4/2/2026
Celebrating 75 Years of World-Changing Technological Advances
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Celebrating
75 Years of World-Changing Technological Advances
In 2026, CSL is celebrating its long history of world-changing
technological advances.
Written by Kim Gudeman
Today, interdisciplinary research labs following the model established by The Grainger College of Engineering’s Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) are so commonplace on university campuses that it’s easy to forget how recently they were unheard of. Yet CSL has remained unique – not only in its longevity, but in its ability to reinvent itself time and again to remain at the forefront of multidisciplinary research progress.
In 2026, CSL is celebrating its 75th anniversary – a remarkable milestone for an entity that was planned as a short-lived Korean War project! But CSL has not only survived as the oldest interdisciplinary scientific research unit on campus, but blossomed into a globally renowned research environment where generations of world-changing discoveries and inventions have come to light. Where once it was a narrowly tailored military project staffed by a handful of physicists, today it has about 150 faculty members from 16 home departments and hundreds of graduate students whose work at the crossroads of circuits, computing, control, and communications is supported by about $50 million in annual funding from federal, state, military, industry, gift, and foundation sources.
But what has made CSL so successful and enduring? As CSL marks its 75th year, it’s worthwhile to reflect on how it got so far – and to speculate on where its long journey will go next.
The origin of CSL
A century ago, universities were sleepier places than they are today. Faculty puttered around with modest research activities in a sheltered environment that felt relatively insulated from the world’s problems. Professors from different departments rarely collaborated, and the word “multidisciplinary” didn’t even exist yet.
World War II threw that idyll upside down. Fearing that civilization itself was under threat, many academic scientists and engineers were eager to contribute to the war effort, and numerous R&D projects sprang up to harness their abilities. One of the most crucial was MIT’s Radiation Laboratory, which achieved vital innovations in microwave and radar technologies.
F. Wheeler Loomis, then also the head of physics at Illinois, served as the associate director of MIT’s “Rad Lab,” whose successes he witnessed firsthand. But after the war ended, he faced a related headache: that of rebuilding a gutted Illinois physics department. Two-thirds of the faculty he’d recruited before the war had abandoned Illinois to join wartime R&D projects.
Those experiences left Loomis with two ideas. First, he thought that Illinois was capable of hosting a lab similar to MIT’s Rad Lab – and that if another war broke out, it should do so rather than suffer a second brain drain. Second, he no longer saw physics as a pure and isolated scientific discipline. At Illinois, he threw himself not just into rebuilding physics, but into building new research relationships between physics and other departments.
Another war started all too soon. North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, and U.S. forces were soon involved. A need to improve military technologies’ control systems emerged, and Loomis and his colleagues leapt to respond. On February 1, 1951, having attracted Department of Defense support, the Control Systems Laboratory (CSL) was established as a classified research lab at Illinois.
Early CSL work produced breakthroughs in radar technology, such as the Cornfield System, which tracked radar hits on aircraft. It was one of the first applications of digital computer technology to complex decision-making, and elements of it were incorporated into the U.S. Navy Tactical Data System.
The Korean War ended in 1953, but CSL’s ongoing research successes meant that its military funding was nevertheless renewed repeatedly. Over time, though, some began to feel that CSL could offer much more than military R&D. CSL was declassified and launched into a second life dedicated to civilian as well as military-funded research.
Since the lab was well-known as CSL, its transformation was marked by a new name with the same acronym, and in 1959, the Coordinated Science Laboratory was reborn.
CSL was led into its new life by its third director, Daniel Alpert. He felt it was important to announce CSL’s transition with some kind of attention-getting, emphatically civilian research success. Another professor’s suggestion launched CSL into the forefront of a revolution that didn’t yet exist: what about computer-assisted learning?
Alpert chose a newly graduated electrical engineering Ph.D. named Don Bitzer to lead the effort, dubbed “PLATO.”
PLATO’s initial vision, shown in the adjoining 1960 conceptual diagram, looks simple enough today, like someone just needed to slap together a few off-the-shelf components. But back then, none of these components had been invented yet: Bitzer’s team had to design and build every piece from scratch, including the world’s first flat-panel plasma display.
PLATO was a triumph that went on to have global reach – and its success went far beyond its hardware innovations. By the early 1970s, PLATO had introduced the phenomenon of social computing: it offered e-mail, instant messaging, and chat rooms and hosted the first online newspaper. In fact, PLATO was destined to be not just an educational tool, but the world’s first genuine online community.
With PLATO, Alpert put CSL on the map. But CSL was just getting warmed up.
75 years of achievement
Following CSL’s civilian transition, its research agenda rapidly broadened and diversified. To this day, CSL has maintained a stance of conscious flexibility, continually evolving to respond to changing research priorities and societal needs.
So what does CSL have to show for that approach? CSL’s history is interwoven with that of the global rise of high tech, and its innovations are inside technologies all around you, from the devices you carry in your pocket to the massive critical infrastructure systems that support the world’s economy.
Gregory Stillman
Stillman transformed the field of III-V semiconductors; he introduced sophisticated approaches for growing and studying III-V materials and heterostructures, and a new class of high-performance microwave heterojunction bipolar transistors that have had enormous importance in wireless communications.
Stillman transformed the field of III-V semiconductors; he introduced sophisticated approaches for growing and studying III-V materials and heterostructures, and a new class of high-performance microwave heterojunction bipolar transistors that have had enormous importance in wireless communications.
Joe Greene
Greene developed an atomic-level understanding of the interactions that occur during vapor-phase crystal growth. He used that understanding to manipulate the nanochemistry and nanostructure, and therefore the physical properties, of materials; his work both improved existing materials and created new ones.
Greene developed an atomic-level understanding of the interactions that occur during vapor-phase crystal growth. He used that understanding to manipulate the nanochemistry and nanostructure, and therefore the physical properties, of materials; his work both improved existing materials and created new ones.
Janak Patel
Patel developed the Illinois Scan Architecture, which massively reduced the test time and volume required to scan large-volume integrated circuits for faults; it remains a standard and is still found in most chips. He also proposed delta interconnection networks; today found in most routers, they offer a simple way to allow direct links between any processor and any memory module in a system.
Patel developed the Illinois Scan Architecture, which massively reduced the test time and volume required to scan large-volume integrated circuits for faults; it remains a standard and is still found in most chips. He also proposed delta interconnection networks; today found in most routers, they offer a simple way to allow direct links between any processor and any memory module in a system.
H. Vincent Poor
Poor did groundbreaking work on spread spectrum multiple access, which became the basis for CDMA cellular wireless communication networks. He also pioneered the joint detection and decoding of information signals in wireless communication systems, allowing multiple users to share wireless bandwidth efficiently and transmit information at unprecedented rates.
Poor did groundbreaking work on spread spectrum multiple access, which became the basis for CDMA cellular wireless communication networks. He also pioneered the joint detection and decoding of information signals in wireless communication systems, allowing multiple users to share wireless bandwidth efficiently and transmit information at unprecedented rates.
Tamer Başar
Başar has been a world leader of both zero-sum and nonzero-sum game theory for decades. Perhaps his greatest real-world impact has been through robust control algorithms he created within the framework of zero-sum games, in which controllers and adversarial uncertainties are viewed as players with totally conflicting objectives. His work has been widely applied in the automotive and aerospace industries and in communication networks, social systems, and economics.
Başar has been a world leader of both zero-sum and nonzero-sum game theory for decades. Perhaps his greatest real-world impact has been through robust control algorithms he created within the framework of zero-sum games, in which controllers and adversarial uncertainties are viewed as players with totally conflicting objectives. His work has been widely applied in the automotive and aerospace industries and in communication networks, social systems, and economics.
Thomas Huang
Huang solved important problems in estimating the motion of 3D objects based on sequences of 2D images – work that was incorporated into MPEG standards for video transmission and found uses in navigation, orientation, and object tracking. His image compression solutions led to new ways to store images and international standards for image, video, and fax compression.
Huang solved important problems in estimating the motion of 3D objects based on sequences of 2D images – work that was incorporated into MPEG standards for video transmission and found uses in navigation, orientation, and object tracking. His image compression solutions led to new ways to store images and international standards for image, video, and fax compression.
Bruce Hajek
Hajek's foundational work on stochastic processes, information theory and computer networks revealed performance limits of the Internet, wireless and peer-to-peer systems. He has also been influential as a teacher and mentor; his former CSL students include many leaders in academia and industry.
Hajek's foundational work on stochastic processes, information theory and computer networks revealed performance limits of the Internet, wireless and peer-to-peer systems. He has also been influential as a teacher and mentor; his former CSL students include many leaders in academia and industry.
Wen-mei Hwu
Hwu is today a leader of research at NVIDIA, pioneered GPU computing while in CSL; a GPU cluster that his group built in CSL helped prove that GPU computing is far more energy-efficient than CPU computing. He later pushed for the initially controversial, but ultimately wildly successful use of GPUs in the Blue Waters supercomputer on campus.
Hwu is today a leader of research at NVIDIA, pioneered GPU computing while in CSL; a GPU cluster that his group built in CSL helped prove that GPU computing is far more energy-efficient than CPU computing. He later pushed for the initially controversial, but ultimately wildly successful use of GPUs in the Blue Waters supercomputer on campus.
Naresh Shanbhag
Shanbhag developed a Shannon-inspired model of computing and the subsequent idea of in-memory computing. The latter alleviates the energy consumption and latency involved in moving data out of memory by performing computations within memory.
Shanbhag developed a Shannon-inspired model of computing and the subsequent idea of in-memory computing. The latter alleviates the energy consumption and latency involved in moving data out of memory by performing computations within memory.
Ravishankar K. Iyer
Iyer's group pioneered measurement-driven, AI-powered analytics for applications in critical infrastructure trustworthiness as well as health and personalized medicine. Leveraging huge datasets of health information, his methods are finding solutions for cancer pathology, personalized drug efficacy and prediction, and management of neurological diseases.
Iyer's group pioneered measurement-driven, AI-powered analytics for applications in critical infrastructure trustworthiness as well as health and personalized medicine. Leveraging huge datasets of health information, his methods are finding solutions for cancer pathology, personalized drug efficacy and prediction, and management of neurological diseases.
More achievements can be found in Coordinated Science Laboratory: 75 Years of Multidisciplinary Excellence, just published by the University of Illinois Press.
CSL’s next chapter
CSL’s adaptability has always been one of its greatest strengths, and Minh Do, CSL’s interim director, recently offered some predictions on where CSL will head in the coming years.
“One thing that is in everyone’s mind now is the AI revolution. Things are going to change in a lot of different fields,” Do said. CSL faculty are considering how CSL’s mix of expertise uniquely positions it to advance “physical AI” – AI systems that connect digital and physical components. That covers everything from robotics and autonomous systems to AI that interfaces with cyberphysical systems like the power grid.
The future of physical AI is intertwined what CSL researchers are calling “the compute/energy nexus”: the challenge of AI’s growing demand for energy. People in CSL are considering the AI ecosystem as a whole and looking at ways to optimize energy use from both the energy and computing sides. CSL’s Rakesh Kumar recently launched the Alliance for Maximizing Power Efficiency in Data Centers to coordinate work in this area.
Another field that may become prominent in CSL is quantum computing. Quantum’s future is hard to predict, but success will require integration of whole systems from the physical level of quantum phenomena all the way up to the high levels of systems and applications. “The strength of CSL is in the system thinking: bringing different pieces together and looking at it holistically,” Do said. “CSL is going to be very well-suited to addressing those kinds of issues.”
Do has observed another kind of evolution in CSL: the increasing importance of industry partnerships. “We need to diversify our funding portfolio,” he said, “no longer just going to federal funding agencies.” CSL has a long track record of success in industry-funded work; its Center for Networked Intelligent Components and Environments (C-NICE), a collaboration with Foxconn Interconnect Technology, is a conspicuous example.
CSL’s 75th anniversary symposium
CSL will celebrate its 75th anniversary with an April 13–14 symposium that brings together luminaries from CSL’s past and present to reflect on achievements and brainstorm on future directions. Visit https://csl.illinois.edu for details.
Grainger Engineering Affiliations
Minh N. Do is the Thomas and Margaret Huang Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the Siebel School of Computing & Data Science, the Department of Bioengineering, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, as well as the Interim Director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory, in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Daniel Alpert was a professor in the Department of Physics. Tamer Başar is Swanlund Endowed Chair Emeritus and CAS Professor Emeritus of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Donald Bitzer was a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Joseph Greene was a professor of Materials Science & Engineering and Physics. Bruce Hajek is the Leonard C. and Mary Lou Hoeft Endowed Chair in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Thomas Huang was a Swanlund Endowed Chair and professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Wen-mei Hwu is the AMD Jerry Sanders Chair Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Ravishankar K. Iyer is George and Ann Fisher Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Rakesh Kumar is a Professor and John Bardeen Faculty Scholar in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. F. Wheeler Loomis was a professor in the Department of Physics. Janak Patel is a Donald Biggar Willett Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. H. Vincent Poor is a former professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Naresh Shanbhag is Jack S. Kilby Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Gregory Stillman was a professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.