Prof. K. K. Ramakrishnan (of our CSE Department at University of California, Riverside) and Dr. Jiachen Chen (WINLAB, Rutgers University) participated in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR) Tech-to-protect Challenge with their project, Next-Gen MCPTT, which aims at improving the mission-critical communications capabilities for first responders. The project was selected as one of the top awardees, nationwide, for the progress round in Nov. 2020. Earlier this year, the project also received the "Superior" award and the seed round award in the nationwide contest, and was overall #1 and best in class (Contest 2) in the in-person contest at the New York competition in Nov. 2019.

Project website: http://winlab.rutgers.edu/~jiachen/NG-MCPTT/