VUSE space-defense institutes gain new home on Music Row

The School of Engineering’s Institute for Space and Defense Electronics (ISDE) and the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) anticipate further growth after relocation to new offices at 1025 16th Avenue South.

The two institutes will move their combined 130 personnel in September to a building that provides approximately 40,000 square feet of lab, office and conference space. ISIS and ISDE were formerly housed at 2015 Terrace Place and in the Center Building on Broadway, respectively, in facilities that were cramped and no longer met the institutes’ needs.

The new space will not only provide much-needed space but also is expected to help the School of Engineering attract top faculty, researchers and graduate students. Formerly music industry-related offices, the red brick Music Row building was purchased by Vanderbilt for the School of Engineering in 2008.

ISDE Director Ron Schrimpf said the institute is the world’s leading academic center for study of radiation effects on computers and other electronics. ISDE now earns more than $5 million each year from customers and sponsors that include NASA, the U.S. Navy and Air Force, Medtronic, Cisco, Boeing, Texas Instruments, AMD and others.

In the Music Row building ISDE will occupy about 11,000 square feet of space, in contrast to less than 5,000 sq. ft. it had in the Broadway facility.

ISIS Director Janos Sztipanovits said the institute conducts basic and applied research in the area of systems and information science and engineering. Applications of ISIS technology span a wide range of software-intensive systems from small embedded devices, through real-time distributed systems, to globally deployed systems of systems. Its customers and sponsors include the U.S. armed services, departments of energy, education and homeland security, as well as Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, IBM, Microsoft Research and others.