ISI Founded
The Information Sciences Institute has a history of solving difficult problems – beginning with its own creation. In 1972, technology maverick Keith Uncapher received an unusual offer. His work at Santa Monica, California-based think tank RAND Corporation, where Uncapher directed the computer science division, had drawn the attention of the United States’ Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Create and lead a center for emerging technologies, said DARPA officials, and the agency would provide financial support. Uncapher initially approached the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he was told a decision would take 15 months. But given DARPA's interest, Uncapher felt he had no time to waste. He then appealed to George Bekey, chair of Electrical Engineering Systems at the University of Southern California and a consultant to Rand. Bekey helped arrange for Uncapher to meet with USC Dean of Engineering Zohrab Kaprielian, who wielded considerable influence – and who thought Uncapher’s concept had tremendous promise. USC's Board of Trustees authorized the center just five days later. Thirty days after receiving a proposal, the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) funds Uncapher and his only two colleagues for $6 million. In less than a month, ISI launched operations as a largely autonomous arm of USC's School of Engineering. At Uncapher's insistence, the new center would be located off campus to maximize its entrepreneurial bent.
ARPANET
ISI designs an interface for The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). It was the first network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foundation of the Internet. The ARPANET was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. The first computers were connected in 1969 and the Network Control Program was implemented in 1970. The network was declared operational in 1971. Further software development enabled remote login, file transfer and email. The network expanded rapidly and operational control passed to the Defense Communications Agency in 1975.
Over the next several decades, ISI plays a pivotal role in creating and managing ARPANET/internet, including its core concepts, technical standards and ongoing functionality.
In 1977, ARPANET pioneer Jonathan Postel joins ISI, where he manages global address allocation (later named the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, or IANA.) He also maintains the "Request for Comments" developer dialogue that catalyzes and captures the emerging network's structure. So pivotal is Postel that he informally becomes known as "god of the Internet."
ARPANET Voice (VoIP)
ISI's Danny Cohen implements online voice communications, the first use of packet switching for real-time voice applications. Back in 1967, he developed the first real-time visual flight simulator on a general purpose computer, as well as the first real-time radar simulator. Then, in 1973, he was the first to implement “packet-video” and “packet voice” (Network Voice Protocol) when he adapted the visual flight simulator to run over the ARPANET. It was the first application of packet switching to real-time applications. Voice transmission goes on to become fundamental to webcasts and other uses, such as Facetime, Skype or Zoom.
MOSIS
ISI's Danny Cohen creates the breakthrough Metal Oxide Semiconductor Implementation Service (MOSIS). It was based on the inventions of VLSI pioneers Carver Mead and Lynn Conway, who invented and tested this new approach to rapid-prototyping and short-run fabrication at Xerox PARC
Probably the world’s first e-commerce site, MOSIS slashes chip production costs by consolidating multiple customers' projects onto shared wafers. This enables universities, government agencies, research institutes and businesses to prototype chips efficiently and cost-effectively. Customers are able to debug and adjust designs, or to commission small-volume runs, without making major production investments. Fabrication costs are also shared by combining multiple designs from a single customer onto one "mask set," or wafer template.
Decades later, MOSIS continues leading the fabless foundry industry. The service has delivered more than 60,000 integrated circuit designs since it launched.
Internet Domain Name System
ISI researcher Paul Mockapetris invents the internet's pivotal Domain Name System (DNS), using a simpler, more memorable name in place of a host's numerical address, invented back in the ARPANET era. The DNS automatically translates text addresses, which humans can understand and remember, to numerical addresses that computers can understand. The Domain Name System is maintained by a distributed database system, which uses the client–server model. The nodes of this database are the name servers. Each domain has at least one authoritative DNS server that publishes information about that domain and the name servers of any domains subordinate to it. The top of the hierarchy is served by the root name servers. The right to use a domain name is delegated by domain name registrars which are accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or other organizations such as OpenNIC, that are charged with overseeing the name and number systems of the Internet.
ISI soon leads DNS development and technical implementation around the globe.
Packet Video
ISI debuts packet video, led by Stephen Casner and Danny Cohen, and transmitted via a satellite on the building's roof. Video goes on to become a wildly popular fixture of the contemporary internet. Cohen and his colleagues started looking for applications in the real world, and created the first conference call. Video transmission goes on to become fundamental to webcasts and other uses, such as Facetime, Skype or Zoom, along with VoIP.
Online Payments
Clifford Neuman and PhD student Gennady (Ari) Medvinsky create NetCash, a framework for electronic currency, because of the need for licensing between software publishers and users. In order to facilitate such licensing and to enable economic software usage in enterprise-wide computer systems, they create a service that is trustworthy because it contains an aspect of virus protection. They create NetCheque clearing and conversion one year later.
NetCash and NetCheque are among the first internet-based electronic payment systems, which exploded with the rise of online commerce.
Spinning off USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT)
ISI spins off the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), a pioneer in virtual reality and other immersive technologies for military and civilian uses. The Institute was established in 1999 as a DoD-sponsored University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). ICT is working in collaboration with the Natick Soldier Systems Center and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command to establish new capabilities for the Army of 2030 and beyond. The U.S. Army selected the University of Southern California as a strategic partner because of the university’s unique confluence of scientific capabilities, immersive creativity, and entertainment industry relationships.
This unique confluence not only allows ICT to provide the DoD with new knowledge, but it gives military subject matter experts the opportunity to work with scientists and artists, resulting in prototypes that successfully transition into the hands of warfighters.
For over 20 years, the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC has been at the forefront of basic and applied research in immersive technology, simulation, human performance, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and narrative. And for over 20 years, ICT has leveraged this multi-disciplinary research to develop advanced prototypes and pilot projects that solve real-world problems facing service members, students, and society. Dedicated to finding new ways to teach, train, help, and heal, ICT researchers continue to explore and expand how people engage with technology. In turn, the immersive prototypes built on this knowledge provide engaging experiences that help users improve decision-making, leadership, and coping skills.
Whether it is developing next-generation 3D terrain capabilities for the military, virtual reality exposure therapy for patients with post-traumatic stress, or lowering the cost bar on head-mounted displays prompting the emerging VR and AR spaces to-date, ICT brings together government, healthcare, academia, and the entertainment industry to build experiences that matter. ICT helped create breakthrough 3D special effects for the Academy Award-winning film Avatar.
DETER Cybersecurity Testbed
ISI partners with UC Berkeley on Cyber Defense Technology Experimental Research (DETER), a major cybersecurity testbed. Led by ISI's Terry Benzel, DETER later adds "research on research" to serve 600-plus cybersecurity experimenters in 16 countries. The goal: accelerating innovative defenses by advancing cybersecurity science and experimentation. Since 2004, the DETER Cybersecurity Testbed Project has worked to create the necessary infrastructure - facilities, tools, and processes - to provide a national resource for experimentation in cyber security. The next generation of DETER envisions several conceptual advances in testbed design and experimental research methodology, targeting improved experimental validity, enhanced usability, and increased size, complexity, and diversity of experiments
First Physics-based SoCal Seismic Hazards Map
The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) uses Pegasus to generate the first ever physics-based seismic hazards map for the Southern California region. This was a high-point of many years of close collaboration between SCEC and Pegasus team members, and the work leading to this won the team the best paper award for their publication at EScience conference 2006. Pegasus maps the CyberShake workflows onto SCEC, NSF XSEDE and OSG (Open Science Grid) CyberInfrastructure resources. SCEC is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Geological Survey to develop a comprehensive understanding of earthquakes in Southern California and elsewhere, and to communicate useful knowledge for reducing earthquake risk. They use Pegasus in several of their scientific workflows using advanced features like Clustering, Recursive Daxes, Throttling, Priorities.
Quantum Computing Center
The USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC), led by USC professor Daniel Lidar and ISI's Robert F. Lucas, launches. The QCC utilizes the world's first commercial adiabatic quantum processor, the D-Wave One. Faculty, researchers and students are performing basic and applied research into noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computing devices, and are collaborating with researchers around the world. QCC was the first organization outside of D-Wave to house and operate its own system, and it has conducted pioneering research on three different generations of these early NISQ processors.
Quantum computing potentially offers orders-of-magnitude gains in speed and memory, as well as greater security, for some computing problems. Applications include “big data” analysis, classification, optimization and machine learning, which in turn could support breakthroughs in aerospace, medical imaging, robotics, finance, web search, bioinformatics and other disciplines.
Sports Analytics
ISI researchers Rajiv Maheswaren and Yu-Han Chang apply data analytics to basketball, and successfully launch a startup that commercializes the approach. Second Spectrum teaches machines to understand sports and creates software for coaches, players, leagues and media spanning products from data analytics and video query to augmented reality video streaming and interactive apps. Their player tracking system applies state-of-the-art machine learning and computer vision techniques to produce fast and accurate location data for basketball, association football and several other sports. They are the Official Optical Tracking Provider of the top league in both basketball (NBA) and soccer (Premier League).
Human Trafficking
Craig Knoblock and Pedro Szekely of ISI develop an Internet search tool to expose and combat shadowy, often brutal human trafficking. Their cloud-based analytics tool, Domain-specific Insight Graphs, uses open-source software to identify and extract web information, producing meaningful, searchable information for law enforcement.
The tool combs through escort ads — mining, decoding and organizing the relevant data into an enormous but easily searchable database. Known as DIG (for Domain-specific Insight Graphs), the tool allows officers who are searching for a missing child who is believed to be trapped in the escort industry to search by phone number, location, alias — even by photo — and pin down a way to reach them. DIG is simple enough that it doesn’t require special training to use. The database it utilizes has 50 million Web pages, 2 billion records and grows at a rate of roughly 5,000 pages per hour. The funding and initiative to create DIG came from Memex, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program aimed at developing the next generation of Internet search tools in hopes of helping law enforcement agencies fight online human trafficking. The code for DIG is open-source — and therefore free to law enforcement agencies.