Better driving by design: Purdue-Led NSF CHORUS Center makes autonomous systems stay safe There were more than 1,000 crashes involving vehicles equipped with automated driving systems or Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems in the first half of 2025, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Whether on highways or farms, automated systems must remain safe despite sensor failures, GPS disruptions, network dropouts or even cyber-attacks. That’s why Purdue University is leading CHORUS, a multi-institution research center funded by a $7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, to build resilience into cyber-physical systems (CPS). The name is inspired by the Egyptian god Horus, who symbolizes protection from disasters, with the “C” added to emphasize the center’s cyber focus. “With CHORUS, we want to give cities and transportation agencies a scientific way to reason about how their cyber-physical systems behave under stress from cyberattacks, equipment failures, or simple human error,” said Saurabh Bagchi, CHORUS director and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the College of Engineering (COE). “Our goal is for CHORUS to help multiple stakeholders coordinate their defenses, so connected and autonomous transportation can remain safe and reliable when such perturbations are inevitable.” CHORUS addresses a fundamental challenge: building dependable connected and autonomous transportation systems (CATS) when every component, including hardware, software, communication links and human operators, is inherently imperfect. The guiding principle is simple: systems must remain safe when, not if, failures occur. The center organizes its research into three thrusts. First, it models systems and stakeholders to reveal how failures originate and propagate. Second, it applies game theory and optimization for proactive planning that guides cost effective resilience investments. Third, it develops runtime detection and distributed response so systems can maintain safety and availability as