What We Do

What We Do

Our Mission

At ERDC’s Information Technology Laboratory, our mission is to provide innovative solutions to the nation’s most complex information technology and computational challenges.

What We Do

Our work centers on research and development in informatics, computational science, and computational engineering with an emphasis on high-performance computing, computer-aided and interdisciplinary engineering, computer science, systems engineering, and instrumentation systems.

We plan, manage, and conduct research and development in the following areas:

High-performance computing

We utilize high-performance computing (HPC) to help the DoD’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) community access insight that would otherwise be too costly, dangerous, or time-intensive to get through observation and experimentation alone. We also execute the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP), a multiservice effort and national asset that provides a comprehensive modeling and simulation ecosystem. The HPCMP integrates the supercomputing capabilities and computational science expertise that allow DoD scientists and engineers to conduct a wide range of RDT&E activities and amplify their creativity, productivity, and impact.

Engineered Resilient Systems

We use Engineered Resilient Systems methods to streamline the DoD’s ability to examine design options during their acquisition process. The DoD needs to develop and sustain combat systems that are effective in an increasing range of military operations, and high-quality acquisition decisions are the key to meeting this goal. By combining advanced engineering techniques with high-performance computing, systems are dependable, easy to modify to meet future mission goals, and have a predictable lifecycle.

High-performance data analytics

We lead the charge for innovation in the use of supercomputing to develop high-performance data analytics within the DoD. Increasingly powerful high-performance computing systems that can run complex models and simulations have generated an explosion of data. Those computing systems, along with iterative problem-solving methods that produce large data volumes and the growing requirement to perform advanced analytics in near-real time, make high-performance data analytics possible. By leveraging our expertise in HPC, data science analytics, and big data, we can solve new kinds of challenges and advance the science of knowledge discovery and data mining.

Cybersecurity for the Department of Defense

We use our expertise in cybersecurity to proactively enable cyber protections, encourage technological advancements, and maximize RDT&E protection and defense. Our cybersecurity areas include assessments, cyber-physical systems, cyber analytics, and defensive cybersecurity capabilities. We’re home to a National Security Administration (NSA)-certified Red Team, a group that acts as adversaries themselves to identify security issues and put protections in place to secure networks against attacks. We’re also responsible for providing cybersecurity for two elements of the DoD information network: the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) and the Secret DREN (SDREN).

Enabling the regiment

We conduct research and development that directly support USACE, the DoD, and other government agencies. We focus on large-scale enterprise software engineering and follow the entire lifecycle of software development, including requirements engineering, systems architecture, software development, systems testing, documentation, and training using agile methodology. Our other efforts include mobile application development, augmented/virtual/mixed reality software development to support the warfighter, and support to USACE’s civil works mission.

Additional research areas include:

  • Data science
  • Computer-aided and interdisciplinary engineering
  • Software engineering
  • Computer science
  • Systems engineering
  • Augmented and virtual reality
  • Artificial intelligence and machine learning
  • Instrumentation systems