfaces. We will also learn how best to use information for advanced visualization prototyping and shared decision making.

Activities:
We will determine additional requirements for MITRE's TFM research and development platforms, add capabilities to our new technology framework, and develop services using SOA and Web service technologies. Simultaneously, we will explore advanced TFM visualization and interaction concepts using this platform.

Impact:
These new capabilities will support MITRE's research on NextGen TFM tools and concepts. By exploring and developing a net-enabled framework of simulation and visualization capabilities for TFM using SOA technologies, MITRE will take important steps in building a knowledge base and will gain real-world experience that can inform the broader system integration issues being tackled by the FAA as part of NextGen.

Public Release No:09-1000

[Presentation]

NETwork Application IDentification using netflow: NETAID

Primary Investigator:Jones, George

Problems:
The Network Application IDentification (NETAID) project is an effort aimed at combining netflow data with data mining techniques to identify applications in network traffic and thwart sophisticated threats. These applications may include malware such as botnets, worms, distributed denial of service, and data exfiltration.

Current trends in networking, such as the use of encryption, tunnels, proxies, server farms, web 2.0 apps, peer-to-peer, and intentional attempts at hiding are making traditional methods of identifying network usage obsolete. For example, deep packet inspection of network traffic has always been a key tool in threat detection. However, due to some of the the developments just listed, it is often not an option. Other common clues to application intention, such as port numbers in use, are no longer reliable. It is quite common now for applications to overload usage on traditional web-traffic ports (80 and 443).

Netflow data, in contrast, is almost universally available and not subject to spoofing. This data simply contains the Internet equivalent of "call detail data" -- who talked to who when. The challenge with this data is that it is quite shallow, containing a sparse representation of the network traffic. We intend to use netflow data combined with data mining to generate techniques and tools to classify network traffic by its actual behavior. By combining advanced, automated analysis techniques with the heuristics and expertise of network security engineers, there is early evidence that it is possible to develop automated threat detectors. In addition to the experts on our project team, we have partnered with one of our key sponsors in addressing pressing problems in this space. They are enthusiastic to supply ideas, feedback, and a real-world test-bed as results develop.

Objectives:
Identify current deficiencies in the sponsors ability to detect (mis)use of networked resources


Determine the extent to which netflow and data mining can be used to address these deficiencies



Build and deploy tools to address the deficiencies in operational environments.

Activities:
Phase 1 : Baseline Profiling. Build signatures for applications, classes of applicationsand known malicious behavior. Start with obvious metrics (precision, recall). Initial focus on BitTorrent.‏

Phase 2: Expand to additional applications and network conditions. Profile Remote Control applications. Explore effects of network
topology such as proxies on detection capabilities.

Phase 3: Identifying (new) unusual behavior. Using profiling attributes, tools, alert on unusual activity. Measure subjective “interestingness” with real data.

Impact:
Impact: Bring real targeting and diagnostic tools to sponsor’s network security needs. Build specific malicious behavior and app detectors (High Confidence)‏. Detectors for abnormal/unusual network traffic or applications (High Confidence)‏. Profile general classes of applications (Reasonable goal, but challenging)‏.

Public Release No:09-1190

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 5

Network Theoretic Approaches for Wireless Systems

Primary Investigator:Landry, Randall J.

Problems:
Most networks exhibit complex behavior that is not well understood from a fundamental perspective. Wireless communications networks are no different in this respect. The complex dynamic behavior associated with wireless networks makes design and management of such systems difficult, particularly in the absence of a fundamental theoretical understanding of how these networks behave. This project is aimed at developing a new set of tools to enable the study, and aid the design of, complex mobile wireless networks. Many of the traditional tools used for network analysis and design are not amenable to dynamic wireless networks exhibiting low levels of predictability. This project represents a fresh new approach to this problem by using and customizing tools, such as genetic computing and ABM (Agent-Based Modeling), that have been traditionally employed in other branches of network science including biology and sociology.

Objectives:
This year's efforts are geared toward the development of a network science-based set of tools that enables the discovery of fundamental guiding principles for wireless networks as well as providing a new and innovative approach to complex wireless network design.

The agent-based tool currently under development will be brought to a greater state of maturity during FY09 and then used as the engine for a mobile wireless network design tool. This tool will be created in collaboration with a relevant MITRE sponsor, and we plan to have a first-generation version available at the end of FY09.

Activities:
Developing agent-based models using a commercially available ABM tool.

Publishing methodology and key findings with respect to the emergent behavior of complex wireless networks.

Producing a Data-Centric Networking (DCN) architectural approach for autonomic networks.

Using the agent-based network science engine for the development of an innovative design tool.

Impact:
Any future radio system with networking capabilities will rely heavily during design and development stages on the state of network theory at that time. Today, an absence of fundamental network-theoretic results and processes forces designers to rely on strict protocol layering and commercial-based protocols. This work will influence DoD programs in wireless networking and aid research in academia and industry.

Public Release No:09-0810

[Presentation]

NextGen Environmental Regulatory Framework

Primary Investigator:Rodriguez Cifuentes, Jorge

Problems:
Compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its implementing regulations will require that environmental reviews be conducted before Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) concepts can be deployed at any facility in the National Airspace System. The NextGen community may not fully appreciate the hurdles (e.g., increased implementation time and cost) that NEPA requirements may present to NextGen deployment.

Objectives:
This research will lay out the challenges to NextGen implementation posed by NEPA and identify potential policy and regulatory options available to overcome them. We will first identify potential NEPA constraints to NextGen deployment, and then investigate possible changes to noise regulations that limit the required precision of noise modeling estimates. We will also examine policy and regulatory options for navigating the NEPA review of NextGen concepts.

Activities:
We will conduct initial coordination meetings to inform key stakeholders about the research effort, solicit early feedback, and establish points of contact. We will then analyze historic trends for NEPA reviews of FAA actions, such as the time required to complete Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements. This will allow us to identify the NextGen concepts most likely to encounter challenging environmental reviews and describe the NEPA review requirements for their implementation. We will investigate alternatives to the current definitions for "reportable noise increase thresholds" that would account for error sources and implicit uncertainties in noise modeling, and conduct case studies to demonstrate the practical implications of the NEPA review of NextGen concepts.

Impact:
Environmental impacts have been identified as “the fundamental constraint on air transportation growth in the 21st Century.” This is evidenced by the ever increasing cost and time associated with the environmental review of aviation improvements. The NextGen literature contains almost no mention of NEPA, yet NEPA is a critical constraintthat must be addressed in the NextGen planning and implementation processes. By laying out the challenges and discussing options for overcoming them, this research will highlight an area of major concern, and focus additional attention on critical policy questions.

Public Release No:09-1019

[Presentation]

NextGen Terminal ATC Display

Primary Investigator:Sanchez, Julian

Problems:
Today’s Air Traffic Control (ATC) is a "manual," tactical task in which controllers visually scan the surveillance display to gather information about aircraft such as their location, altitude, speed, and type/model. Controllers use this information to update their mental model of the airspace, as well as plan and execute changes, such as merging aircraft, or increasing in-trail spacing. The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is expected to incorporate new tools and capabilities, such as Area Navigation (RNAV), Required Navigation Performance (RNP), data communication, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), and automated decision-making tools for monitoring, merging, and spacing. These new capabilities may drastically change the nature of the controller task, presumably toward a more supervisory one. A NextGen ATC display must support this supervisory controller role. While previous research findings suggest that systems with high levels of automation can reduce workload demands, in some cases, they also appear to lower the overall level of human involvement in the task; in others, they increase human reaction times once the automation becomes unavailable.

Objectives:
We will define the roles and responsibilities of the controller in NextGen and gather qualitative feedback from controllers and stakeholders about the concept. We will then develop a prototype of an ATC display that supports high levels of automation and twice the traffic monitoring capabilities per controller, relative to today’s operations. In the following year, we will gather objective performance data about the interaction of controllers with the prototype.

Activities:
We will develop a conceptual, but detailed description of the automated features of the NextGen ATC system to drive the user interface and visualization requirements of the NextGen display. We will leverage the knowledge of various experts in CAASD who are working in the development of mid- and long-term concepts for performance-based air traffic management and NextGen to design a conceptual working prototype that includes most or all of these features, and then incorporate those requirements and features into the visualization design prototype.

Impact:
Our current design philosophy rests on developing a display prototype that supports an automation-rich ATC environment, while adhering to a human-centered design philosophy. This approach can maximize the overall performance of the ATC system (controller and automation), by ensuring that both agents work in harmony and make optimal contributions. For example, one thrust area of NextGen is the development of procedures that allow aircraft to fly in a more fuel-efficient manner. One challenge to the adoption of such procedures is the actual (and perceived) difficulty that controllers inherit in trying to manage them. A key functionality of the NextGen ATC Display concept is to give controllers the ability to visually examine potential future conflicts, as well as solutions proposed by the ATC automation agent. This capability is likely to facilitate the controller task of evaluating the feasibility of “green procedures,” and may help accelerate the adoption of such procedures.

Public Release No:09-1026

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 6, May 7

NextGen Valuation by Stakeholders

Primary Investigator:Giles, Stephen L.

Problems:
Decision makers in the aviation community need a way to transparently assess the business case implications of major portfolio investments. Since progress in aviation modernization requires coordinated action across multiple stakeholder groups, a common means for evaluating business case implications of new operational concepts, technology insertion opportunities, alternate business models, and policy initiatives is needed.

Objectives:
This research project is intended to meet the aviation community’s need for a robust and extensible business case analysis capability that conforms to statutory and administrative guidance requirements for investment analysis. The project also addresses the research community’s need for an agile set of tools and methodologies to evaluate the business implications of alternate policy, operational, and/or technical approaches to aviation modernization.

Activities:
The research will result in a portfolio analysis tool and methodology that can be used to evaluate a range of significant business issues. These include alternate bundles of performance-based services, provision of those services across alternate deployment schedules or geographic layouts, and changes in the operational environment. Examples include analyzing the impact of fuel costs, changes in environmental policy, government intervention in the aviation marketplace, and incentive mechanisms for shifting cost or risk.

Impact:
The ability to establish aviation stakeholder valuations of needs, expectations, and constraints can influence a range of proposed research initiatives. Our research can offer insights into specific considerations pertaining to the alternate portfolios evaluated, and lead to development and integration of processes and tool sets supporting evaluation of joint public-private investment challenges. In addition, it can increase awareness among MITRE staff, government decision makers, and the broader aviation community regarding the need to assess joint investments in light of the full range of stakeholder needs, expectations, and constraints.

Public Release No:09-1029

[Presentation]

OneCommunity: Social Network Services for the Intelligence Community

Primary Investigator:Gertner, Abigail S.

Problems:
One of the historical problem areas within the Intelligence Community is the segregation of individuals into narrow communities based on agencies and organizations within agencies. In recent years this has been changing due to an increased community emphasis on collaboration. In this new environment, the fundamental problem for analysts seeking to increase their level of collaboration is how to find other analysts working in complementary areas.

Our approach is to build and evaluate a prototype application that will monitor the user’s work, and dynamically identify and recommend other users who have indicated an interest in similar data. This combination of real-time data collection and matching in a browser-based application has the potential to alert analysts to others who are working the same or related issues and are concerned with events in the same areas of the world. To allow users to manage and communicate with their networks of contacts, we are providing the contact recommendation functionality within a social networking web site that we are calling OneCommunity.

Objectives:
Our primary goal is to develop and test algorithms to assist intelligence analysts in finding potential contacts within the community. These algorithms are implemented in the context of a prototype social networking framework, but they are designed to be easily portable to any environment that has a use for such information.

In addition to the technical implementation, we are working with a group of analysts to evaluate the effectiveness of our tools in helping them find other analysts with similar interests. Our objectives for this field testing are to understand the analysts’ collaboration needs and their attitudes and experience regarding social software, to work with them to incorporate our tools into their existing work flow, and to assess whether the tools help to improve their ability to collaborate more widely.

Activities:
We are improving collaboration across the intelligence community by providing social networking services to help analysts identify and make contact with other analysts with similar interests. In particular, we are developing tools to enable discovery of social networks based on shared interests. This work will facilitate communication among analysts across traditional boundaries.

We have installed and configured our OneCommunity social networking site on a secure network and on the unclassified DNI-U network. We have also developed an internal MITRE version of the site, called MITREverse, which we have integrated with several services on the MITRE intranet such as Onomi (MITRE’s social bookmarking tool). We have also developed interfaces from imagery analysis tools to OneCommunity. We are building a collaborative filtering service to identify and recommend potential new contacts. Finally, we have conducted interviews with analysts to determine how they would work with a social networking tool such as OneCommunity.

Impact:
A tool that will connect users working similar areas and issues in real-time has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of analysts. Additionally, this application may help analysts to gain a greater awareness of other elements of the community and to establish standing relationships with other individuals and groups within the community. Our customer connections and experience working in these areas should enable us to be effective in applying collaborative filtering techniques and introducing our customers to these ideas and our OneCommunity platform.

The entirety of our OneCommunity platform (Elgg infrastructure and plug-ins supporting collaborative filtering) should be usable as a unit by the Intelligence and DoD communities. OneCommunity versions will exist on different secure networks. Additionally,we expect that the collaborative filtering plug-ins will be reusable on other social networking platforms with minimal additional software development. We are in discussions with A-Space to potentially reuse our plug-ins to serve part of the intelligence community.

Public Release No:09-0943

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 5, May 7

Open Information Interoperability

Primary Investigator:Seligman, Leonard J.

Problems:
MITRE’s sponsors have an unprecedented need to respond quickly to new mission requirements; this requires the ability to compose capabilities on demand. A key barrier is the cost and time required to achieve information interoperability—i.e., meaningful information exchange among separately developed systems. Our sponsors need information interoperability tools that are:

- Affordable,
- Extensible, and
- Vendor-neutral

Unfortunately, this is not the current state-of-the-practice. Current commercial tools are mostly expensive and exist as single-vendor stovepipes. Sponsors currently have little alternative to manual data cross-walks, followed by programming the transformations required. Finally, there are few tools to help our sponsors exploit and encourage reuse ofthe data standards they develop, such as the Department of Defense's Universal Core or the National Information Exchange Model.

Objectives:
1. Work collaboratively with industry and academic leaders to define, design, and build the first release of an open source information interoperability (Open II) toolkit. The main partners in OpenII are Google, MITRE, the University of California at Irvine, and the University of Wisconsin, with some participation by IBM and the University of Pennsylvania.

2. Extend and adapt tools developed under the MITRE Innovation Program to provide important components of Open II.

3. Apply the toolkit to goverment projects and pilots to prepare for wider transition.

Activities:
- Proposed and gained acceptance by the OpenII collaboration for a common meta-model for use by multiple vendors' tools. In recognition of our contribution, the model is known as the MITRE Meta-Model, or M3.
- Defined and published intefaces to the Schema Store metadata repository, which enables knowledge sharing among different interoperability tools
- Developed the RMap relational mapper which produces executable mappings between data sources represented as SQL
- Guided two winning proposals for Google faculty awards. These will result in two new useful tools for the OpenII toolkit.
- Released the Harmony schema matcher, SchemaStore metadata repository, and MRALD form builder as open source software on code.google.com and openintegration.com
- Making several component tools more industrial strength, to prepare for wider distribution
- As they are ready, we are applying components of the toolkit to sponsor problems.
- Published a paper on the approach to interoperable

Impact:
We have advanced the state-of-the-art, by publishing a vendor-neutral meta-model and building acceptance of it. If we are successful, the end result will be an extensible suite of interoperability tools available for free to our sponsors. An open toolkit will enable big advances in agile information interoperability. Unlike today, researchers and small vendors will be able to plug their innovations into a larger framework, thereby speeding progress for the whole industry. The potential impact on agile interoperability for C2, emergency preparedness, homeland security, law enforcement, and bio-defense applications is enormous.

In FY09, we have successfully used components of the toolkit to address challenges faced by the Army Force Development/Warfighter Analysis Office and the Distributed Common Ground Station - Army. As the OpenII toolkit matures, we will pursue additional transition opportunities. The goals are both to provide near-term value to government programs and to learn lessons that will help us improve the toolkit.

Public Release No:09-0826

[Presentation]

Exhibit Date(s):May 6, May 7