CENS Organization

On this page:

• Organization and Management Chart
• Executive and Advisory Boards
• National Science Foundation
• CENS Contact

Organization and Management Chart
Text Version | PDF Version (Large Print) Updated May, 2008

Executive and Advisory Boards

In addition to our internal management structure as discussed above, CENS continues to have oversight by an internal Executive Board (The Research Executive Committee) who oversees center management issues, coordination across research projects, resource allocation, research and education integration, and outreach to the larger scientific community. Also, as discussed above, CENS has continued to evaluate and organize its External Advisory Board to provide external guidance and feedback to strategic directions and management policies and to ensure consistency with the Center’s vision, goals and objectives. As discussed in the Executive Summary and briefly in the Knowledge Transfer section, CENS REC decided to make an organizational change to its advisory board structure in the last reporting period. This included the originally proposed Technology Advisory Board that was outlined in our original proposal and strategic plan. In year 1, CENS had established two of its three planned advisory boards, the External Advisory Board (EAB) compiled of members from academia and government, to provide advice to the Center Director with respect to strategic directions, management policies, and to ensure consistency with the Center’s vision, goals and objectives, and the Strategic Partnership Advisory Board (SPA) made up of members from industry, to provide advice on Center Proposal Development activities, identification of new funding opportunities/funding sources, building Strategic Relationships and Partnerships, new technology and application directions, and specific ways to proceed with partnering opportunities. After convening meetings with both of the committees, CENS found that each committee was evaluating and discussing the same ENS issues and were together bringing different perspectives to the same CENS strategic directives. Also, these two viewpoints equaled the whole picture. It was then apparent that CENS would greatly benefit from bringing these two groups together in order to better utilize the time of the members and to obtain a more balanced perspective on CENS strategic initiatives. Learning our lesson from the establishment of these original two advisory boards, we included technical experts on our EAB in place of assembling the originally proposed separate Technology Advisory Board. This newly reorganized CENS Advisory and Executive Board Organization Chart is shown below.

CENS Advisory and Executive Board Organization Chart
Text Version | PDF Version (Large Print) Updated May, 2008

Research Executive Committee

Over this reporting period CENS has continued to be managed by the Research Executive Committee (REC) composed of the Director, Deputy Director, CENS Co-PIs, CENS Executive Staff and key research leaders across the technologies and applications. The REC meets monthly with members attending in-person, by telephone, or via video-conferencing. Each quarter the Executive Committee meets to discuss long term directions and redirections, and prior to the annual in-person External Advisory Board, the executive meeting focuses on strategic planning. The REC is responsible for the formal review and evaluation of CENS research and education projects ensuring they adhere to the overarching principles of the Center as previously outlined, at several stages of their life-cycle: proposal, prototype, deployment, and termination. Complete research portfolios are reviewed by REC quarterly on the basis of their progress reports. In this reporting period, the CENS REC activated the described policies and procedures for renewal of current research projects and incorporation of new projects into research thrust areas.

Projects will be evaluated according to their potential for fundamental knowledge creation, contributions to diversity, outreach, and knowledge transfer, and for their ethical implications, at each of these steps, as well as the implications for resources (both financial, and staff time scheduling). The overarching question is to what extent a project will contribute to the basic infrastructure (scientific, technological, or educational) of CENS. This will determine the various ways a project may be tied to CENS: use of center funds, use of center staff in exchange for external funding, or loose association as a project to track. While CENS will seek to broaden its funding base and application domains, caution will continue to be exercised in the early years to ensure that our initial tasks proceed on schedule. These initial tasks will however be subject to the same review process, to ensure that they meet the interlocking educational, scientific, and technological goals, and so that ethical implications can be evaluated at an early stage. At each step, resources may be reallocated to other tasks. Essential to this process will be project reports compiled by the PI’s. At termination, projects will be evaluated as to their impact, with lessons learned applied to management of other tasks.

External Advisory Board

As previously discussed, CENS has reconfigured its EAB to include the previous members, the members of the previous Strategic Partnership Advisory Board and technology persons to replace the previously considered Technology Advisory Board. A full in-person meeting bringing together the newly reorganized EAB members was convened in January. This proved a useful meeting for beginning new interactions and members were introduced and provided with an overview of CENS progress to date. Plenary discussions with area leads were held on key focus, plans, issues for all applications and technologies. Breakout sessions were held on the CENS science focus, discussing 2nd generation science questions and urgent concerns that CENS technologies might address. This included education of next generation scientists. A session on CENS Technology focus discussed commercial opportunities, including entertainment and RFIDs. Other sessions included an overview of data management issues and presentation of CENS integrity/security focus. Discussions were also begun on the ethical and social issues associated with ENS technologies. This proved to be a good first meeting of this newly constituted board. They will next meet at their semi-annual teleconference in July. The overall task of the EAB is to provide advice to the Center Director with respect to strategic directions and management policies and to ensure consistency with the Center’s vision, goals and objectives. It will review research portfolios and REC renewal recommendations in July and will provide a complete and thorough review of our research portfolio at their in person meeting in January. This process will help to insure that we identify areas of research whose efforts should be reduced or terminated; as well as opportunities where we should add new activities. The External Advisory Board has developed and finalized its charter which was reported last year. Now that our two boards are reconfigured and fully operational, we will begin the process of recording, transcribing, and providing complete meeting minutes in the next reporting period.

National Science Foundation Contract Information

National Science Foundation
Cooperative Agreement # CCR-0120778
Title: Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS)
PI Names: Deborah L. Estrin, Michael Hamilton, Mark Hansen, Thomas Harmon, Gaurav Sukhatme
Effective Date: August 1, 2002 Expiration Date: July 31, 2012

Contact Information

Center for Embedded Networked Sensing
UCLA 3563 Boelter Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1596
Tel. (310) 206-2476
Fax. (310) 206-3053

Administrative contact:

Xuan-Mai Vo, Kim Goodine

Director of Administration:

David Avery

Director of Program Development:

Jeffrey Goldman

Education Director:

Karen A. Kim

Center Director:

Deborah Estrin

Budget Analyst:

Terance Tashiro

Payroll and Financial Specialist:

Dennis Urie

Principal Investigators:

Deborah L. Estrin, Michael Hamilton, Mark Hansen, Thomas Harmon, Gaurav Sukhatme