The research vision of CENTS is focused on real-world systems, with corresponding levels of scale and complexity. Such systems often contain highly embedded and networked devices, often interact with people and their physical environment, and frequently come with attendant security, privacy, and reliability challenges. These aspects raise significant systems research challenges, while at the same time presenting exciting opportunities to improve the technology of the future. CENTS is a broad center that will encompass existing projects, such as TinyOS, sensor networks, PlanetLab, TIER / Third World, and various security projects, as well as new projects in this area.