ARLINGTON, VA:  ISE Professor Cole Smith and Distinguished Professor Panos Pardalos, along with CISE Professor My Thai, have received an extension of funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) of the Department of Defense to study systems under threat of attack.  Their proposal, “Mathematical Approaches to WMD Defense and Vulnerability Assessments on Dynamic Networks,” will examine the worst-case scenario of systems that are under attack.  The goal is to define defense strategies to maintain a “basic level of functionality across critical systems,” as average performance of the system after attack is not of interest.  The grant is a continuation of previous work by the authors, with the total funding level having reached nearly $600,000 over four years.