Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Information and Intelligent Systems awarded a CAREER grant of $343,966 to the University of California, Merced on July 1, 2026, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070). The award funds research through June 30, 2031, developing PULSAR (Power Usage Estimation Leveraging Sensing and Analysis of Electromagnetic Radiation), a contactless electromagnetic monitoring system designed to estimate energy consumption, detect performance anomalies, and enable proactive thermal management in computing hardware. The system operates without requiring wiring modifications, device alterations, or privileged software access, addressing cost and accessibility limitations of existing power monitoring approaches.

The project deliverables are organized across three integrated research thrusts: (1) generalizable contactless power monitoring combining physics-based models of switch-mode power supplies with automated signal feature discovery and multi-sensor fusion; (2) electromagnetic radiation-based system profiling methods using physics-informed features, temporal machine learning, and signal separation to identify fine-grained performance events such as CPU starvation, memory stalls, and thermal throttling; and (3) predictive thermal management methods leveraging electromagnetic signals as early indicators of heat generation to guide cooling actions before temperature increases occur. The research establishes foundational passive sensing systems advancing signal processing and machine learning techniques applicable to high-performance computing systems and distributed connected devices.