Applied Urban Science Conference
Thursday, July 28th, 2022
Brooklyn, NY
Due to technical difficulties, we will no longer be streaming today's sessions via Zoom. We apologize for any inconvenience.
The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at New York University Tandon School of Engineering is excited to launch the inaugural Applied Urban Science Conference in Brooklyn! Conference attendees and presenters will share innovative ideas around data science in complex urban systems, explore new topics, and create professional connections.
The conference will feature presentations from our Capstone Program, where CUSP graduate students pair with sponsors to research and address critical urban issues across multiple focus areas. Other activities include remarks from the distinguished leadership at CUSP and multiple opportunities for networking with urban science researchers, graduate students, industry practitioners, and public officials.
Schedule of Events
Each presentation will last approximately 40 minutes with time for Q&A at the end. To see a full description of each research project, please visit our 2022 Capstone page. Order of presentations is subject to change. Refer back to the list as we get closer to the event for the most up-to-date schedule.
8:30 am - 9:15 am ET
5 MetroTech Center
Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology
Check in will be held in the Pfizer Auditorium foyer in the Dibner Library. A light breakfast will be served.
9:15 am - 9:45 am ET
5 MetroTech Center
Bern Dibner Library of Science and Technology
Opening Remarks from Dr. Danielle Wright, CUSP’s Director of Academic Affairs and Dr. Maurizio Porfiri, CUSP Industry Professor and incoming Director in Pfizer Auditorium.
10:00 am - 10:40 am ET
6 MetroTech Center
Various Rooms
Rogers Hall 204: Repairing Dallas: Leveraging Data to Improve Housing Quality
Project Sponsor: Ashley Flores, Senior Director (Housing), Child Poverty Action Lab; Owen Wilson-Chavez, Senior Director (Analytics), Child Poverty Action Lab
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Mona Sloane
CUSP Students: Danielle Bayer, Riccardo Negri, Vaidehi Raipat, Yilin Sang
Rogers Hall 211: Hardening New York City’s Interdependent Water and Energy Infrastructures Against Climate Change and Cyberattacks
Project Sponsor: Charalampos Avraam, Smart Cities Postdoctoral Associate, NYU CUSP; Yury Dvorkin, Assistant Professor, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Seung Hwa Lee, Wonchan Lee, Vaishnavi Muthukrishnan
Rogers Hall 304: Behavior Modeling Using Multi-Modal Mobility Data
Project Sponsors: David K A Mordecai, Co-Advisor, RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics; Visiting Scholar, NYU Courant; Samantha Kappagoda, Co-Advisor, RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics; Visiting Scholar, NYU Courant
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Richard Vescler
CUSP Students: Pupul Bhoumick, Vittorio Costa, Flora Gong, Junren Wang
Rogers Hall 325: Democratizing New York City’s Urban Development Processes
Project Sponsors: Dana Chermesh-Reshef, CEO and Founder, inCitu
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Manny Patole
CUSP Students: Ying Lei, Hanfie Vandanu, Shi Hui Zenn Wong, Yu Wu
Rogers Hall 331: Developing an AI-Based Image Classifier for School Infrastructure Baseline Data Collection in Large Scale Disaster Risk Analysis
Project Sponsors: Luis Ceferino, Assistant Professor, NYU Disaster Risk Analysis Lab (DRAL) and NYU AI4CE Lab; Jingzhe Wu, Consultant, World Bank’s Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS)
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Himanshu Mistry
CUSP Students: Cayden Chen, Tarea Karunaratne, Jikun Liu, Eva Yao
Rogers Hall 474: V2X-Sim – Collaborative Perception for Self-Driving in Urban Scenes
Project Sponsors: Chen Feng, Assistant Professor, NYU AI4CE Lab; Yiming Li, Ph.D. Candidate, NYU AI4CE Lab
CUSP Students: Zizhen Chen, Xiangkun Fang, Shicheng Jin, Yanzhou Zhu
Jacobs Academic Building 475: A Tale of Two Cities: Assessing the State of the Thermal Environment for New York and Athens
Project Sponsors: Constantinos Cartalis, Professor, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA); Anastasios Polydoros, Ph.D. Candidate, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)
CUSP Faculty Mentors: Tricia Davies, Adrienne Schmoker
CUSP Students: Yushan Luo, Xavier Neo, Bing Yang Tan
11:00 am - 11:40 pm ET
6 MetroTech Center
Various Rooms
Rogers Hall 204: Simulating Interactions with the Visually Impaired
Project Sponsor: Maurizio Porfiri, Institute Professor, NYU Dynamical Systems Laboratory (DSL)
CUSP Students: Jianjun Chen, Andrew Lan, Ruyi Quan, Hanyu Tian
Rogers Hall 211: Informing Policymakers On State Level Supplemental Security Income Support
Project Sponsors: Dani Hochfellner, Adjunct Assistant Professor, NYU CUSP; Mary Hamman, Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin La Crosse
CUSP Students: Chih-Yun Lu, Jingxuan Xiao, Samuel Zierler
Rogers Hall 304: Virtual and Augmented Reality for Community Preparedness to Disasters
Project Sponsors: Qi Sun, Assistant Professor, NYU Immersive Computing Lab; Luis Ceferino, Assistant Professor, NYU Disaster Risk Analysis Lab (DRAL); World Bank’s Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS)
CUSP Students: Erdi Gao, Ziyang Huang, Tianqi Zhang, Zhongqi Zhang
Rogers Hall 325: Understanding Public Opinion About the Police in New York City
Project Sponsor: Maurizio Porfiri, Institute Professor, NYU Dynamical Systems Laboratory (DSL)
CUSP Students: Lingxuan Bu, Ruoqing (Rachel) Lin, Xiangyu Ying
Rogers Hall 331: Learning Efficient Multi-Agent Robotic Navigation for Exploration and Mapping
Project Sponsors: David K A Mordecai, Co-Advisor, RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics; Visiting Scholar, NYU Courant; Samantha Kappagoda, Co-Advisor, RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics; Visiting Scholar, NYU Courant; Giuseppe Loianno, Professor, NYU Agile Robotics and Perception Lab (ARPL@Tandon)
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Himanshu Mistry
CUSP Students: Natalie (Huiyue) Feng, Kunal Kulkarni, Wangtianhan Pang, Aneri Piyushkumar Patel
Jacobs Academic Building 474: Building Accessible City by Self-Supervised Visual Place Recognition
Project Sponsors: Chen Feng, Assistant Professor, NYU AI4CE Lab; Chao Chen, Ph.D. Candidate, NYU AI4CE Lab
CUSP Students: Chien Hsu, Gang Jiang, Chenhao Jin, Fanshu Li
Jacobs Academic Building 475: City of Bogotá: Data Driven Door-to-Door Care
Project Sponsors: Diana Rodríguez Franco, Secretaria de la Mujer, Office of Women’s Affairs, City of Bogotá; Stefaan G. Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer, The GovLab
CUSP Faculty Mentors: Tricia Davies, Adrienne Schmoeker
CUSP Students: Tarush Bahl, Yixuan Ma, La-Toya Niles, Xinyu Xu
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm ET
370 Jay St
Room 202, 2nd Floor
Enjoy a light lunch while the discussion about advancements in the field of urban science continues! We will be hosting a panel discussion, moderated by Dr. Danielle Wright and featuring four distinguished speakers.
1:00 pm - 1:40 pm ET
370 Jay St
12th & 13th Floor Kitchens
After the panel, cool down with ice cream treats and start a conversation about what you learned in the morning sessions. Connect with other attendees in this informal networking session.
2:00 pm - 2:40 pm ET
6 MetroTech Center
Various Rooms
Rogers Hall 204: Audio-Visual Vehicle Localization for Urban Traffic Monitoring
Project Sponsor: Magdalena Fuentes, Assistant Professor, NYU Music and Audio Research Laboratory (MARL)
CUSP Students: Yuehang Chen, Jacob Jiang, Suraj Sunil
Rogers Hall 211: Rapid Detection of Power Outages with Time-Dependent Proximal Remote Sensing of City Lights
Project Sponsors: Gregory Dobler, Assistant Professor, Multi-City Urban Observatory Network, University of Delaware; Luis Ceferino, Assistant Professor, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Ruoru Feng, Hongming Liu, Hao Shi
Rogers Hall 304: Emergency Response After Earthquakes: Assessing Risk and Guiding Coordination in Hospital Systems
Project Sponsors: Luis Ceferino, Assistant Professor, NYU Disaster Risk Analysis Lab (DRAL); World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR); Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s Public Health Working Group
CUSP Students: Sai Charan Kukunoor, Dan Mao, Xinlu Xu
Rogers Hall 325: Trustworthy AI for Human Machine Interface
Project Sponsor: S. Farokh Atashzar, Assistant Professor, Medical Robotics and Intelligent Interactive Technologies Lab (MERIIT @ NYU); Jacqueline Libby, Smart Cities Postdoctoral Associate, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Jeff Guo, Yusen Li, Soobin Lim, Baohan Liu
Rogers Hall 331: The Electric Commute: Envisioning 100% Electrified Mobility in New York City (TEC-NYC)
Project Sponsor: Robert Mieth, Postdoctoral Researcher, SEARCH Group, NYU Tandon; Yury Dvorkin, Assistant Professor, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Amber Jiang, Sara Kou, Brian Newborn, Jingrong Zhang
Jacobs Academic Building 474: RealCity3D: A Large-Scale Georeferenced 3D Shape Dataset of Real-World Cities
Project Sponsor: Chen Feng, Assistant Professor, NYU AI4CE Lab
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Wenyu Han
CUSP Students: Qingrui Duan, Xianyou Li, Zirui Liu, Jingyuan Yu
Jacobs Academic Building 475: Data-Life: Exploring Post-Covid Scenarios Through Data Science
Project Sponsors: Marco Brambilla, Professor, Politecnico di Milano; Stefano Ceri, Professor, Politecnico di Milano
CUSP Faculty Mentors: Tricia Davies, Adrienne Schmoeker
CUSP Students: Yuyang Gao, Bing Hu, Xiya Ma, Hui Wang
3:00 pm - 3:40 pm ET
6 MetroTech Center
Various Rooms
Rogers Hall 204: Creating a High Performance Construction Project Database To Accelerate Building Decarbonization and Resilience in NYC
Project Sponsor: Marianna Koval, Director, Invest NYC SDG, NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Mona Sloane
CUSP Students: Rohan Kalyani, Emma Thomsen, Weiya Yuan
Rogers Hall 211: Shape Estimation and Data-Driven Intelligent Control of Soft Robotic Upper-Limb Exoskeletons for In-home Telerehabilitation
Project Sponsors: Jacqueline Libby, Smart Cities Postdoctoral Associate, NYU CUSP; S. Farokh Atashzar, Assistant Professor, Medical Robotics and Intelligent Interactive Technologies Lab (MERIIT @ NYU)
CUSP Students: Chen Liu, Xiaojia Pan, Jiazhi Xu, Yinuo Zhao
Rogers Hall 304: Airport Departing Passenger Profile Curve at EWR Terminal B: Understanding Passengers’ Journey Through Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Airports
Project Sponsors: Rohun Iyer, Senior Data Scientist, PANYNJ; Ai Yamanaka, Data Analytics Program Manager, PANYNJ
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Richard Vescler
CUSP Students: Junning Guo, Yuki Mitsuda, Gabe Pincus, Solomane Sirleaf
Rogers Hall 325: Mapping Agricultural Production in NYC (M.A.P. NYC)
Project Sponsors: Wythe Marschall, Senior Research Project Manager, Food and Health, Invest NYC SDG, NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business; Alice Reznickova, Industry Assistant Professor, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Manny Patole
CUSP Students: Danting He, Katherine Merifield, Dingrui Zhang
Rogers Hall 331: Challenges and Solutions for Walking with Assistive Wearable Robots in Urban Environments
Project Sponsor: Joo H. Kim, Associate Professor, NYU Applied Dynamics and Optimization Laboratory
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Himanshu Mistry
CUSP Students: Cici Chen, Akash Kota Raju, Bowen Li, Boqian Zhou
Jacobs Academic Building 474: A New Dataset to Develop Smart Assistants for Specialized Training with Augmented Reality
Project Sponsors: Iran R. Roman, Postdoctoral Scholar, NYU CUSP; Juan Pablo Bello, Professor and Director, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Siyong Liu, Sonam, Sijian Wang, Miaojing Yang
Jacobs Academic Building 475: Measuring Geographic Distribution and Predictors of Variation of Over-Policing Across NYC
Project Sponsors: John R. Pamplin II, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; Spruha Joshi, Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Opioid Epidemiology and Policy (Dept. of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine)
CUSP Students: Eaverine Fu, Yiou Wang, Yuxin Zhao
4:00 pm - 4:40 pm ET
6 MetroTech Center
Various Rooms
Rogers Hall 204: Modernizing Organics “Collection” for Managing the City’s Municipal Solid Waste and Achieving Zero Waste Goals
Project Sponsor: Terri Matthews, Director, Town+Gown: NYC Urban Resource Recovery Working Group (NYC Department of Design and Construction)
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Mona Sloane
CUSP Students: Zihao Feng, Emma Keogan, Hongjiang Ye
Rogers Hall 211: Addressing Complexity of Urban Networks with Deep Learning
Project Sponsors: Stanislav Sobolevsky, Industry Professor, NYU CUSP, Urban Complexity Lab
CUSP Students: Jingxin He, Jiale Li, Vinita Milind Wagh, Ke Zhao
Rogers Hall 304: Low-Power Computer-Vision Counting Research
Project Sponsor: Paul Rothman, Director, Smart Cities + IoT Lab, NYC Office of Technology and Innovation
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Chen Feng
CUSP Students: Abdulaziz Alaql, Turbold Baatarchuluu, Alec Bardey, Branden DuPont
Rogers Hall 325: Community Economic Recovery Tool
Project Sponsors: Palak Agarwal, Data Scientist, US Ignite; Praveen Ashok Kumar, Technical Program Manager, US Ignite
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Menny Patole
CUSP Students: Daniel Levine, Max Magid, Zuda Yan, Kaiwen Zhang
Rogers Hall 331: Data-Driven Agent-Based Modeling of Fake News Dynamics over Online Social Networks
Project Sponsor: Quanyan Zhu, Associate Professor, NYU CUSP
CUSP Faculty Mentor: Himanshu Mistry
CUSP Students: Jiaming Chen, Tong Cui, Jiayuan Huang, Wengan Xiao
Jacobs Academic Building 474: Study of Indoor Spaces Occupancy and its Correlation with the Performance of HVAC System
Project Sponsors: Juan Pablo Bello, Professor and Director, NYU CUSP; Yurii Piadyk, Ph.D. Candidate, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Danna Alamer, Kaiyue Feng, Haosheng Jiang, Yipeng Qiu
Jacobs Academic Building 475: FloodNet – Computer Vision for Urban Street Flood Detection
Project Sponsors: Maddalena Romano, Director, Data/Asset Management, NYC Department of Transportation; Charlie Mydlarz, Research Assistant Professor, NYU CUSP
CUSP Students: Jianlin Huang, Swarangi Kulkarni, Heng Quan, Gwen Wu
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm ET
Circa Brewing Co.
Celebrate the achievements of the day with refreshments at Circa Brewing Co., just around the corner!
Speakers
Opening Remarks
Dr. Danielle Wright, CUSP Director of Academic Affairs
Danielle Wright, Ph.D. is the Director of Academic Affairs and Associate Professor with the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). She is interested in the use of an applied focus to engineering, policy, and technology in addressing urban issues around city and community resilience. Dr. Wright comes to CUSP having served as associate director for the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis (IUPRA), and as faculty at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education Department of Leadership and Policy. Her expertise includes policy implementation and analysis, public engagement, and city and community resilience.
Dr. Maurizio Porfiri, CUSP Institute Professor and Incoming Director
Dr. Maurizio Porfiri is an Institute Professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering, with appointments at the Center for Urban Science and Progress and the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Civil and Urban Engineering. In 2006, he founded the Dynamical Systems Laboratory. Dr. Porfiri is engaged in conducting and supervising research on complex systems, with applications from mechanics to behavior, public health, and robotics. He is the author of more than 300 journal publications and the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award. His research has been featured in many major media outlets, including CNN, NPR, Scientific American, and Discovery Channel. Other significant recognitions include invitations to the Frontiers of Engineering Symposium and the Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium organized by National Academy of Engineering; the Outstanding Young Alumnus award by the college of Engineering of Virginia Tech; the ASME Gary Anderson Early Achievement Award; the ASME DSCD Young Investigator Award; and the ASME C.D. Mote, Jr. Early Career Award.
Lunch & Learn Panel
Stefaan Verhulst, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Research & Development Officer, The GovLab
John R. Pamplin II, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
Tara Pham
Co-Founder and CEO, Numina
Federico Messa
Consultant, Systematica
Logistics
COVID-19 Restrictions
Once you register for this event, you will be contacted by NYU Public Safety to submit your vaccination information. Per NYU policy, all visitors are required to adhere to the following:
Age
Must be 5 years of age or older.
Identification
Must show a valid government-issued photo ID (children under 18 can provide non-government identification).
Vaccination
Must provide proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and boosted (if eligible, based on CDC criteria) with an FDA-authorized or WHO-listed vaccine.
Documentation must include:
- Name
- Birthdate
- Dates of doses
- Vaccine manufacture
- Documentation must be in English
Note: If the documentation proof you provide does not meet these requirements, you will not be allowed access to NYU settings and NYU-sponsored activities, including those that take place off campus.
Masks
Masks will be required. Check NYU’s standards for acceptable types of masks.
Please refer to NYU’s requirements for visitors for more details and FAQs.
Directions
*An accessible entrance to 6 MetroTech Center is located around the corner, near the Starbucks.
Thank you to our sponsors!
Thank you to our capstone sponsors for participating in the Capstone Program and providing students with insightful experiential learning opportunities.