September 10, 2020
Phase three funding awarded for DARPA CASE program involving K-State faculty
Two Kansas State University computer science professors, Robby and John Hatcliff, are part of an international team that has been selected for the capstone phase, or phase three, of the DARPA Cyber-Assured Systems Engineering, or CASE, program.
Robby and Hatcliff, and the team led by Collins Aerospace, which includes Adventium Labs, Data61 — Australia's leading digital research network — and the University of Kansas, will partner in the contract extension that fully realizes Robby and Hatcliff's $950,000 Collins' subcontract with Adventium Labs for the August 2018-April 2021 period of performance. K-State's share in this funding is $375,000.
In addition, Collins Aerospace has continued to support Robby and Hatcliff's sabbatical work by awarding an additional $550,000 for the period of August 2020-February 2022. This new award includes partial funds for research associates and graduate research assistants to support work on the DARPA CASE Phase 3 projects. Thus, including their previously awarded sabbatical funding received last year of $589,909 for May 2019-August 2020, the total Collins' awards to Robby and Hatcliff for their sabbatical line of research work amounts to $1,139,909.
The DARPA CASE program aims to develop system modeling, analysis, code generation and verification techniques that will help engineers harden critical systems, including Department of Defense systems, against cyberattacks.
In DARPA CASE Phase 3, code generation, analysis and verification tools built by the K-State team will be used to develop cyber-resilient mission control software for an experimental version of an in-use military aircraft platform.