What's Happening at CUSP: April 2018

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Welcome Julien Baur, our new Postdoctoral Associate, who will be working with Drs. Greg Dobler and Federica Bianco as part of the Urban Observatory (UO) team. Julien is an accomplished cosmologist skilled in data science tools and their applications to astrophysical data (both photometric and spectroscopic). Julien has a Masters degree in Astronomy & Space Engineering and a Doctoral degree in Astroparticle Physics & Cosmology from Paris Saclay University (France).

Welcome to Mario Graniero, a visiting scholar from Sapienza Universita di Roma. He will be here at CUSP through September working with Prof. Masoud Ghandehari.

Welcome Alexander Shermansong, CEO at Civic Consulting USA, who is working with Prof. Masoud Ghandehari on the Urban Health and Equity project.

Welcome to Bhaumik Jasani, an undergrad student from the School of Professional Studies, who will be working with Monia Mariani-Besch, Frank Colaianni and Mindy Flannery as a CUSP Accounting/Finance Student Worker.

Congratulations to Abdullah Kurkcu, one of Prof. Kaan Ozbay’s students, on the successful defense of his dissertation in Transportation Planning and Engineering last month.

Congratulations to Zohreh (Mina) Zahiri, one of Prof. Debra Laefer’s UCD students, who successfully defended her dissertation.

Kavli Futures Symposium: Sensing the City (April 26). Debra Laefer and Director Steve Koonin have organized a full-day symposium on April 26 in the 2^nd floor auditorium that will bring sensing luminaries from across the USA for a blend of talks and panel discussions on three core themes exploring. Large Sensor Networks will focus on the challenges in deploying, calibrating, and maintaining sensors across large stationary networks, cybersecurity of sensor networks, and privacy concerns, as well as the many opportunities that these large networks present. Novel Sensing Modalities will explore new sensing modalities and their potential applications across health, threat detection, urban physiology, and magnetometry. Smart Cities and Citizen Science will discuss citizen science initiatives, sensor deployments, and their social implications in the context of transportation and disaster management to understand how cities the world over can change their citizen’s lives. Additional information and registration can be found at https://wp.nyu.edu/sensingthecity/.

Technology Transfer Days (April 30 – May 4 and May 7-11). Debra Laefer has helped organize this Tech Transfer Day event to bring local inventors and innovators together with US Military tech scouts to facilitate commercialization and implementation of inventions. Anyone who has an interest in getting DOD, DARPA, IARPA money for development or commercialization should consider attending. Additional information can be found at https://www.federallabs.org/sites/default/files/TTDNY2018.pdf.

Masoud Ghandehari will be one of the panelists speaking at The Ideal City – Master Plans and Dystopian Realities, Monday, April 9, April 9th, 2018, Reception 5:00 pm, discussion 5:30 – 7:30 pm, in the 2FL auditorium, 370 Jay Street.

Congratulation to Prof. Stan Sobolevsky who has had his talk, “Optimality Proof For Community Structure In Complex Networks,” accepted at the 9th International Conference On Complex Systems (ICCS’2018) in Boston this coming July .

CUSP Data Facility. We are pleased to announce that the CUSP servers have been successfully moved from 1 Metrotech Center to the new server room here at 370 Jay Street. The system will be brought online as of April 9, 2018. This physical move, however, will not impact your use of these resources. All features will remain as they were before the shutdown and move. The only difference is that student work (i.e., classroom work and most capstones) will now be done on the cloud using the ADRF. Research-related work will still be done using CUSP Research Computing Facility (CUSP-RCF) resources now located in 370 Jay St. You can expect improvements and new usage policies in the near future.

Laefer, D.F., Vo, A.V., Bertolotto, M. (2018), A spatio-temporal index for aerial full waveform laser scanning data, ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 138, 232-251.

Papadopoulos, Sokratis, Bartosz Bonczak, and Constantine E. Kontokosta. 2018. “Pattern Recognition in Building Performance over Time Using Energy Benchmarking Panel Data,” Applied Energy, in press.

Kontokosta, Constantine E., Boyeong Hong, Nicholas E. Johnson, and Daniel Starobin. “Using machine learning and small area estimation to predict building-level municipal solid waste generation in cities.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems(2018).

Falcocchio, John C. Giancarlo, Awais Malik, and Constantine E. Kontokosta. “A data-driven methodology for equitable value-capture financing of public transit operations and maintenance.“ Transport Policy(2018).

Hong, Boyeong, Awais Malik, Jack Lundquist, Ira Bellach, and Constantine E. Kontokosta. “Applications of Machine Learning Methods to Predict Readmission and Length-of-Stay for Homeless Families: The Case of Win Shelters in New York City.” Journal of Technology in Human Services(2018): 1-16.