- March 9, 2021
Research
- Congratulations to the Floodsense team, whose research on “FloodNet.nyc: Street-level Flood Sensing and Data Sharing for Urban Resilience” was named the MetroLab Innovation of the Month! MetroLab spoke with Andrea Silverman, Brett Branco, Charlie Mydlarz, Elizabeth Henaff, Ricardo Toledo-Crow and Tega Brain about the project, which aims to monitor and record frequent, hyperlocal street-level floods in New York City.
- A new study led by CUSP Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri and NYU Tandon Visiting Professor and Professor at the Politecnico di Torino Alessandro Rizzo found that limiting personal mobility through travel restrictions and similar tactics is effective only in the first phases of the epidemic, and reduces in proportion to the spread of infection across a population. Their research, “Modelling and predicting the effect of social distancing and travel restrictions on COVID-19 spreading,” details a data modeling framework for isolating the differential efficacy of different COVID-19 intervention policies.
- Congratulations to Professor Debra Laefer and NYU Wagner Professor Emerita Rae Zimmerman, who are awardees of the Civic Innovation Challenge, a national competition to drive research and collaborative action in urban resiliency and smart and connected communities! Their research on “Unification for Underground Resilience Measures (UNUM),” co-led with Wendy Dorf and Alan Leidner from NYC’s Geospatial Information System and Mapping Organization (GISMO), aims to bolster the ability of first New York City and, ultimately, of cities nationwide to prepare for and respond to crises and disasters by making critical information on community infrastructure robust, open, transparent, and easy for key stakeholders to share and act upon.
- Professor Debra Laefer will co-chair the 3D GeoInfo 2021 Conference on October 11-14th, a 4-day virtual event. The conference offers an interdisciplinary forum for researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to discuss and exchange advances in the field of 3D geo-information. There will also be a virtual job fair and poster sessions, as well as local networking opportunities in select hub cities around the world.
- In a new viewpoint on “The Transformation of Patient-Clinician Relationships with AI-based Medical Advice,” published in the Communications of the ACM, Professor Oded Nov, Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri, Assistant Professor J.R. Rizzo, and faculty members from NYU Langone discuss how AI-based medical advice is transforming the patient-clinician relationship. The researchers argue that “Bring Your Own Algorithm” (BYOA) is changing the patient-clinician relationship and the nature of expert work in healthcare, and better patient-clinician-information-interpretation relationships can be facilitated with solutions that integrate technological and organizational perspectives.
Press
- Neighbors join effort to document flooding – features the FloodNet project from the Floodsense team (Queens Chronicle).
- Game on! – Alum Jeffrey Pawlick and Professor Quanyan Zhu team up to improve cybersecurity with game theory (NYU Tandon Newsroom).
- C2SMART paves a path forward for transportation in a post-pandemic world at TRB 2021 – features research by Professor Kaan Ozbay and Assistant Professor Joseph Chow (NYU Tandon Newsroom).
- Why are reports of sexual assault delayed? – features a new paper on “Understanding spatial patterns in rape reporting delays” by Associate Professor Daniel B. Neill, Visiting PhD Student Konstantin Klemmer, and Stephen A. Jarvis (Cosmos Magazine).
- New Website Uses Ai to Make Community Board Meetings More Accessible – A new website by CUSP alum Sarah Sachs (MS 2019) and MS 2021 candidate Brandon Pachuca uses artificial intelligence to promote civic engagement by auto-generating informative weekly newsletters about New York’s community boards (Brooklyn Paper).
Education
- NEW PROGRAM: NYU CUSP’s Online Advanced Certificate can be completed from anywhere in the world, personalized to your busy schedule, and is offered at a 50% tuition discount to qualified individuals, to help meet this critical urban moment.
- Learn more during our Prospective Student Webinar on Thursday March 18th at 12:00pm.
- Earn your Master’s in Applied Urban Science and Informatics! It’s not too late to apply for Fall 2021 – learn more about our programs in Urban Informatics on our website or start your application here.
Publications
- Debra F. Laefer, Thomas Kirchner, Darlene Cheong, Aseah Khan, Weiyi Qiu, Nikki Tai, Tiffany Truong, and Maimunah Virk. “Data Resource Profile: Egress Behavior from Select NYC COVID-19 Exposed Health Facilities March-May 2020.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.10079 (2021).
- Shemshadian, Mohammad E., Arturo E. Schultz, Jia-Liang Le, Ramzi Labbane, Debra F. Laefer, Salam Al-Sabah, Linh Truong-Hong et al. “Amass: Advanced manufacturing for the assembly of structural steel.” Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction 26, no. 1 (2021): 04020052.
- Farah, Imed, Abdelouahab Rezaiguia, Ahcene Mouassa, Laefer Debra, and Salah Guenfoud. “Free vibration analysis of multi-span orthotropic bridge deck with rubber bearings.” Diagnostyka 22 (2021).
- Jun Yuan, Oded Nov, and Enrico Bertini. “Visualizing Rule Sets: Exploration and Validation of a Design Space.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.01022 (2021).
- Pietro Delellis and Maurizio Porfiri. “Detection of Influential Nodes in Network Dynamical Systems from Time-Series,” in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, doi: 10.1109/TCNS.2021.3061953.
- Stanislav Sobolevsky. “Recurrent Graph Neural Network Algorithm for Unsupervised Network Community Detection.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.02520 (2021).
- Mieth, S. Acharya, A. Hassan and Y. Dvorkin, “Learning-Enabled Residential Demand Response: Automation and Security of Cyberphysical Demand Response Systems,” in IEEE Electrification Magazine, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 36-44, March 2021, doi: 10.1109/MELE.2020.3047470.
- Kieras, J. Farooq and Q. Zhu, “I-SCRAM: A Framework for IoT Supply Chain Risk Analysis and Mitigation Decisions,” in IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 29827-29840, 2021, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3058338.
- Assistant Professor S. Farokh Atashzar has two workshop proposals accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2021:
- Mahdi Tavakoli, S. Farokh Atashzar, Kaspar Althoefer, Paolo Fiorini, “Impact of COVID-19 on Medical Robotics and Wearables Research: Learning from the Past and Strategizing for the Future,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) ICRA 2021.
- Farshid Alambeigi, S. Farokh Atashzar, Mohsen Khadem, Fanny Ficuciello, “Holistic Integration of Design, Sensing, and Intelligence in Dexterous Medical Robotic Systems,” IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) ICRA 2021.
- Gulati, Q. Hu, S.F. Atashzar, “Toward Deep Generalization of Peripheral EMG-based Human-Robot Interfacing: A Hybrid Explainable Solution for NeuroRobotic Systems.” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
- Thudi, S. F. Atashzar, “Discrete Windowed-Energy Variable Structure Passivity Signature Control for Physical Human-(Tele)Robot Interaction,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
- Grande, S. Farokh Atashzar, E. Valdes, A. Nunzio, D. Falla. “Kinematic biomarkers of chronic neck pain measured during gait: A data-driven classification approach.” Journal of Biomechanics 118 (2021): 110190.
- F. Atashzar, J. Carriere, and M. Tavakoli. “How Can Intelligent Robots and Smart Mechatronic Modules Facilitate Remote Assessment, Assistance, and Rehabilitation for Isolated Adults with Neuro-Musculoskeletal Conditions?” Frontiers in Robotics and AI 8 (2021): 48.
- Feizi, M. Tavakoli, R. Patel, and S. Farokh Atashzar. “Robotics and AI for Teleoperation, Tele-assessment, and Tele-training for Surgery in the Era of COVID-19: Existing Challenges, and Future Vision.” Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 8 (2021): 16.
- Mehrdad, Fei Liu, Minh Tu Pham, Arnaud Lelevé, and S. Farokh Atashzar. “Review of Advanced Medical Telerobots.” Applied Sciences 11, no. 1 (2021): 209.
- S. M. Castillo, S. Wilson, R. Vaidyanathan and S. F. Atashzar, “Wearable MMG-Plus-One Armband: Evaluation of Normal Force on Mechanomyography (MMG) to Enhance Human-Machine Interfacing,” in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 29, pp. 196-205, 2021, doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.3043368.
- Tøttrup, S. F. Atashzar, D. Farina, E. N. Kamavuako and W. Jensen, “Nerve Injury Decreases Hyperacute Resting-State Connectivity Between the Anterior Cingulate and Primary Somatosensory Cortex in Anesthetized Rats,” in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 28, no. 12, pp. 2691-2698, Dec. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2020.3039854.
- Nicholson-Smith, V. Mehrabi, S. F. Atashzar and R. V. Patel, “A Multi-Functional Lower- and Upper-Limb Stroke Rehabilitation Robot,” in IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 549-552, Nov. 2020, doi: 10.1109/TMRB.2020.3034497.
Open Data Week
Join members of the CUSP community for NYC’s Open Data Week, running now through March 14th! Open Data Week is a week-long festival of community-driven events organized and produced by the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and BetaNYC. This year’s events include:
Who’s In? Barriers to Participation in NYC Open Data – Wednesday March 10th, 6:30 to 8pm
- Led by Research Assistant Professor Graham Dove
- What does the NYC Open Data community look like? And what does it take to be a member? Conversely, who might currently be excluded? What are the barriers to their participation? And what can be done to bring these barriers down? In this moderated forum we will discuss participation in NYC Open Data, investigate new places we might want to take it, and ask how to reach these desired goals.
Block Party: A Platform to Explore NYC Community Board Meetings – Thursday, March 11th, 11:00 to 11:45 am
- Led by CUSP Alum Sarah Sachs & MS 2021 Candidate Brandon Pachuca
- This interactive showcase will welcome you to block party as we dive into the public archive of Community Board meetings and explore what is discussed throughout New York City at a local level.
NYC Planning’s Data Engineering team’s year in review: highlighting new tools and products – Friday, March 12th, 12:30 to 1:45 pm
- Led by CUSP alum and Adjunct Professor Amanda Doyle and CUSP alum Baiyue Cao
- During this presentation NYC Planning’s Data Engineering team will share some of the products we worked on in the past year and demonstrate how they improved access to data and data quality. The presentation will be divided into three parts: new tools and processes, new projects and products, and general updates. First, we’ll share some processes we’ve built including workflows for extracting and staging input datasets, and how we’ve employed new tools, such as GitHub Actions for building products. Next, we’ll give an overview of new public data products, such as the DCP Housing Database, and highlight work we did to improve data quality in other interdivisional projects. Finally, we’ll share a few team updates including the status of PLUTO.
Living with Water: Using Qualitative and Quantitative Data on Flooding to Engage with Communities and Agencies – Friday, March 12th, 1:00 to 1:40 pm
- Panel includes Assistant Professor Andrea Silverman, Research Assistant Professor Charlie Mydlarz and Assistant Professor Elizabeth Henaff.
- Members of the Mayor’s Office of Resiliency, Mayor’s Office of the CTO, the City University of New York, and New York University will come together to discuss their work on flood monitoring, ranging from programs that rely on resident reporting to sensor-based, real-time monitoring. The panel will touch on the different approaches to data collection, how data is shared, and how to effectively work with and for communities.
Analyzing NYC’s 311 Street Flooding Complaints from 2010 to 2020 – Friday, March 12th, 2:00 to 3:00 pm
- Led by CUSP alum Mark Bauer
- Flooding poses a serious threat to coastal cities all around the world, and New York City is no exception. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 devastated the area, with many communities still suffering from its effects or unable to fully recover. What can citizen science data tell us about where flooding occurs and how it is changing over time? Additionally, how can this data potentially play a role in how New York City prepares and ultimately mitigates flooding in the future? In this virtual talk, Mark will explore NYC’s 311 street flooding complaints data.
Understanding and Addressing Algorithmic Bias in Hiring – Friday, March 12th, 5:00 to 7:00 pm
- Led by Julia Stoyanovich, Co-Founder/Director, Center for Responsible AI at NYU Tandon
- This online session is designed to generate insight into algorithmic bias in employment assessment software tools (aka hiring). Presenters and attendees will discuss through chat and submitted Q&As. The session is geared towards anyone interested in the social context of current tools, employment and equity policies, compliance, and research on impacts. Presentation will synthesize larger ethical questions with the practical technicalities of how these systems dys/function.
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