WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Spacecraft Engineering Department recently developed the Transmit/Receive Enterprise (TREx) service with sponsorship from the Space Development Agency, Space Rapid Capabilities Office, and Space Systems Command to provide software development and mission operations for sponsoring organizations across the space community.

With natural disasters striking communities across the U.S. at an accelerating pace, the question of how to build homes that can endure them has never been more critical. New research spanning political science and civil engineering shows that the answer could lie at the intersection of smarter regulatory systems and stronger structures. University of Notre Dame political scientist Susan Ostermann and her team have identified the building code features that have the biggest impact on hazard resilience and translated those features into tangible, practical building solutions.

Conventional telescopes are limited in detecting low-surface-brightness (LSB) structures, which are essential for studying galaxy evolution. Now, researchers have developed a new telescope system featuring a confocal off-axis design with three freeform mirrors, optimized for deep LSB imaging. This system enables astronomers to observe faint galactic features more clearly, revealing how galaxies evolve over time.

 

As long as humans write software by hand, errors will remain inevitable. “Automatically synthesizing systems that are correct by design is considered the Holy Grail of software engineering,” says CISPA-Faculty Rayna Dimitrova. While it is already possible to automatically and correctly generate simple programs, suitable techniques for complex software systems are still lacking. With a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) worth approximately two million euros, Dimitrova aims to change that. In her SyReP project, she is developing new synthesis methods for so-called reactive software systems—systems that continuously interact with their environment and must make sophisticated decisions on the fly.

Future quantum networks could revolutionize many aspects of our lives from cybersecurity to healthcare and energy. But how do we make such networks practical and affordable? Professor Mehul Malik, from the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, has been awarded a grant of more than £2.6 million by the European Research Council (ERC) to address some of the key challenges involved. His five year project will focus on harnessing the spatial and temporal properties of light. 

IMDEA Software researcher Marco Guarnieri has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to develop PRIMULA, a pioneering project aimed at building hardware–software systems that are secure by design against microarchitectural attacks.

With 2€ million in funding over 5 years, PRIMULA will drive a paradigm shift in cybersecurity by establishing formal foundations and tools to protect computer systems against attacks, eliminating the dependence on ad-hoc mitigations.