NYU Center for Urban Science + Progress, Location: Brooklyn NY, Architect: Mitchell Giurgola Architects

Research

  • Congratulations to Joseph Chow and Julia Stoyanovich, who have been conferred the title of Institute Associate Professor in recognition of their significant accomplishments in research, teaching, and service!
  • Congratulations to Smart Cities Postdoctoral Associate John R. Pamplin II, who received an NIH Health Disparities Research LRP Award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)! The awarded project is titled, “The impact of overdose prevention policy interventions and the COVID-19 pandemic on racial disparities in opioid overdose.”
  • Professor Chen Feng is leading the organization of the first workshop on “SoRoSE: Soft Robot State Estimation” at IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021. This workshop aims to exchange new knowledge, discover inspiring trends, and advance integrated software and hardware techniques for soft robot sensing and state estimation. The goal is to connect communities (robotics, vision, learning, graphics, HCI, etc.) and stimulate collaborative research. The workshop (and the associated special issue journal) is open to extended abstract (and full manuscript) submissions now.
  • Professor Chen Feng is serving as the chair of the technical committee for the annual International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC) in 2021. This is a leading conference in the research areas of construction automation and robotics with multidisciplinary researchers from civil/mechanical engineering and robotics.
  • The Open Data Policy Lab—an initiative by The GovLab and Microsoft—is announcing the launch of the City Incubator, a first-of-its-kind program to support data innovations in cities’ success and scale. Following an application process, ten city government intrapreneurs from different parts of the world will be selected and have access to a council of mentors and join a network of peers. The six-month program will kick-off in September 2021 and provides a unique opportunity for cities to acquire visibility and support in improving the lives of their residents through data. Applications are due by August 31 with an early application deadline of August 6th. This program is supported by our partners at Microsoft, Mastercard City Possible, Luminate, Public Sector Network and NYU CUSP.
  • Undergraduate student Michelle Edid, who is working with Professor Debra Laefer in the Urban Modeling Group, was awarded an NYU Sustainability Internship Grant for her summer work on Brownfield site ranking in Sunset Park Brooklyn.
  • Professor Debra Laefer’s student Maimunah Virk received a Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund award for COVID-19 related work in the Pakistani communities in Queens, NY.
  • A warm welcome to Terri Matthews, who is joining the Urban Modeling Group as an Urban Infrastructure Systems doctoral student.
  • Professor Debra Laefer and Professor Mary Leou (NYU Steinhardt) were awarded an NYU Climate Research Seed Grant to do an oral history project with residents in Sunset Park about their experiences related to Hurricane Sandy.
  • Professor Debra Laefer will be a featured speaker for the Open Geospatial Consortium’s “Digital Twin Conference,” hosted by the Korea Land and Housing Corporation on July 22.

Press

Publications

  • Yiming Li, Congcong Wen, Felix Juefei-Xu, and Chen Feng, “Fooling LiDAR Perception via Adversarial Trajectory Perturbation”. IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2021.
    • This paper has been accepted to ICCV for oral presentation (<3% acceptance rate). It shows that small perturbations to vehicle trajectory can blind LiDAR perception, which reveals for the first time a potentially significant safety/security threat for self-driving cars. More info can be found here: https://ai4ce.github.io/FLAT/
  • Diwei Sheng, Yuxiang Chai, Xinru Li, Chen Feng, Jianzhe Lin, Claudio Silva, JR Rizzo, “NYU-VPR: Long-Term Visual Place Recognition Benchmark with View Direction and Data”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021.
    • This paper presents a new large-scale dataset for researchers to study visual place recognition for self-driving and assisted living in complex urban environments, such as the Washington Square Park area of NYC. The dataset and the project webpage will be released on AI4CE lab’s Github site soon.
  • Uljad Berdica, Yuewei Fu, Yuchen Liu, Emmanouil Angelidis, Chen Feng, “Mobile 3D Printing Robot Simulation with Viscoelastic Fluids”, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2021.
    • This paper presents a new mobile robot simulation toolkit that supports interaction with viscoelastic fluids. It allows researchers to simulate mobile 3D printing in ROS Gazebo environment while testing perception, planning, and control algorithms. The software and the project webpage will be released on AI4CE lab’s Github site soon.

Education

  • On Monday, August 9th, CUSP’s graduate students presented their capstone projects during the 2021 Capstone Showcase and Recognition Ceremony. NYU CUSP’s Capstone program brings together student teams with government agencies, industry, or other research partners to address real-world urban challenges through data. The capstone presentation event is the culmination of their six-month projects and marks the final presentation of the students’ work during their studies at CUSP. Learn more about the 2021 projects here.

People

  • CUSP is hiring a Visiting Assistant or Associate Faculty! The successful candidate will serve as the Interim Director of Academics at CUSP, manage a staff of two, and lead admissions, marketing, student services, curricular development and quality control for our programs. As part of CUSP’s leadership team, they will also contribute to strategic planning and decision-making for the center and lead our faculty on academic issues. The successful candidate will also be expected to advise students and teach 4-5 courses/year, including our two-semester capstone sequence of hands-on project work with external partners, as well as specialized courses from our required or elective lists. This position is full-time, non-tenured, with an initial appointment for 1 year, renewable depending on need and performance.

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