Clarkson joins cooperative to research electric, connected and autonomous vehicles

POTSDAM — Clarkson University announced it is part of a new nationwide collaboration focused on developing new sustainable vehicle technologies.

The collaboration is part of the Center for Electric, Connected and Autonomous Technologies for Mobility (eCAT), Clarkson said in a Sept. 5 news release.

The eCAT Center is an industry-university cooperative research center (IUCRC) sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). It is tasked with developing sustainable mobility technologies such as electrification, smart infrastructure, and resilient computing systems, Clarkson said.

It is one of three universities participating in the collaboration, along with the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas and Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

Chen Liu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, will serve as the site director of eCAT center at Clarkson University. Liu has expertise in perception and mapping for autonomous systems, hardware design and heterogeneous computing, and cybersecurity, the school said.

“The Clarkson faculty has collective strength across disciplines in sensing/perception, computing, electrification, green energy, and vehicle grid integration,” Liu said in the release. “We are looking forward to this opportunity to collaborate with industry partners and government agencies to work on these exciting areas of emerging technologies.”

The Clarkson University eCAT site will focus on hardware support and computing backbone, especially employing edge computing, edge server, cloud computing in a holistic and integrated fashion to address the computing need for connected and autonomous driving workloads.

The NSF has awarded Clarkson $600,000 over five years to conduct its research, the school added.