The CRIS center conducts multidisciplinary research across the areas of controls and signal processing, robotics, machine intelligence, embedded and real-time systems, and communications. The center focuses on fundamental research, as well as its transition to technological discoveries and its application to a variety of domains including autonomous systems, energy systems, biomedicine, environmental monitoring, agriculture automation, transportation, manufacturing, and advanced materials.

The center brings together undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, researchers, and faculty from all departments of the Bourns College of Engineering, and from the College of Natural Sciences at UC Riverside. The center provides a forum to coordinate research and teaching activities, foster collaborations within and outside UC Riverside, and disseminate discoveries and results. The center also organizes informal weekly lunch meetings, student presentations, invited seminars, workshops, and tutorial sessions on selected timely topics. Finally, the center pursues and facilitates collaborations with local, national, and international industrial partners.