- November 6, 2020
Research
- Congratulations to Professor Debra Laefer and Assistant Professor Tom Kirchner (NYU School of Global Public Health)! Their COVID-19 research on “DETER: Developing Epidemiology mechanisms in Three-dimensions to Enhance Response” was selected by the New York State GIS Association for a GIS Applications/ Dashboard Award. Funding for this project was made possible by a NSF Rapid Research Award, 3DS, and ARISE.
- On Friday, November 13th, at 1pm EST, Professor Debra Laefer will discuss her NSF COVID-19 research at the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub COVID-19 Research Lightning Talks: Webinar and Q&A. Learn more & RSVP here.
- Congratulations to the Sounds of New York City (SONYC) Project, who received a $25,000 grant from Con Edison to support the NYU-Poly Center for K12 STEM Education 2021 Middle School SONYC program!
- The Sounds of New York City (SONYC) Project collaborated with Loft to develop a rugged, easy to install IIOT (Industrial Internet Of Things) urban noise collection network meter that New Yorkers could mount outside their windows. Loft is building 100 initial production units which will be deployed to New Yorker’s homes, collecting noise information across the city.
- Assistant Professor Giuseppe Loianno will be a plenary speaker at the 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR 2020). His invited talk on “Agile and Resilient Autonomous Flight” will present recent research results on agile and resilient navigation of aerial robots for search and rescue, exploration, transportation, physical environment interaction, and human drone collaboration. He will also present a paper at SSRR 2020 in the main program.
- On November 2-3, Assistant Professor Giuseppe Loianno led a full-day workshop on “Perception, Learning, and Control for Autonomous Agile Vehicles” at IROS 2020. This workshop will bring together heterogeneous communities working on aerial robots, mobile ground vehicles, and autonomous cars to discuss the next research challenges in the area of agile navigation of autonomous robots and vehicles to achieve super-human maneuvering and racing capabilities in dynamic and challenging environments.
- Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri devised a novel solution based on network and information theory that makes “little data” act big through, the application of mathematical techniques normally used for time-series, to spatial processes. The study, “An information-theoretic approach to study spatial dependencies in small datasets,” was featured on the cover of Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.
- Adjunct Assistant Professor Alexander Shermansong led a three-day workshop on the Pink Tax on Mobility. The workshop analyzed the causes of the Pink Tax: Women pay more than men for their travel needs, because transportation options do not effectively address caregiver accessibility and personal safety. Sponsored by NYSERDA and Lyft, the workshop included MTA, NYC DOT, NYC EDC, LA Metro, and a wide range of businesses, university partners, and community organizations.
Publications
- The BUILT @ NYU Laboratory, led by Assistant Professor Joseph Chow, has 11 papers accepted for presentation at the 100th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, which will be held virtually in January 2021. These papers include contributions from an Undergraduate Summer Research Program student as well as collaborators from TU Delft and LISER in Luxembourg.
- Assistant Professor Joseph Chow also has a paper co-authored with Professor Kaan Ozbay published in Transportation Research Part A (a leading policy/practice journal for transportation field):
- He, B. Y., Zhou, J., Ma, Z., Chow, J. Y. J., Ozbay, K., 2020. “Evaluation of city-scale built environment policies in New York City using an emerging mobility-accessible synthetic population.” Transportation Research Part A 141, 444-467.
- The paper is from a C2SMART study to develop a synthetic population for NYC as a precursor to this multiagent simulation tool called MATSim-NYC, which simulates travel patterns for 8+M NYC residents throughout a typical weekday. The synthetic population is publicly accessible here.
- Sheng Wang, Yuan Sun, and Zhifeng Bao. “On the Efficiency of K-Means Clustering: Evaluation, Optimization, and Algorithm Selection.” PVLDB, 14(2): 163 – 175, 2021.
- Michael H. Stanley and Debra F. Laefer. “Metrics for Aerial, Urban LiDAR Point Clouds.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.09951 (2020).
- McGetrick, P. J., Matis, P., Martin, T., Laefer, D. F., Al-Sabah, S., Truong-Hong, L., … & Labbane, R. “Experimental testing and analysis of the axial behaviour of intermeshed steel connections.” Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Structures and Buildings, 1-56 (2020).
- Daniel Frey, Jip Kim, Yury Dvorkin, and Miguel A. Modestino. “Spatiotemporal Decoupling of Water Electrolysis for Dual-Use Grid Energy Storage and Hydrogen Generation.” Cell Reports Physical Science, Volume 1, Issue 10, 2020.
- Zhengbo Zou, Suzana Duran Bernardes, Abdullah Kurkcu, Semiha Ergan, and Kaan Ozbay. “An integrated approach to capture construction workers’ response towards safety alarms using wearable sensors and virtual reality.” In L-C. Ungureanu, & T. Hartmann (Eds.), EG-ICE 2020 Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering, Proceedings (pp. 164-174). Universitatsverlag der TU Berlin. 2020.
- Maurizio Porfiri and Manuel Ruiz Marín. “An information-theoretic approach to study spatial dependencies in small datasets.” Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2020).
- Devashish Khulbe, Chaogui Kang, and Stanislav Sobolevsky. “Transportation Interventions Reshaping NYC Commute: the Probabilistic Simulation Framework Assessing the Impacts of Ridesharing and Manhattan Congestion Surcharge.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.06588 (2020).
- Francesco Parino, Lorenzo Zino, Maurizio Porfiri, and Alessandro Rizzo. “Modelling and predicting the effect of social distancing and travel restrictions on COVID-19 spreading.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.05968 (2020).
Press
- Novel method for measuring spatial dependencies makes small data act big – Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri devised a novel way to simplify spatial relationships, making “little data” act big through the application of mathematical techniques (NYU Tandon)
- Engineers Are Helping Draft the Solutions to America’s Ills – COVID-19 research by Professor Debra Laefer is featured in this article (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Good for the Many or Best for the Few? A Dilemma in the Design of Algorithmic Advice – Professor Oded Nov led this research (NYU Tandon)
- Control the Vectors & You Control the Virus – Assistant Professor Thomas Kirchner discusses his COVID-19 research with Professor Debra Laefer (NYU School of Global Public Health)
- AI-powered and Robot-assisted Manufacturing for Modular Construction – Assistant Professors Semiha Ergan and Chen Feng will lead this project. (NYU Tandon)
- The Devil is in the Data: Overhauling the Educational Approach to AI’s Ethical Challenge – Assistant Professor Julia Stoyanovich is taking a novel approach to educating the next generation of computer scientists and data scientists on the ethical implications of AI (IEEE Spectrum)
- Earth-shaking expertise – New faculty member Luis Ceferino is exploring novel ways to model natural disasters (NYU Tandon)
- Researchers from NYU Tandon release 3-D data tracking human interactions outside of coronavirus hotspots – examines COVID-19 research by Professor Debra Laefer (North East Big Data Innovation Hub)
People
- Congratulations to CUSP’s associated faculty member Semiha Ergan in her promotion to the rank of Associate Professor!
- Welcome to Peter Huu Tran, CUSP’s new Manager of Student Engagement & Academic Administration!
Education
- Our application for both Spring 2021 and Fall 2021 is now open! Learn more about our programs in Urban Informatics on our website or start your application here. The deadline for Spring 2021 entry has been extended to November 15th!
- NYU CUSP is pleased to announce its 2021 call for Capstone Projects, open to city agencies, private sector companies, and academic organizations interested in co-supervising an applied urban analytics project with CUSP graduate students! The 6-month Capstone Program is the experiential learning focus of the MS program, teaching CUSP students to utilize urban data science techniques within the constraints of political, social, and financial considerations, as well as address issues of data privacy, validity, and transparency. Learn more about the 2021 Capstone Program and submit a project proposal here.
- Data is Not Enough to Solve Our Problems – CUSP MS Student Brandon Pachuca examined how to better frame questions to solve public problems in a new blog post for his “Innovative City Governance” course.
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