2024 Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) Principal Investigators (PI) Meeting
The primary objective of this project was to manage and oversee the logistical aspects encompassing the pre-meeting, meeting, and post-meeting activities for the thirteenth NSF CPS PI Meeting, which took place from March 20-21, 2024, with participants arriving on March 19, 2024, at Vanderbilt University. This marked a significant departure as it was the first time the meeting was hosted on a college campus and outside the Washington, DC Metropolitan area since its inception in 2009. A key rationale for this move was to control expenses. The event served as a pivotal platform for stakeholders from academia, industry, and federal agencies to examine new developments in CPS foundations, explore emerging applications, and address technology challenges. The CPS PI Meetings convene annually to unite researchers supported by NSF, spanning diverse domains such as agriculture, climate change, energy, healthcare, and transportation. These gatherings aim to identify innovation opportunities, discuss technological hurdles, and chart future research pathways.
Additionally, the project entailed organizing the logistics for the 2024 Aspiring CPS PIs Workshop, held concurrently with the CPS PI Meeting on March 19, 2024, also at Vanderbilt. This workshop was tailored to assist potential PIs in understanding NSF's expectations, particularly those of review panels, regarding successful CPS proposals. Its aim was to help participants articulate their ideas effectively, ensuring proposal reviewers could discern how their proposed work would contribute to advancing the CPS research agenda.
The 2024 CPS PI Meeting provided a two-day forum for 276 CPS stakeholders from government, industry, and the academic community to discuss new and ongoing programs in CPS research being pursued by U.S. government research sponsor agencies. The meeting allowed PIs to inform and showcase their research results and accomplishments; to discuss challenges (gaps and barriers) and research approaches; to identify new, emerging problems, developments, and opportunities; and to interact and network to forge new collaborations with colleagues in academia, industry, and Federal agencies program managers, and other research organizations.
1. Actual Attendance Metrics:
- Total number of actual attendees - 276
- Total number of CPS Lead PIs, PIs, and Co-PIs attendees, non-academic PIs, and students - 235
- Foreign Government Officials - 3
- Independent Research Labs - 4
- Total number of Government attendees - 8
- Total number of project staff – 8
- Others (Private citizens) - 1
2. Registration Metrics: 310 total number of registrants (based on pre-meeting data collected)
3. Artifacts Metrics: The following artifacts were generated from the listing of 345 unique research grant awards for this meeting:
- 2 keynotes
- 2 R&D PI project panels comprising a panel on Starts Ups and Transition and one on Agriculture
- 1 Equity-Diversity-Inclusion panel session
- 162 project poster abstracts and posters
- 149 project Lightning Talk videos
- 10 unique demonstrations by respective PIs were presented "live" in real-time
II. The 2024 CPS PIs Workshop:
The intended outcome of the workshop was to expand and enrich the CPS research community by equipping early-stage researchers with a better grasp of the NSF's expectations and the CPS program's objectives with the goal of enhancing the quality of project ideas emanating from the community.
1. Attendance Metrics:
- 50 Aspiring CPS PIs
- 8 Others including NSF CPS PDs, CPS PIs, and VU staff and volunteers
2. Artifacts Metrics: 50 project posters that focused on CPS research themes that each Aspiring PI would propose to NSF
