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Saving the Lives of Life Savers

October 3, 2018

NYU Researchers and Major Urban Fire Departments Partner to Create Scenario-Based Simulation Training for Nationwide Firefighters

In celebration of Fire Prevention Week from October 7 – 13, 2018, we highlight NYU Fire Research Group’s impact in supporting the firefighters who risk their lives for us daily.

This year, people across the U.S. watched as destructive wildfires raged across California, Oregon, and Washington, and as the thousands of firefighters poured in from all over the country to help contain these fast-moving fires.

Though battling these wildland fires bears its own set of challenges compared to residential fires, firefighters must always strategize and coordinate their efforts to effectively manage a fire from spreading — no matter the location — while also ensuring their own safety.

Yet, researchers at the Fire Research Group at NYU Tandon School of Engineering discovered that many fire departments lack the resources and budget to train their firefighters in the latest advanced firefighting methods emerging out of research centers and from scientific studies.

ALIVE (Advanced Learning through Integrated Visual Environments) is a decades-long effort to bridge the information gap between research and real-life firefighting. Developed by the Fire Research Group under the leadership of Dr. Sunil Kumar, ALIVE is an online, scenario-based simulation training program created by a team of NYU Tandon Mechanical Engineering faculty and scientists working to disseminate firefighting tactics and research-based information to urban and rural fire departments. It is funded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG).

Spearheaded by Dr. Prabodh Panindre, a Senior Research Scientist and Adjunct Mechanical Engineering Faculty at NYU Tandon, ALIVE’s interactive online modules train firefighters in diverse firefighting issues such as residential fires, wind-driven high-rise fires, firefighter health and safety, and fire scenarios. Its latest module — Wildland Fires — focuses on training firefighters to manage and coordinate their attack methods on wildfires.

Culling together research, expertise from multiple fire departments and experts, and insight from national organizations such as the Underwriters Laboratories (UL), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Forest Service, the modules provide firefighters, including part-time and volunteer firefighters, with life-saving and critical information on combating various types of fires.

The modules are engaging, adaptive, data-driven, and live — allowing departments to understand where more training is needed in specific areas. The online training teaches critical firefighting concepts, and lets users immediately apply what they’ve learned to realistic scenarios and quizzes. Even if you select the wrong answer, the program explains why an answer is or isn’t the most effective way to address a situation based on scientific research, reinforcing the best actions for firefighters when they’re out in the field.

Fighting Fire with Scientific Evidence-Based Learning

“When we first started the project, it was centered on training the FDNY on high-rise fires,” Panindre explains. After seeing the positive response, the team behind ALIVE spent three years researching its effectiveness on a national scale and discovered that firefighters retained more information using ALIVE’s online modules versus the traditional classroom training. “Now, more than 75,000 firefighters from all 50 states have gone through our training modules. More than 1,000 departments are incorporating these modules into their own training programs,” shares Panindre.  

One such department is the Houston Fire Department, which has been an ALIVE partner for many years and incorporates the ALIVE modules into their classroom training.

Senior Captain Jeffery King of the Houston Fire Department (HFD), a partner with ALIVE and NYU Fire Research Group, knows the importance of disseminating advanced firefighting research to fellow firefighters, having lent his expertise to ALIVE’s module development for Residential Fires and Fire Scenarios. He shared that HFD’s continuing education program trained their whole department in August 2018 with the Fire Scenarios module, and currently all of its members are using the cardiovascular health module.

“In the last 15 to 20 years, we have learned more about the science of firefighting, a better understanding of how to do our job, and more about the physiological impact of firefighting – one of those being cardiovascular health,” King says. “The health and safety of each firefighter is paramount to a department’s success. Getting this information out to firefighters through the module is absolutely critical. NYU has done a phenomenal job of taking difficult information and putting it into a format that is easily understandable, deliverable to the people in the fire service, and in a means that can impact what’s going on every day in fire departments.”

“Around 50-60% of firefighters die of cardiac events,” Dr. Kumar explains. “Using scientific data and interviews, our module explains how cardiac arrest occurs, the impact of firefighting gear and hot environments upon their health, signs and symptoms, and how to prevent cardiac problems in fire service.”

Managing Destructive Wildfires

ALIVE is currently unveiling its new wildland fire module. Aimed to help first responders and initial incident attack commanders effectively manage wildland fires, the module addresses the unique challenges of wildland fires due to their erratic behavior, more difficult terrain, and dangerous environmental conditions. The NYU Fire Research Group partnered with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Los Angeles County Fire Dept. (LACoFD), California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), and Barona Fire Department (BFD) in developing the module.

Nationwide wildland fire experts provided insight into the critical issues and training points, including Former Battalion Chief for Cal Fire Pete Scully. With over 33 years of active service battling wildfires, Scully tapped into his vast knowledge and own experiences to distill the best information into the module.

“I thought back to areas where I made mistakes, and my own first-hand experiences as a chief officer regarding how incidents were or weren’t properly managed,” he says. “Wildland fires can be very intimidating, and often when someone first arrives on the scene that isn’t experienced, they don’t take the time to manage and size up the big picture of the situation. Often, opportunities are missed. They might be focusing on where the most smoke or most flames are, but that’s not really where the most efficient use of resources is. This module is designed to get firefighters thinking about managing an incident properly and efficiently.”

Both Scully and Panindre agree that ALIVE’s modules are not meant to replace classroom training, but rather to supplement and complement training programs within a fire department, and help volunteer firefighters gain more training.

Emphasizing ALIVE’s accessibility, Panindre explained that “70% percent of the nation’s fire service are smaller, rural fire departments, yet they don’t have the budget or resources of larger departments like FDNY. We tried to focus on helping those firefighter departments who have few firefighters and resources, but want to increase their training. We make sure we can reach them through our modules.”

All ALIVE training modules are free for all firefighters and fire departments. Firefighters can access the free training modules on the Fire Research Group’s website, and through mobile applications. Fire departments interested in offering ALIVE training to their members can register by emailing the NYU Fire Research Group at fire.research@nyu.edu.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/saving-lives-life-savers

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Leading Geotechnical Publication Features Professor Iskander

September 19, 2018

Groundbreaking Research Highlighted in Pile Driver Long before Magued Iskander became NYU Tandon’s Chair of the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering and a leading expert in geotechnical engineering, he was a student discovering his career path just like the many students walking the halls of NYU Tandon today.

Iskander’s journey from university student to renowned educator features prominently in the latest issue of the Pile Driver magazine, a publication of the Pile Driving Contractors Association. The magazine’s feature article spotlights Iskander’s storied 30-year career, tracing his early days as a civil engineer in the Egyptian armed forces, to his doctoral research on the capacity of piles in sand, and up through his current research at NYU Tandon.

Pile drivers, also known as hammers, are devices engineers use to install piles, or poles, into soils to support buildings, skyscrapers, and other structures with deep foundations. (The magazine highlights the latest trends and technologies for pile driving, and reaches a global audience of industry professionals and engineering firms.)

Known internationally for his research on replacing conventional piling with recycled polymeric piling in structures near water, Iskander is also recognized in the article for his development of transparent soil surrogates — surrogates that are used to study the behavior of soils near foundations in model tests. His visualization techniques have widespread impact and applications, with 30 universities having employed them. His present work is experimenting with computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to predict pile capacity.

Reflecting on his journey from a young student to his current place at the helm of NYU Tandon’s Civil & Urban Engineering department, Iskander remembers his lifelong fascination with foundations and piling. “I came to America exactly 30 years ago to study foundation engineering. In fact, I wrote my dissertation on the behavior of pipe piles in sand,” Iskander notes. “It is very gratifying that on the 30th anniversary of me arriving to the U.S. as a student, I have been recognized in one of the top foundation engineering trade publications, and one especially dedicated to piling.”

In the feature, Pile Driver also details Iskander’s dedication to teaching the next generation of civil and geotechnical engineers, in particular his involvement in Tandon’s K-12 STEM programs. Helping inspire students as young as second grade envision themselves as scientists and engineers, these programs bring authentic tools such as sensors into classroom experiments, engaging students who typically receive less opportunities and resources.

Almost 33 years since he graduated from university, Iskander recognizes that hard work and perseverance are at the heart of wealth and success, and emphasizes that students who take shortcuts seldom reach their goals. 

He also encourages students to always help others and expect nothing in return: “Those you help may never be able to pay you back, but somehow you will be repaid in full and more.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/leading-geotechnical-publication-features-professor-iskander

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On International Day of Democracy, International Leaders Call for More Open Public Institutions

September 13, 2018

The GovLab at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Publishes the CrowdLaw Manifesto, Collects Signatures in Support of Principles to Spread Democracy through Digital Collaboration

BROOKLYN, New York, Thursday, September 13, 2018 – As the United Nations celebrates the International Day of Democracy on September 15 with its theme of “Democracy Under Strain,” The Governance Lab (The GovLab) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering will unveil its CrowdLaw Manifesto to strengthen public participation in lawmaking by encouraging citizens to help build, shape, and influence the laws and policies that affect their daily lives.

Among its 12 calls to action to individuals, legislatures, researchers and technology designers, the manifesto encourages the public to demand and institutions to create new mechanisms to harness collective intelligence to improve the quality of lawmaking as well as more research on what works to build a global movement for participatory democracy.

The CrowdLaw Manifesto emerged from a collaborative effort of 20 international experts and CrowdLaw community members. At a convening held earlier this year by The GovLab at The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy, government leaders, academics, NGOs, and technologists formulated the CrowdLaw Manifesto to detail the initiative’s foundational principles and to encourage greater implementation of CrowdLaw practices to improve governance through 21st century technology and tools.

Beth Simone Noveck, professor in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at NYU Tandon and director of The GovLab, explained the timely significance of the CrowdLaw Manifesto as governments around the globe face greater public distrust and threats to democracy.

“This manifesto shares what we see as the future of governing, which moves beyond viewing public opinion and petitions as the main form of civic engagement,” Noveck said. “Technology enables us to collectively ask and answer how we should redesign our governing practices to solve the complex policy challenges of the 21st century at local, national, and global levels. We ask citizens throughout the world to join us as signatories to this manifesto and thereby encourage democracy to put down strong roots in communities everywhere.”

The global embrace of CrowdLaw principles is demonstrated by international launches planned for the Crowd Law Manifesto: at Reworks Agora in Agora, Greece — the birthplace of democracy — on September 16,  and at Nesta’s Designing Collective Intelligence event in London on September 17.

More than 30 organizations and 80 individuals working on citizen engagement and democracy worldwide have already signed the manifesto. Signatories include

Madrid City Council

Sabine Romon, chief smart city officer, General Secretariat, Paris City Council

Ben Kallos, New York City Council member, District 5 (Upper East Side, Roosevelt Island, East Midtown, East Harlem), New York City Council

Audrey Tang, digital minister of Taiwan

Raffaele Lillo, chief data officer, Digital Transformation Team, Government of Italy

Mukelani Dimba, civil society co-chair, Open Government Partnership

“The successes of the CrowdLaw concept — and its remarkably rapid adoption across the world by citizens seeking to affect change — exemplify the powerful force that academia can exert when working in concert with government and citizens,” said NYU Tandon Dean Jelena Kovačević. “On behalf of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, I proudly sign the CrowdLaw Manfesto and congratulate The GovLab and its collaborators for  creating these digital tools and momentum for good government.”

“One of the most urgent debates of our time is about the exact role that these new technologies can and should play in our societies and particularly in our public decision-making processes,” said Victoria Alsina, research professor in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at NYU Tandon and coordinator of the CrowdLaw Initiative at The GovLab. “By exploiting technology to engage a broader and more diverse constituency in the lawmaking process, CrowdLaw has the potential to enhance the quality of lawmaking practices and to transform fundamentally the source of authority undergirding the legislative process.”

In July 2018, the GovLab debuted the CrowdLaw Catalog as an online platform to bring together real-world examples of CrowdLaw projects from 39 countries. With over 100 cases of public participatory lawmaking listed, the online portal aims to help civic leaders create new projects or bolster existing ones, and encourages users to continue adding more CrowdLaw cases to increase research and evaluation of these practices.

To complement its work on CrowdLaw, The GovLab at NYU Tandon together with NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge is launching a lecture series, “The Future of Democracy.”

Drafters and signatories of the CrowdLaw Manifesto explained its importance in spreading democracy:

“CrowdLaw is an exciting new concept that seeks to encourage deep citizen engagement throughout each phase of law and policy-making processes. Instead of passive participation in public governance through democratic rituals such as voting every four or five years. CrowdLaw innovations enable active citizenship continuously. I believe this can be an essential part of the arsenal for pushing back against the retreat of democracy that seems to have become a defining feature of politics globally.” – Mukelani Dimba, co-chair, Open Government Partnership

“Democratic governance institutions need to experiment and adapt if they are to harness rapid technological change rather than be overwhelmed by it. CrowdLaw provides just that sort of innovation by delivering with a wide range of tools that elected officials can use to engage citizens in policy-making processes. The Design4Democracy.org coalition — a growing group of democracy and human rights organizations, which NDI supports — is committed to ensuring the technology industry embraces democracy as a core design principle. CrowdLaw is a shining example, the embodiment of this philosophy.” – Scott Hubli, director of governance programs, NDI

"In a time of major threats to democracy, such as populism, technological manipulation, and greater complexity, CrowdLaw is the most interesting and inspiring idea I've ever heard on how we can improve the quality of our laws and public decisions, and save democracy." – Josep Lluis Marti, vice-rector and associate professor, Pompeu Fabra University

"I have signed it. You have all my good wishes and support. I think this is a good idea and needs to be expanded.” – Sam Pitroda, chairman, Pitroda Group, and former advisor to the prime minister of India on public information, infrastructure and innovation

To learn more about CrowdLaw, visit crowd.law or contact crowdlaw@thegovlab.org.

To sign the CrowdLaw Manifesto, visit http://manifesto.crowd.law.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/international-day-democracy-international-leaders-call-more-open-public-institutions

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Tandon Researcher Explores Network Synchronization and Resiliency

August 28, 2018

Chaos Journal Features Study by Tandon Professor Porfiri

Chaotic may be the perfect adjective for New York subway rush-hour traffic, but dozens of engineers and scientists are currently working within the realm of chaotic, nonlinear systems to better understand how humans, fish, and networks can be controlled or influenced.

NYU Tandon Professor Maurizio Porfiri, director of the Dynamical Systems Laboratory, is one of these scientists exploring how to control the process by which a group can be synchronized to perform certain actions or specific behaviors. Porfiri’s research alongside Russell Jeter and Igor Belykh was recently published in the prestigious journal Chaos and featured as one of the journal’s Editor’s Picks. Their research is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office.

In “Overcoming network resilience to synchronization through non-fast stochastic broadcasting,” the team revealed that a network can be synchronized by a broadcasting oscillator that intermittently transmits signals, thereby overpowering the network’s resiliency to attacks. By examining the interplay between the switching of the broadcasting node and the network dynamics, their study discovered that so-called non-fast switching rates create “windows of opportunity” for synchronized behaviors or “collective dynamics.”

Porfiri explains that this notion of non-fast stochastic broadcasting has implications across natural and technological networks, from schools of fish to a network’s ability to resist control by an external signal.

“Within this paradigm, we imagine a single, isolated unit that is tasked with the goal of taming the dynamics of an entire group. How can it achieve this goal?” Porfiri said. “One possibility is to broadcast information intermittently to the whole group, at a target frequency that is conducive to coordination. In this vein, a robotic fish may be tasked with guiding a group of fish to safety and its approach could be to intermittently release a signal to the group, like a visual cue or food, for the group to follow.”

Porfiri noted that this research has an impact across his other projects, including their exploration of creating models for an epidemic’s spreading and their study of human-computer interactions. “In these cases, it is critical to address the problem of promoting or hampering collective dynamics through the use of selected units in the network.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/tandon-researcher-explores-network-synchronization-and-resiliency

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To Mars and Beyond: NYU Tandon and partners selected as new hub for VR/AR in NYC

June 29, 2017

Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen may have thought she was just coming to Brooklyn, but her visit to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering took her all the way to Mars and back.

The occasion was a celebration of a new partnership between the school and the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), which selected Tandon to lead a virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hub at the Brooklyn Navy Yard (see the press release). The VR/AR facility will cement New York City and NYU Tandon as leaders in these technologies by fostering innovation, supporting startups, and creating more than jobs as soon as next year and into the next decade.

Tandon was chosen from numerous contenders as it’s established an unprecedented partnership network with a range of university, industry, civic and cultural organizations, which will ensure the lab is accessible to a diverse array of New Yorkers with a specific focus on job creation. Tandon is home to the Future Labs incubators, which provides support and resources for growing ventures, and is also a founding member alongside NYCEDC and Columbia University of the NYC Media Lab – the consortium of universities and companies that drives innovation in the areas of media, design, and technology. Tandon’s selection also speaks to its groundbreaking work in virtual reality and augmented reality (see box below).

“This facility will bring new members into the innovation economy and will ensure that VR and AR applications are used by all,” Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan said of the country’s first ever publicly funded VR/AR facility. Sreenivasan and Glen were joined by NYCEDC President and CEO James Patchett, MOME Commissioner Julie Menin, and Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Economic Development Dan Garodnick, among other dignitaries.

At the June 27 event, held in Tandon’s state-of-the-art MakerSpace, Glen and the audience got a firsthand look at the exciting possibilities of the technology when she donned a 3D headset to take a virtual trip to Mars using Tandon’s VR application Tandon Vision. (The mobile app debuted in 2016 to encourage attendance by admitted high school students.) Operating the NYU Lunabotics Rover as it collected soil samples on Mars’ surface, Glen – who noted the city’s deep commitment to and $6-million investment in the new hub – expressed a sentiment shared by many in the room that “the applications of VR and AR are endless.”

Her words were borne out by the demos on display at the event. Created by innovative companies, startups, and students who are melding VR/AR with healthcare, art, entertainment, storytelling and human interaction, these included:

Semblance AR is a company launched by Mark Skwarek, a Tandon faculty member and founder of NYU’s Mobile Augmented Reality Lab, who showcased his innovative approaches to gaming, industrial, geographic, and creative uses of AR

Holojam, a product from NYU Courant, is a software platform that allows anyone to create a multi-user, interactive VR/AR experience where virtual and physical worlds blend together – such as a mixed reality (MR) multi-player video game

Medivis, a tenant in the Digital Future Lab, is a collaborative startup founded by members of Tandon, NYU Langone Medical Center, and the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) and is using AR and 3D holographic imaging to revolutionize medical visualization, education and patient engagement

Two NYC Media Lab-supported startups displayed their AR mobile apps. One, VillageLIVE, is an AR walking tour created by NYU ITP students that traces the queer history of the West Village through narrative storytelling. YOU ARE HERE, developed by Jere Hester and Sandeep Junnarkar of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, explores Times Square across time, from the 1900s until now, using AR and image archives.

Menin described VR/AR’s immense impact on the global economy and predicted that the new hub would generate revenue and jobs across such diverse industries as entertainment, healthcare, tourism, and engineering. “This [center] is a place for people to come together to learn, to collaborate and to really grow these important technologies,” Menin said. “This hub, under the leadership of NYU, will be that unifying space.”

“Twenty years from now, we’ll look back at today, probably through headsets, and think that this was the day we launched our success in virtual reality,” Patchett asserted.

The new facility will be unveiled later in 2017 and also features a partnership with CUNY’s Lehman College, in the Bronx, which was selected to run a workforce development center.

Tandon at the VR/AR Forefront

In 2017, NYU Tandon debuted a new mobile application – Tandon Research Labs – that takes students on a journey from Professor Alesha Castillo’s Laboratory for Mechanobiology & Regenerative Medicine to the microscopic world of cell communication within blood vessels.

Combining theater and virtual reality, adjunct professor and alumnus of Integrated Digital Media Javier Molina transformed William Shakespeare’s Hamlet into a VR production. The interactive VR experience To Be with Hamlet was featured at the Tribeca Film Festivalin April 2017.

Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Vikram Kapila and doctoral researcher Jared Alan Frank are developing Mixed-Reality Learning Environments (MRLE) to foster more interactive and hands-on learning in science and engineering for young students.

Students and faculty demonstrated their VR, AR and MR acumen at the 2017 Integrated Digital Media Showcase, which showcased such projects as the three HoloLens-based applications created by students in Dana Karwas’ User Experience Design course, and the immersive mixed reality experience WAVR, which combines neuro-controlled VR technology and biosensors that allow users to control virtual objects with their mind.

Article appeared originally at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/mars-and-beyond-nyu-tandon-and-partners-selected-new-hub-vrar-nyc

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Seniors Pitch Their Products at Annual Capstone Competition and Earn Cash Prizes

May 9, 2018

Many graduating undergraduate students at NYU Tandon School of Engineering spend their final year creating, building, and designing their senior capstone project. A culminating project that embodies all of their academic and entrepreneurial skills they’ve developed during their time at NYU Tandon, the capstone provides students a chance to let their talents shine.

At the third annual Senior Capstone Competition and Showcase on May 7, 2018, a select group of students had the opportunity to not only present their final designs and prototypes, they even had a chance to garner cash prizes to support their continued work after they leave the halls of NYU Tandon.

Sponsored by the Convergence of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Institute, the 2018 Senior Capstone Competition featured 19 teams who took over the MakerSpace and guided crowds of students, faculty, and guests through demos of their designs. From the 19, six teams were selected by the capstone competition committee, which includes Industry Professor Michael Knox, MakerSpace Manager Victoria Bill, and Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and CIE Institute director Jin Montclare, to pitch their capstone projects to a panel of judges. The six teams had 10 minutes to present their work and field questions during a Q&A session with the judges, which included Julia Byrd, Assistant Director of PowerBridge NY; Kai Tham, an NYU Tandon alumnus and entrepreneur; Richard Rizza, an NYU Tandon alumnus and President of A6 Technology Company, Inc.; and Lee M. von Kraus, Founder of Nebulab.

Now in its third year, the Senior Capstone Competition fosters an entrepreneurial environment for students to test their ideas and products' viability. The judges’ panel selects the top three projects in the categories of Highest Entrepreneurial Potential, Best Design, and Greatest Social Impact; student attendees also bestow the Student’s Choice award to a special team. All of the capstones featured this year demonstrated the innovative and inventive spirit that our students acquire here at NYU Tandon.

EXO2

Earning the award for “Best Design,” EXO2 is a soft robotics exoskeleton developed by Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering students Meraj Choudhury and Navindra Sawh. The duo designed a more cost-effective option for current robotic exoskeletons that are used in physical therapy, which tend to be very expensive. “Our project is a lower-limb, physical therapy exoskeleton that uses pneumatic artificial muscles as primary actuators. The primary function of the exoskeleton is to stimulate the neuromuscular system of the user by allowing them to perform simulated or assisted walking,” Sawh explained, adding that the exoskeleton can be used for certain types of paralysis and can help people with limited mobility. With many robotic exoskeletons costing upwards of $80,000, EXO2 would be a cheaper and effective option for patients undergoing physical therapy. Conceived during their Disability Studies course, Sawh and Choudhury wanted to focus on a physical therapy exoskeleton “because of our interest in robotics and bio-mechanics, but also because we wanted to challenge ourselves to create an innovative, cost-effective solution for physical therapy and rehabilitation, Sawh said.

Odmor

Alexis Zerafa’s project Odmor received the prize for Greatest Social Impact, for her augmented reality (AR) mobile application and wearable that helps people with anxiety disorders. As Zerafa noted in her pitch, over 40 million adults in the U.S. currently experience anxiety, and 2-3% of Americans experience panic disorders in a year according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Zerafa, an Integrated Digital Media major, decided to create a mobile app and wearable ring that uses AR to guide people through breathing techniques in a discrete manner. Users hold up their phone to scan their ring, a flower appears on the screen over the ring, and opens and closes at calming intervals to slow down their heart rate. “While you’ll be able to learn these techniques within a month or two, the app times out, but the ring can be associated with comfort and worn to help you during a panic attack or heightened anxiety,” Zerafa said.

Wi-Find

When firefighters enter buildings to combat a fire, or military personnel conduct an operation, they tend to use manual radio transmissions to estimate their locations, but situational factors can cause issues such as heavy smoke. Hoping to help firefighters and other emergency personnel more efficiently and accurately keep track of their team members during a rescue mission, the team behind Wi-Find developed a portable indoor localization device that employs LoRa wireless technology to track and monitor each person over Wi-Fi. Electrical engineering students Alex Concepcion, Nasif Islam, and Eshka-Ne Kumar selected LoRa for its long-range capabilities, which enables their device to transmit data to a remote computer, estimate distance traveled of each firefighter at a specific location, and also track the path history of each individual. Wi-Find garnered the award for the Highest Entrepreneurial Potential, marking their product as a viable and marketable design for the public safety industry.

Winging-It

Named the Students’ Choice at the Capstone Competition, Winging-It is an electric R/C aircraft that competed at the 2018 Society of Aerospace Engineers (SAE) Aero Design West Competition in California. After winning third place at the national competition and 10th place internationally where they competed against 37 teams, the NYU SAE Aero Design Team’s aircraft successfully completed five flights where it excelled at carrying a maximum payload similar to a commercial airliner. Team members Luciana Jaalouk, Eduardo Hernandez Vivar, Justin Talevski, Juhi Singh, Marc Rozman, and Shivam Suleria debuted their aircraft at the Senior Capstone Competition, and it will now be displayed in the MakerSpace for all to see.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/seniors-pitch-their-products-annual-capstone-competition-and-earn-cash-prizes

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Honoring Tandon's Passionate Student Leaders and Organizations

May 4, 2018

Here at NYU Tandon, our students understand that engineering and technology can impact others, both inside and outside of the classroom. It’s no surprise, then, that we take time to honor all of their efforts and accomplishments from the past year at the NYU Tandon 2017-2018 Student Leader Awards.

The excitement was palpable at the Student Leader Awards ceremony, with students in the audience coming to cheer on their friends, classmates, and colleagues. The annual event celebrates student leaders, organizations, and faculty advisers who spent the past year dedicating themselves to building a stronger and more inclusive community here. For many of the award recipients and nominees, their work and commitment to NYU Tandon started the day they stepped on campus. Their legacy will also continue long after they graduate, as Brittney Anne Bahlman, Tandon’s Director of Student Affairs and Student Activities, shared in her welcome remarks.

“Today’s celebration is not just about the award recipients. This is a time and space for all of us to come together and celebrate all the accomplishments of our community in the past year, at NYU Tandon and across the university,” Bahlman said. Noting that this year’s student organizations hosted over 450 programs and engaged more than 2,330 students in the fall semester alone — a fact that was met with cheers from the audience.

“This year, Tandon student leaders served on planning committees for university-wide events, including HackNYU and the InnoVention competition, planned the March for Science in NYC, participated in the $300,000 Entrepreneur Challenge at NYU Stern, built cars, canoes and bridges to show the creativity and ingenuity of Tandon students in competitions from coast to coast, and hosted Tandon’s first student-run Pride Month and Ally Week events,” Bahlman said. “These are just a few examples of talent and energy you’re bringing beyond the borders of NYU Tandon to show great work going on here.”

Encouraging students to recognize the accomplishments of others during their time at Tandon, she also emphasized mentorship and guiding new student leaders to continue the work they’ve achieved.

Join us in celebrating this year’s winners:

Organization of the Year: out in STEM (oSTEM)

Student Leaders of the Year: Cadence Daniels and Nitin Ramaseshan

Distinguished Engagement Awards: Angie Gonzalez and Roshan Sridhar

Emerging Leaders Awards: Akiyl El and Ajay Shete

Faculty Adviser of the Year: José Ulerio

Outstanding Programming Awards:

Community Engagement & Civic Responsibility: STEMinist

Diversity and Cultural Competency: National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE)

Innovation & Creative Thinking: Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE)

Interpersonal Leadership Development: Institute of Transportation Engineers

Connection to Global Network University: InnoVention Society

Outstanding Organizational Performance Awards

Financial Management: Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA)

Event Management: Alpha Omega Epsilon

Student Engagement: American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Organizational Management: National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE)

Organizational Growth: out in STEM (oSTEM)

Organizational Collaboration: Tandon Undergraduate Student Council (TUSC); National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE); out in STEM (oSTEM); Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE); Society for Women Engineers (SWE); and STEMinist

Groups recognized for their service included the Graduate and Undergraduate Student Councils, the International Student Advisory Board, First Year Mentorship Program, Orientation Captains, Engaging Engineers, SOEciety Agents of Change, Poly Project Student Ambassadors, and the Tandon Leadership Lab.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/honoring-tandons-passionate-student-leaders-and-organizations

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Student Earns Teaching Fellowship to Support K-12 STEM Education

April 24, 2018

Inspiring the next generation of engineers, chemists, and coders starts in the classroom, and that is at the heart of what the NYU Tandon Scientific Outreach and Research (SOAR) program strives to do. Spearheaded by Chemical and Biomolecular Professor Jin Montclare, the SOAR program partners with two local Brooklyn high schools, the Urban Assembly Institute for Math and Science for Young Women and Brooklyn Technical High School, and works with students directly in their chemistry classrooms and labs.

NYU Tandon computer science student Madeleine Nicolas was awarded a Teaching Fellowship from the National Science Foundation, which supports the SOAR program. As a Fellow, Nicolas will be taking her passion for encouraging K-12 girls and boys to take a chance on science.

“I’m a huge proponent of STEM education, so I became interested in the SOAR program as I’m always excited to contribute to initiatives where I can use my technical skills,” Nicolas said. Her teaching fellowship with SOAR is not the first program she has lent her expertise to, though. “I teach coding part-time at elementary schools all over New York City, and over the summer I run a Makerspace at a sleepaway camp, where I incorporate all kinds of interdisciplinary STEAM projects,” she shared.

In her new role, she is developing an online pre-lab platform for students before they start experiments in their chemistry labs. “I’ll be debugging and maintaining the Lab Lessons platform, where high school chemistry and biology students access lab visualizations and other resources.”

With partner high school Brooklyn Tech, Nicolas is already working towards helping students use the Lab Lessons platform during the 2018-2019 academic year, where they can also assess their progress and get feedback from their teachers. Their practice with online modules will also help them prepare for the Regents Examinations required of all New York high school students.

“I’m particularly excited to have Maddie on board with SOAR because of her outstanding programming knowledge and skills,” Montclare said. “She will enable us to not only help engage the students, but also enable teachers to track the students’ learning and reduce time needed to prepare them for labs.”

“I'm really looking forward to the research findings our team observes in relation to student reception to the visualizations as well as the impact of these educational tech tools on their learning,” Nicolas said.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/student-earns-teaching-fellowship-support-k-12-stem-education

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Cybersecurity Lecture Debunks Myths of Field

April 23, 2018

NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Cybersecurity Lecture Series recently hosted the 10th lecture in its series, which brings together some of the top experts and tech professionals to speak on the latest advances and issues within cybersecurity. Now sponsored by finance and insurance corporation AIG, the lecture comes on the heels of recent global cyber-attacks and ransomware such as Petya, which affected a Ukrainian power grid; WannaCry, which disrupted hospital and school systems; and the 2016 email leak from the Democratic National Committee.

With today’s global scale of ransomware and hacking repercussions, cybersecurity no longer remains only within the purview of technology companies, financial institutions, or government agencies. In his opening remarks to the lecture, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-founder of NYU Center for Cybersecurity (NYU CCS) Ramesh Karri shared that when establishing CCS, “we recognized cybersecurity is much more than a tech challenge and only way to secure digital world is to work with industry, educational institutions, governments, and others.”

Because of this vast scale of cybersecurity, it’s no surprise that many misconceptions and beliefs arise about what it is, how to address it, and how it’s going to affect our future.

This year’s lecture featured a keynote speech by Dmitri Alperovitch who is the Chief Technology Officer at CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that is part of the investigation that discovered Russian hacking of elections in the U.S. Alperovitch broke down some of the top ten myths about cybersecurity, dispelling some of the most prevalent beliefs, including:

Myth 1: Attribution is impossible in cyberspace. Making an analogy to seeing patterns in a string of bank robberies, Alperovitch noted that attribution is “not a new thing and can be done without technical means.” “We’re getting much better at attribution because we have a long history of tracking attacks and understanding full scope of operations of different nation states.”

Myth 4: Information sharing is the answer. Alperovitch distinguished between two types of companies, ones that already share and generate information, like big financial institutions, versus the majority of companies that don’t have the same capabilities. “Most people aren’t prepared to use information you give them, because they don’t have the basic technology to investigate it,” he explained.

Myth 6: This is a solvable problem. What makes cybersecurity so different from other areas of science is that “we’re dealing with a sentient adversary who wants to cause harm to you or your company and can be bribed,” he said.

Myth 8: Cyber-attacks are done at the speed of light. Sharing insight from CrowdStrike’s profiles of 25,000 breaches they stopped, Alperovitch detailed how the average breakout time for attacks was 1 hour and 58 minutes. The time-frame could allow defenders to readily contain hackers in one location and from breaching their full system.

Myth 9: It’s all about keeping the enemy out. “Cybersecurity is all about the speed of response,” he shared, adding three essential metrics including 1 minute for time to detect a threat, 10 minutes to investigate, and 1 hour to remediate.

After his speech, Alperovitch was joined by panelists and information security experts including Omkhar Arasratnam, former Global Director of Cyber Security and Americas Regional Head TSS at Credit Suisse; Quiessence Phillips, Deputy CISO of Threat Management for the City of New York; and Garin Pace, Cyber Product Leader and Financial Lines and Property at AIG. Moderated by Randal Milch, Co-Chair of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity and Distinguished Fellow at NYU Law Center on Law and Security, the panel addressed the importance of translating awareness of cybersecurity issues into education and ways in which cybersecurity is at the heart of industries like finance, insurance, government, and more.

“We need more people to think about cybersecurity and execute it better, so more education and understanding of the risk is necessary,” Pace said. Phillips discussed how “grooming the next generation of security analysts and engineers starts at younger age,” she said. “We need more of these small K-12 programs in schools and online.” Panelists all agreed on starting cybersecurity education much earlier than college. Affordable and inclusive options and scholarships are also important, such as NYU Tandon’s NY Cyber Fellowship. Phillips also shared Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement of NYC Secure, a new cybersecurity initiative that aims to protect New York’s phones, Wi-Fi networks, and more.

Alperovitch and Arasratnam emphasized the importance of building relationships and trust for productive information sharing. “Through official information sharing channels, you get information that sometimes will be stale and nonspecific,” Arasratnam said. “Informal relationships and conversations can have more value than these.

Even research and discoveries here in New York can have a significant impact everywhere. “New Yorkers will take the lead in cybersecurity, as it’s the world’s epicenter of finance and media industries,” Karri explained. “When we protect NYC, we protect the economy of our nation and the world.”

The lecture was organized by AIG, NYU Center for Cybersecurity and Tandon Online.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/cybersecurity-lecture-debunks-myths-field

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Tandon Celebrates Women in STEM

Summit Emphasizes Women Having Both a Seat and a Voice at the Table

March 8, 2018

Over the past few years, NYU Tandon has made bridging the gender gap central to its mission, and aims to ensure women are equally represented in the student body and in the faculty. This month kicked off with multiple celebrations honoring women in STEM and those forging a path ahead into a future of inclusivity.

Seven Years of Summit Success

At the 7th Annual Women in STEM Summit at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Dean of Student Affairs Anita Farrington shared an astounding statistic. “When I first started here in 2010, our incoming freshman class was only 25 percent women. Now, we’re at 41 percent,” she said to applause and cheers from the audience. “However, we have to continue to be restless and urgent, and we have to keep that momentum going.”

Over the past seven years, Dean Farrington and her staff have brought numerous speakers and luminaries in their fields to the NYU Tandon campus during Women’s History Month to share the work they’re doing towards increasing representation within academia and industry. This year’s Summit, with a theme of “Catalysts for Change,” recognized the trailblazers, the disrupters, and the revolutionary women and men who are not only encouraging women to embark on their STEM education and careers, but also supporting them to persevere and excel within their chosen sector.

The Support of Allies

Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan welcomed attendees at the morning session on male allies, and highlighted the active transformation in the STEM field towards greater diversity. “We want to spark change within our own NYU Tandon community, and we’ve been working to ensure that women have as equal a role to play as men do,” Dean Sreenivasan asserted. The day began with a panel discussion on how male-identifying students, faculty, and industry leaders can bring about systematic changes to STEM by supporting women colleagues, which was moderated by Jeannice Fairrer Samani, Senior Manager of Global Operations for the Anita Borg Institute and Professor at Santa Clara University (to name a few of her laurels).

Male Allies Breakfast

Samani emphasized creating an “ecosystem towards catalyzing change,” noting that “we cannot do this alone. It’s not going to happen just within NYU Tandon or in Silicon Valley — it’s a systematic process, and we must develop more sustainable engineering solutions, enlist top leaders, support education initiatives, and increase funding and resources for entrepreneurs.”

Power Lunch

Given the three young entrepreneurs who spoke at the Summit luncheon, it is no surprise that funding women’s ideas and businesses can lead to greater changes in all STEM sectors.

Christina Tartaglia, who is the co-founder and Vice President of The Scientista Foundation, emphasized how important it is for women to stay in STEM, despite the statistics that show women dropping out at higher rates than men, because “when you take yourself out of the running you lose, and everyone in the world loses.”

Alex Salvatore, the co-founder and CTO of Beam, was the only woman engineer at Tinder when she started out and spoke to the notion of “reverse engineering” your goals by determining how to get from A to B.

Yamilée Toussaint, founder and CEO of STEM from Dance, blends together her mechanical engineering background with her dance training to help underrepresented girls see the “intersections between technology and dance that already exist” and build the confidence in their capabilities.

Bold Ambitions

While the Women’s Summit featured various events throughout the week, including a Women at Tandon Celebration and award ceremony, the culminating keynote dinner honored some of the trailblazing women who are making waves not only within the NYU Tandon community, but the world at large.

“While our Summit’s overarching theme is ‘Catalysts for Change,’ tonight’s dinner has a special theme of ‘Being Bold for STEM Change.’ Our Summit is doing exactly that,” Dean Farrington shared as she welcomed the esteemed speakers, guests, and attendees. “We know how important it is for us to provide space for our students to find mentors and for programming opportunities like the Summit. We want to bring phenomenal women and men here to Tandon to embolden you.”

The dinner did just that, highlighting the strides of three exceptional women from NYU and NYU Tandon: Dr. Lisa Coleman, NYU’s Senior Vice President for Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation and the school’s first Chief Diversity Officer; Beth S. Noveck, the Jerry M. Hultin Professor of Technology, Culture and Society and Director of the GovLab; and Cadence Daniels ’18, an Integrated Digital Media major and President of the NYU chapter of the National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE).

In her speech, Dr. Coleman explained the differences between equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging and the importance of addressing implicit bias and microaggressions within the classroom, lab, and office head on. Noveck echoed Coleman’s call, remembering how detrimental a teacher’s words were when he stymied her aspirations in math; she encouraged the audience to leave the dinner and advocate for women to stay in STEM, and also to create better workplace environments for women. Noveck also singled out one of her students, who she said is using her engineering degree to help others, a student who was also the evening’s special honoree and award winner.

The Summit award recognized Daniels for her contributions to the NYU Tandon community as an outstanding leader, from her role as president of NSBE to her co-founding of the Women of Entrepreneurship group.

“This is the first time in the seven years of hosting the Summit that the award recipient is a student. What is special about Cadence is her ability to merge her creative and technological talents into bettering the world for people like herself,” Dean Farrington said, listing the bevy of laurels Daniels has received over her four years.

Daniels shared the story of where she came from, and while she said there was “no statistical reason why I was here,” she acknowledged that “I bring something to the table that no one else can. There is a lot of power in diversity and difference, and it goes beyond what I look like or where I came from. It’s the way I think and the way I live."

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/tandon-celebrates-women-stem

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Cybersecurity Lab Welcomes First Female Hacker-in-Residence

Security Researcher Joins OSIRIS Lab to Share Expertise

March 8, 2018

NYU Tandon’s Offensive Security, Incident Response and Internet Security Laboratory, well known as the OSIRIS Lab, recently welcomed a new hacker-in-residence: Sophia d’Antoine, a Senior Security Researcher at Trail of Bits. While d’Antoine may be a new face within the OSIRIS Lab, she has been central to NYU Tandon’s Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Capture the Flag (CTF) competition, having participated for three years while a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), and even serving as a judge and developing three challenges for the competition.

Now, as a hacker-in-residence at the student-run cybersecurity research lab, d’Antoine will be imparting her own expertise to the student members hoping to learn practical approaches to combating hackers who exploit real systems. D’Antoine will also be OSIRIS lab’s first woman hacker-in-residence, a distinctive laurel that she hopes will inspire more women to be part of and excel within the tech and cybersecurity industries.

“I learned of OSIRIS through CSAW CTF — a cornerstone event for the global hacking community,” d’Antoine shared. “But, my decision to join as a hacker-in-residence was made once I saw all of the great work that the Lab is doing and a chance to help out with all of the interesting research projects and smart students working on them, as well as an opportunity to mentor students emerging in the security world.”

At Trail of Bits, an information security company that provides expertise to industry leaders, d’Antoine has been working on a variety of projects, including developing tools to discover vulnerabilities automatically. She also speaks at conferences and events around the world on emerging research and is part of the USENIX WOOT committee. “At Trail of Bits, we attempt to solve interesting, hard problems in the world of security with novel solutions and tooling, ideally advancing the state of the art,” she explained. Trail of Bits was co-founded in 2012 by Dan Guido ’08, a former adjunct faculty member in the cybersecurity program and hacker-in-residence at NYU Tandon.

D’Antoine understands the importance of having an exploratory research space for students in addition to their academic programs. At RPI, she was part of the university’s computer security lab, where she competed in various challenges and hack-a-thons and also helped develop and teach the Modern Binary Exploitation course at RPI, which aimed to introduce students to offensive security through reverse engineering, vulnerability research, and exploit development.

“It is super helpful to have clubs like OSIRIS, and NYU is lucky to have such a large, successful club. Without clubs like these, I would never have gotten into security at all!” d’Antoine shared. “The CTF community helped me get into security and see the value in using novel research, and tool development early on. OSIRIS provides similar introductions to security topics which students would otherwise not be exposed to. The community which these clubs provide also helps new students gain the confidence and the knowledge to stick with it, even when the challenges get harder.”

In her new role at OSIRIS, d’Antoine hopes to work alongside students towards building their expertise in tool development, intermediate languages, symbolic execution, and other research areas that will help them launch their own cybersecurity careers. OSIRIS currently offers a myriad of programs for students, from their weekly Cybersecurity Club to the Hack Night workshops on topics like binary exploitation or hacking hardware.

"I'm really excited to have Sophia working with us in the OSIRIS lab. She is truly a world-class researcher and expert in cybersecurity, and our students will learn a lot from her mentorship,” shared Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, assistant professor of computer science and engineering and the faculty adviser to the OSIRIS Lab.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/cybersecurity-lab-welcomes-first-female-hacker-residence

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Girls Talk Tech: Encouraging Women in STEM

March 5, 2018

Dozens of NYU Tandon students and young women from high schools around New York gathered in the MakerSpace last week for the Girls Talk Tech event. Students had the opportunity to meet with representatives from some of the top industry companies — including Google, Facebook, Morgan Stanley, GrubHub and Goldman Sachs — who also happen to be women.

Geared towards encouraging young women to join and stay in STEM, the event brought students from across the boroughs to learn more about education and career opportunities in the world of science, engineering, math, technology, and business. Organized by NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the Google Anita Borg Scholars Community, the evening featured a resource fair and a panel discussion.

Moderated by Angie Gonzalez ’18, the panelists shared how their current positions employ technology, engineering, and science to make things better for people, and also addressed the ways in which they deal with people who doubt their abilities. The panelists encouraged the young women in the crowd, who are just starting their STEM education or embarking on careers, to listen to their voice and understand the power of speaking up for themselves.

Words of Wisdom

Panelists spoke to how they discovered their love of STEM, their paths from high school to college to their current industry, and the hurdles they overcame to reach this point in their careers.

Tamara Waye, Vice President of User Experience at Goldman Sachs

“Imposter syndrome is real, regardless of what stage you’re at,” shared Waye, who told students that while it’s hard to overcome she advised them to “remember where you’re at and why you’re there. You’re there because you earned that spot, regardless if you’re a student or a new hire. Another thing is to anchor yourself and follow your own north star. Keep in mind what is your end goal, and don’t compare yourself to anyone else.”

Whitney Levine, Lead Software Engineer at Grubhub

Levine echoed Waye, encouraging young students to know their worth, in school and in jobs, and to ask for raises and new opportunities when they’re ready. She also shared how exciting it is to build products people use daily. “At Grubhub, it is so fun to build something that I use, so that if I find a bug, I can fix it. If there’s an experience I don’t like, I can change it or make it better. That’s really powerful, that the thing I’m using, my family is using, and my friends are using is something I built.”

Anjali Menon, Vice President of Wealth Management Technology at Morgan Stanley

“If you’re in meetings and sitting at a table with your peers and managers, remember to speak up and be assertive. You have a voice at the table, so don’t be discouraged,” Menon said, offering examples of times where she recognized the power of speaking up to earn opportunities to advance.

Britt Hykal, University Programs Specialist at Google

Tapping into resources right here on campus, like a career center or visiting recruiters, is essential, Hykal said. She also encouraged students to find a community of support. “Make sure you have a good network for people, whether it is your CS club, or a class, or professors, learn from their experiences and lean on each other for support. When you start out in industry, look for a company where you have a voice.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/girls-talk-tech-encouraging-women-stem

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Tandon Student Awarded Highest Honors from National Youth Organization

Kyra-Lee Harry Recognized for Her Community Work

March 1, 2018

At the heart of NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s mission is its commitment to creating an innovative engineering environment dedicated to building technology and tools to benefit society, in New York and beyond.

For first-year NYU Tandon student Kyra-Lee Harry, ‘technology in service to society’ is more than a motto, it is how she lives her life. From sitting on the Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, to creating a New York State 4-H club at her high school on STEM and community engagement, to organizing a youth conference bringing together students from across the five boroughs, all while earning both an advanced regents diploma and an associate’s degree in biology before 18, she has been working towards her goal of making people’s lives better ever since she was a young girl.

The Business and Technology Management student recently received some well-deserved recognition when the National 4-H Council, the global nonprofit that fosters youth development and leadership, bestowed one of its highest honors upon Harry — the 2018 Youth in Action Pillar Award. The award highlights four young 4-H members who are leaders in their community who best represent each of the four ‘pillars’ of 4-H: agriculture, healthy living, STEM, and citizenship. The organization honored Harry with the citizenship pillar that recognized her lifelong commitment to civic engagement and community building in Brooklyn. Harry, who has been part of 4-H since she joined one of their youth programs in sixth grade, is the first New York 4-H member to earn this award; she also received a scholarship worth $5,000 towards her education.

Growing up in Crown Heights, Harry attended Medgar Evers College Preparatory School where she started a 4-H club centered on fostering an inclusive environment for STEM education and community leadership for her fellow students. While she was lucky to have a family who encouraged her passion for STEM, she knows many do not have the same experience. “My family and community showed me how essential this support is, and for those that may not have that support, I want them to know I’m here to lend a helpful hand,” she said.

After a local community board member saw the important work she was doing at her high school, Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adamsselected her to serve as a youth representative for the Community Board 9. At 15, she became the youngest member to be inducted into a community board where she worked on youth and education committees focused on youth development programs and community engagement.

In 2017, Harry organized and managed the board’s first annual Youth Forum, where over 300 students from the five boroughs converged to learn about leadership opportunities and how they can impact their own communities, here in New York and around the world.

“Once I learned of the Business and Technology Management degree program at NYU Tandon, I realized this is where I need to be and where I can develop my ideas. This is the place where there are endless opportunities.”

— Kyra-Lee Harry

When she was only five, Harry learned the significant impact that technology can make towards helping someone when her mother’s lungs collapsed. While the experience prompted her initial desire to become a doctor after seeing all that went into helping her mother, the 4-H club introduced her to the many ways engineering can be used to benefit others. “Learning that engineering is not a field with a set definition, I realized that engineers are those who want change, they see what needs to be fixed and what needs to be developed so that society and the world can be a better place.”

Yet, with her years working within the community board and leading the 4-H club, Harry sought an institution that provided her with the opportunity to combine her two passions of engineering and management, which she discovered here at NYU Tandon.

“Once I learned of the Business and Technology Management degree program at NYU Tandon, I realized this is where I need to be and where I can develop my ideas. This is the place where there are endless opportunities.”

Since starting at NYU Tandon, Harry has been quite busy. Only a few weeks into her first semester at NYU Tandon, Harry was featured in an article from The Bridge about her decision to attend the school, which included the higher amount of women classmates she found here. She also became the first-year ambassador for the school’s chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), a group she hopes one day to represent as the NYU chapter president and support other students hoping to pursue STEM educations and careers.

“When I look at the statistics for the STEM field, there are not many black female engineers. Even walking into my classrooms here and being the only black student in the class, I wondered in my first semester, did I make the right decision?” she shared. “But I remembered what I always tell myself, that perseverance is key. When you’re in the classroom, you’re adding your ideas, experiences, and culture to the conversation. I want to break barriers, and be working alongside the women who are revolutionizing the way the engineering field is seen.”

Harry is already forging ahead on her chosen path. On March 20, she and her fellow Youth in Action Award recipients will be honored at the 2018 National 4-H Council’s Legacy Awards in Washington, D.C., where they’ll have an opportunity to share their story on a national stage.

“I want to make sure that whatever I’m doing here at Tandon doesn't just benefit myself, I want it to benefit my family, my community, and the world,” Harry said. “At the end of the day, I’m a black female engineering student, who aspires to be a black female engineering manager. I want to be amongst the women in the STEM field who are showing young black girls that it is okay not to follow societal expectations. You can go above and beyond, and you can achieve any goal you set your mind to.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/tandon-student-awarded-highest-honors-national-youth-organization

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NYU Tandon Celebrates Achievements of Our Students and Faculty

A Look Back at 2017

December 21, 2017

Innovation is at the heart of NYU Tandon. Our students and faculty explore how science, technology, and research can impact our community and society through groundbreaking solutions and ideas. This year was no exception — with the announcement of NYU Tandon’s selection as the new hub for virtual and augmented reality, to the launch of the Veterans Future Lab and the school’s new artificial intelligence research institute AI NOW, to its commitment to advancing diversity and women in STEM — NYU Tandon has much to celebrate. Here’s a look back at the many achievements of our students and faculty from the past year:

Students

Graduate Student Receives Marconi Young Scholars Award

Shu Sun, an electrical engineering doctoral candidate and NYU WIRELESS researcher, received the 2017 Paul Baran Young Scholar Award from The Marconi Society. Sun is the second student researcher at NYU to receive this award, which recognized her work on millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum for 5G wireless communication, including her close-in free space path loss model and her development of the world’s first open source channel modeling software. Sun also received the prestigious Neal Shephard Propagation Prize Paper Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) for an article she co-authored with NYU WIRELESS founding director Theodore Rappaport on large-scale propagation path loss models.

Smart Gun Design Competition Awards $1 Million to NYU Tandon Team

A team comprised of NYU Tandon alumni and students including Sy Cohen, Ashwin Raj Kumar, Jonathan Ng, and Eddilene Paola Cordero Pardo won the Smart Gun Design Competition. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams awarded the team a $1 million grant to support their proposed innovative design that prevents unauthorized users from firing a gun, employing fingerprint detection, an RFID keycard, and voice recognition.

NYU Tandon ASCE Chapter Finished in Top 10 at Concrete Canoe Competition

After their first-place victory at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Concrete Canoe Metropolitan Regional Conference, the NYU Tandon ASCE student chapter finished in the top-10 at the National Concrete Canoe Competition in June, competing against teams from across the U.S., Canada, and China. The team impressed judges with their innovative, sleek, and sustainable canoe design.

ASCE Awards ASCE NYU Tandon Student Chapter for Achievements

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) recognized the achievements and recent competition victories of the NYU Tandon ASCE student chapter, awarding the student leaders with the 2016 Certificate of Commendation. This is the first time the chapter received this award, which honored the efforts of the student officers: Nathan Evelkin, Manoela Hammoud, Cliff Cheng, and Ashlene Bisram.

Student Leaders Honored by American Association of Blacks in Energy (AABE)

Sederick Dawkins and Justin Sutton were honored for their leadership of the NYU Tandon student chapter of the American Association of Blacks in Energy - New York Metropolitan Chapter (AABE-NYMAC). Both Dawkins and Sutton were celebrated for their commitment towards providing students with educational and professional advancement, and mentorship opportunities within the energy industry.

Sustainable Farmers and NYU Tandon Students Win NYU Green Grant

A group of NYU Tandon students are taking on sustainable urban farming with their vertical farm that received a $20,000 Green Grant from the NYU Office of Sustainability. We Are the New Farmers, comprised of Jonas Günther, Omar Gowayad, Will Nodvik, Sridhar Parthasarathy, Selim Senocak, and Sarvesh Sivaprakasam, has been transforming their original small-scale environment called a ‘food computer’ to a larger-scale prototype, and will use the grant to incorporate more innovative additions to their design.

Multiple Tandon Students and Organizations Honored with President’s Service Awards

NYU President Andrew Hamilton recognized the achievements of students and student organizations for their commitment to civic engagement and serving local communities. Honored students included: Rawan Abbasi, Mahmoud "AG" Abugharbieh, Kristen Ma, Parth Mehta, Georgey Mekkaringattu Joseph, Pirthmey Singh Randhawa, and Sumayya Vawda. Tandon and all-university student groups included: Entrepreneurship & Innovation Association, Tandon Muslim Students Association, Design for America of NYU, and HackNYU 2017.

Prestigious Scholarship Awarded to Cybersecurity Student and Bridge Program Graduate

Before Yin Mei began her master’s degree in cybersecurity at NYU Tandon, she discovered her computer science skills in the accelerated online course “A Bridge to NYU Tandon,” which is aimed at helping people learn computer science who have little to no background in it. Mei received the 2017 Scholarship for Women Studying Information Security Program (SWISIS), which provides financial support and mentoring to female students interested in computer and cyber security, and was also chosen to be part of the interdisciplinary NYU Cyber Scholars Program.

Four Students Win Audi-Forbes Idea Incubator Challenge on Safe Transportation

This October, Audi and Forbes partnered with NYU Tandon to sponsor a challenge to Tandon’s women students in conjunction with their 2017 Forbes Women’s Summit. The 27 students broke into teams to develop safe, reliable and affordable transportation options for women and girls in underserved communities. The winning team designed a mobile app called TogetHER that provides traveling companions by connecting women with similar commutes. Brittany Kendrick, Aida Mehovic, Camila Morocho, and Emily Muggleton won the first-ever $50,000 Audi Drive Progress Grant.

Financial Engineering Students Take Top Prize in National Competition

At the annual University Trading Challenge (UTC), a team of graduate students from the Finance and Risk Engineering department placed first in the competition. The team, comprised of master’s students Jojo Tang, Hao Zhan, and Yuehan Liu, excelled in the competition’s four intensive challenges that center on real-world trading and business management.

Doctoral Student Recognized with Scholarship for His Work on Protecting Water

The New York Water Environment Association (NYWEA) awarded civil and urban engineering doctoral student Samuel White with its N.G. Kaul Memorial Scholarship. The award recognizes White’s work on hydro-diplomacy, the protection of water on a transnational level, through his collaboration with Professor Ilan Juran and UNESCO on an ecosystem preservation project, and his commitment to water quality issues and public service.

Student Team Advances in Hyperloop Competition

After a team from NYU Tandon was selected out of 120 university teams by the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition to refine and build their prototype, the team returned to SpaceX’s headquarters in California to debut their pod and to receive feedback as they further develop their design. The Hyperloop is a ground transportation system conceived by SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk for high-speed passenger and cargo pods.

United Nations Challenge on Data and Climate Change Awards Tandon Team

The United Nations (U.N.) Data for Climate Change Challenge tasked researchers, students, and data scientists to implement data-driven climate solutions. After presenting their research at the 2017 U.N. Climate Change Conference, a team of NYU Tandon students, including Yuan Lai, Bartosz Bonczak, Boyeong Hong, Sokratis Papadopoulos, Awais Malik, and Nick Johnsonwho were led by Assistant Professor Constantine Kontokosta, received the Best Data Visualization Award for their development of the first-of-its-kind high resolution spatial-temporal model of urban greenhouse gas emissions.

Student Honored by National Science Foundation for K-12 Community Outreach

The National Science Foundation awarded computer engineering student Peter Ferrarotto for his work with NYU Tandon’s Science Outreach and Research (SOAR) program, which supports K-12 STEM education in the New York community. Through SOAR, Ferrarotto designs online modules for Brooklyn Technical High School students to use in their chemistry labs, implementing technology to foster a unique learning environment.

Virtual Reality Student Demo Wins Prize at NYC Media Lab Summit

A team of Integrated Digital Media students won a second-place prize for their virtual reality demo at the 2017 NYC Media Lab Summit. Gabriella Cammarata, Najma Dawood-McCarthy, and Chun-Fang Huang were awarded $1,000 for their project, Untitled Realities, which explores immersive virtual reality experiences and how they can influence human identity formation.

Tandon Teams Award Top Prizes in InnoVention Competition

The InnoVention prototyping competition, which challenges student-led teams to build prototypes and pitch commercially-viable technology ventures to solve global problems. After the 10-week challenge, two Tandon-led teams were awarded second and third place prizes to continue developing their ventures. Multicorder, an educational device and platform, featured Zainab Babikir, Shiva Duraisamy, and Theodore Kim. INVIP, a wearable device for the visually impaired, featured Nicolas Metallo, Nuvina Padukka, and Brenda Truong.

Faculty

IEEE Recognizes Electrical Engineering Professor for Contributions to Multimedia Networking

Yong Liu, professor of electrical engineering and faculty member at NYU WIRESLESS and the Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). IEEE acknowledged Liu’s work with multimedia networking systems, which are crucial to the global Internet and online traffic, as well as his development of real-time bandwidth estimation and video adaptation algorithms.

National Science Foundation Selects Tandon Researchers for CAREER Award for Work on Smart Cities and Transportation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected two New York University faculty members, Joseph Y.J. Chow and Constantine Kontokosta, as recipients of the prestigious NSF Faculty Early Career Development Awards (CAREER Awards). Through their CAREER Awards, Chow and Kontokosta, assistant professors of civil and urban engineering and faculty with the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP), will further their research into urban transportation and mobility, smart cities, and making cities healthier, safer, and more livable.

H&M Global Change Awards Professor for Sustainable, Solar-Powered Nylon

Miguel Modestino, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, received the 2017 Global Change Award from the H&M Foundation for his research into more sustainable production of nylon material. Modestino and his co-researchers are proposing a zero-emissions method that eliminates the use of oil and will develop synthetic nylon with solar energy, plant waste, and water and will capture greenhouse gases within the fabric. The Spanish edition of the MIT Technology Review recently named Modestino one of the “Innovators Under 35,” celebrating his innovative research into solar energy towards developing a more sustainable textile industry and reduction of fossil fuel production.

IEEE Honors Professor with Prestigious Industrial Innovation Award

The IEEE recognized the pioneering work of Thomas Marzetta, who originated the concept of Massive MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) — a cornerstone for the 5G wireless technology. Marzetta, who is a distinguished industry professor and faculty with NYU WIRELESS, received the 2017 Communications Society Industrial Innovation Award for his development of the concept of Massive MIMO since his time at Bell Labs, where he was director of the Communications and Statistical Sciences Department.

Senior Lecturer Recognized for His Innovative Teaching

Allan Goldstein, senior lecturer of Technology, Culture and Society, was named by the Chronicle of Higher Education to their inaugural list of Teaching Innovators, which honors faculty who use unique teaching approaches and fosters deep connections with students. Goldstein was recognized for his teaching in his Disabilities Studies course, which brings together engineering students and consultants from organizations like HeartShare and ADAPT, who work together on multimedia projects and create human-centered designs and technologies. Goldstein also received the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award, which recognizes NYU faculty for their commitment to social justice and embodying the teachings of Dr. King.

Professor and Research Team Reveal Vulnerability of Mobile Phone Fingerprint Recognition

Computer science and engineering professor Nasir Memon led a team of researchers from NYU Tandon and Michigan State University College of Engineering, who discovered a vulnerability in fingerprint-based security system on mobile phones and other devices. As systems capture only partial fingerprints, the research determined that enough similarities between partial prints could lead to the development of a MasterPrint hack. Memon also led a research team who developed an application called IllusionPin to combat shoulder-surfing, or when people standing closeby can observe private and financial information on mobile phones and ATMs.

Construction Industry Group Awards Civil and Urban Engineering Professor

Frank Lombardi, adjunct professor of civil and urban engineering and former chief engineer of The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, received the 2017 Moles Member Award for Outstanding Achievement in Construction. The organization honored Lombardi for his multiple accomplishments and contributions to New York and New Jersey, including structural repairs after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and restoration of PATH service after 9/11.

Office of Naval Research Awards Professor for Work in Electromagnetics

With our increasing reliance on electromagnetic devices, research into computational electromagnetics (CEM) is essential — a task that Michael O’Neil is taking on. The assistant professor of mathematics at NYU Tandon and NYU Courant received the 2017 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award to pursue his research into simulation and design tools for CEM through the development of state-of-the-art, analysis-based algorithms. O’Neil’s research could provide simulations for other mathematical physics, including fluid dynamics and heat flow.

Data Science Professor Becomes First Woman Chair of Prestigious Computing Association

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) recently named Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Juliana Freire as its chair, making her the first woman elected to this position in SIGMOD’s history. As a professor at NYU Tandon and the NYU Center for Data Science, Freire works within data reproducibility and leads the development of innovative data science tools, including the Memex Suite from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Recognizes Contributions of Dean Sreenivasan

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce celebrated the immense contributions of Dean Katepalli Sreenivasan, honoring him with the 2017 Building Brooklyn Award, which selects individuals who have enriched the Brooklyn community. Dean Sreenivasan spoke to NYU Tandon’s deep connection to Brooklyn, transforming the Brooklyn Tech Triangle into the Innovation Coastline. The Awards also celebrated the NYU Tandon MakerSpace for its impact on STEM education.

Professor Named Editor-in-Chief to Top Journal on Gaming and Artificial Intelligence

The IEEE Transactions on Games journal selected associate professor of computer science and engineering Julian Togelius as its new editor-in-chief starting in 2018. The prestigious journal explores research into games and computational and artificial intelligence, and will expand its scope into a variety of game-related topics and research.

National Academy of Engineering Selects Professor to Prestigious Research Symposium

The National Academy of Engineering’s E.U.-U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium selected associate professor of electrical and computer engineering Riccardo Lattanzi to participate in the invitation-only symposium that promotes interdisciplinary research collaborations. Lattanzi, a faculty member of NYU WIRELESS, is developing noninvasive methods for mapping electrical conductivity in tissues, which could increase the diagnostic benefits of MRI.

Civil & Urban Engineering Team Awarded Prize for Transportation, Operations Research

Kaan Ozbay, professor of civil and urban engineering, led a team of researchers in a multi-university consortium that is researching the potential of an initiative by the U.S. Department of Transportation and NYC Department of Transportation (DOT). The prestigious Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) awarded the NYC DOT team, including Ozbay, the Franz Edelman Finalist Award for their research in reducing traffic impact and congestion in NYC.

Professor Developing Antidotes to Toxic Chemical Weapons

Aiming to combat the many chemical weapons and other toxic agents like pesticides, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering Jin Kim Montclare is engineering antidotes that neutralize these chemicals to prevent and treat exposure. Montclare received a grant from the U.S. CounterACT (Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats) program to continue her research into phosphotriesterase, which can deactivate neurotoxic agents.

Isolating Immune Cells to Better Understand Diseases

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a three-year grant to Weiqiang Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, to continue his development of a platform that uses an immune cell isolation technique and nano-scale biosensors to allow biologists and researchers with a better way of analyzing proteins from individual immune cells. Chen’s research allows for single-cell analysis, which can result in more targeted treatments to enhance immunotherapy treatments and improve patient prognosis with immune system diseases like HIV and malaria.

Creating Small-Scale Reactors to Discover New Polymers

Chemical engineering professor Ryan Hartman is leading a team of researchers who are developing Artificially Intelligent Autonomous Microreactors (microAIRS) that reduce the scale, time, and energy currently required for the discovery process for new polymers. Hartman received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue development of the microreactors and the AI system that can quickly analyze a reaction process and determine catalysts to generate a faster and more sustainable process.

Professor Named Fellow of NewCities Foundation

The global nonprofit NewCities Foundaion, which aims to make cities more inclusive and healthy, named Mariela Alfonzo their new fellow. NewCities tapped Alfonzo, a research assistant professor in Technology, Culture and Society, for the fellowship for her ability to develop solutions that merge the theoretical with the practical, including her predictive analysis software that helps placemakers invest in better places.

Google Awards Computer Science Professor for Machine Learning Research

Assistant professor of computer science and engineering Enrico Bertini received Google’s most highly competitive and unrestricted grants, the Faculty Research Award. Bertini received the Google grant for his creation of interactive visualization and machine learning methods that will help developers better understand the decisions made by machine learning models.

Researchers Use New MRI Techniques to Study Cocaine’s Effects on Infant Brains

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and NYU Tandon, including professor and chair of computer science and engineering Guido Gerig, are researching the impact of in utero cocaine exposure on infant brain development. Using new MRI imaging and analysis techniques developed by Gerig, the research was awarded a five-year, $3.2 million grant by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health that will determine the long-term effects of reduced gray matter in infant brains.

ASCE Awards Adjunct Professor for Innovative Design of Deep Excavation Systems

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) honored Dimitrios Konstantakos, adjunct professor in civil and urban engineering, with the 2018 Martin S. Kapp Foundation Engineering Award. The award recognizes engineers for their innovative or outstanding design or construction of foundations, retaining structures, or underground construction, and highlighted Konstantakos’ work on deep excavation support systems.

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/nyu-tandon-celebrates-achievements-our-students-and-faculty

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Students' Prototypes Take on Virtual Reality, Smart Technology, and Robotics

December 18, 2017

Each semester the NYU Prototyping Fund supports innovators and budding entrepreneurs from across NYU schools and surrounding universities. Sponsored by NYU Tandon MakerSpace’s Greenhouse program and the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, the Fund awards $500 to student-led teams in the first round of funding and up to $2000 in the second to test and develop their unique ideas, solutions, and products.

Of the 15 teams awarded this semester, 11 featured collaboration across disciplines with students representing schools such as NYU Tandon, Tisch, and Steinhardt. On December 6, the teams displayed their prototypes, including those made by Tandon students who explored augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), smart technology, and robotics. As many Tandon-led ventures such as We Are the New Farmers, INVIP, and Peris got their start at the Prototyping Fund, these students are in good company.

“It’s exciting to see the results of our 9th Prototyping Fund,” shared Anne-Laure Fayard, associate professor of Technology, Management and Innovation and adviser to the Greenhouse program. “Frank Rimalovski from the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, who’s been my partner in crime since the beginning of this collaborative program, and I reflected on how the quality of the prototypes has evolved over the years. This semester we noticed many more iterations of the prototype, showing that teams fully embrace the iterative approach — an essential dimension of our prototyping philosophy.”

Tandon Teams:

Augmented Escape Room Games

Integrated Digital Media (IDM) graduate students Alexandros Lotsos’ 18 and Acacia Judge ’18 are using AR technology to add another dimension to the escape room experience. Modeled after the popular adventure game, where players find clues to a mystery and solve puzzles to break out of a room, Lotsos’ and Judge’s project integrates AR technology to create “more challenging puzzles that use AR to expand the possibilities of items or clues in our game,” Lotsos said.

Drispen

Lindsey Kim '19 and Ruby Pittman '20, both majors in Business and Technology Management (BTM), are developing a smart pen that digitizes notes and drawings without the need for a tablet. “We’re both artists and business students, and this idea stemmed from our frustration with expensive art supplies and tools,” Pittman said. Using infrared LED light and a microchip, the pen will work on any flat surface to capture drawings or words you write, transferring them through Bluetooth to an online platform. Kim and Pittman credit Technology Management and Innovation lecturer Michael Driscoll with supporting their project, and they even named their pen after him.

Fly-M

Many people accidentally drop their phones, causing cracked screens or other damage, which prompted Purva Patel ’19, Supreeth Kumar ’19, and Swapnesh Wani ’19 to devise a unique solution to lessen the impact. The Mechatronics and Robotics master’s students created a phone case that turns your phone into a miniature quadcopter. The 3D-printed case uses sensors to detect motion and distance, and is modeled after a quadcopter, releasing tiny propellers that gently lower your phone when falling. Next for the team? “We’re focusing on different parts to reduce the size and weight of the case, and we’re planning a sensor that flips around your phone if it’s falling front first,” Wani said.

FruitNow

Aiming to bring fresh and affordable fruit to NYU students, BTM student Jenny Zheng ’20 and Kent Ma ’20 have created the mobile app Fruit Now that provides students with a weekly subscription box filled with fruits, such as berries, apples or lychee. Tapping into the international network of fruit farmers, Zheng hopes to offer easier access to high-quality fruit and is in talks to allow the use of NYU Dining Dollars.

Geckobot

The Tandon team behind Geckobot are developing a compact robot to clean building windows and facades. “Currently, commercial window cleaning robots are quite large and very expensive. Instead of using one big robot, we propose using five to 10 small robots that are more efficient and low-cost,” Yi Wei ’19, a Mechanical Engineering graduate student, said. Team members include Mingzhe Ye ’19, Yunzhu Li ’19, Zhengqing Ye ’19, Mo Wu ’19, Cindy Li’19, and Wei.

Posture Sensing

Many people’s neck and backaches stem from poor posture, a fact that the team behind Posture Sensing hopes to assuage using headphones that can detect improper posture. Using an accelerator and a compass, your headphones can calculate pressure on your spine and alert users to adjust their position and lessen harmful effects of bad posture. Team members include Emily Huang ’18, Brandon Rogowski ’18, Timothy Wong ’18, Aidan Collins ’18, and Kaitlyn Yiu, Steinhardt.

SOLAR

A group of computer science, electrical, and mechanical engineering students have designed a modular solar panel system to navigate Mars’ surface and provide sustainable and efficient power for future Mars expeditions. Part of NASA’s Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge, their compact modular system works like an accordian — extending and contracting solar panels that will be equipped with sensors to avoid obstacles, radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to communicate with other Mars vehicles, and can withstand Mars’ dust storms. Team members include: Aida Mehovic ’19, Leonardo Lamboglia ’19, Randy Martinez ’19, Matthew Persad ’19, and Yoon Cho ’19.

WAVR

WAVR, developed by Baris Siniksaran '18 (IDM) and Sean Kim (Interactive Telecommunications Program), is an immersive experience where your brain waves can control virtual reality technology. “One of the main questions we’ve been exploring with WAVR is how our technology can be effective in improving people’s lives,” Siniksaran said of their latest prototype, WAVR: Self Discover. Using color and virtual reality for therapy purposes, WAVR: Self Discover is “designed to help people see reality from a different perspective through the alternating perception of virtual reality.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/students-prototypes-take-virtual-reality-smart-technology-and-robotics

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LIGO Scientist Details History of Gravitational Wave Detection

2017 Lynford Lecture

December 8, 2017

On September 14, 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) run by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) and California Institute of Technology (CalTech) made its landmark discovery — the direct detection of gravitational waves. These waves emanate from cataclysmic events, such as two black holes or two neutron stars merging, which distort space-time and cause ‘ripples’ that travel out across the universe. Gravitational waves have long been on the minds of physicists since Albert Einstein’s 1916 theory of general relativity, which claimed their existence but asserted they would remain undetectable.

After 100 years of research and experimentation, and the development of a laser interferometer capable of measuring the tiniest wrinkle in space-time caused by a passing gravitational wave, LIGO detected a gravitational wave that reached our planet some 1.3 billion light years after a collision of two black holes. In October 2017, the work of three LIGO pioneers — MIT physicist Rainer Weiss and CalTech physicists Kip Thorne and Barry Barish — received the most prestigious of awards, the Nobel Prize in Physics.

“It’s one of the greatest physics and engineering feats ever accomplished by humans. It’s a wonderful testament to human ingenuity and was the accomplishment of almost two successive generations of scientists, in which instant gratification was not the operative philosophy,” Dr. Katepalli R. Sreenivasan explained in his welcoming remarks to the 2017 Lynford Lecture on November 30 that featured Dr. Peter Fritschel, a core member of the team who made the incredible discovery in 2015.

Dr. Fritschel joined a long line of prestigious speakers — luminaries in their fields — who have spoken at NYU Tandon School of Engineering over the past 18 years at the Lynford Lectures, which are supported by Jeffrey Lynford, the Vice Chairman of the Board for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and NYU Tandon board member, his wife Tondra, and Drs. David and Gregory Chudnovsky, co-directors of the school’s Institute for Mathematics and Advanced Supercomputing (IMAS).

Also on hand that evening was Lindsey Boylan, Chief of Staff and Executive Vice President of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Empire State Development, who shared the governor’s special connection to the Lynford Lectures. At the inaugural event in 1998, Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, introduced the lecture on string theory. “There’s certainly an unintended symmetry in my being here this evening on behalf of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 20 years after his father stood in this very room. We’ve come full circle in such a meaningful way,” Boylan expressed.

The Chudnovsky brothers presented Dr. Fritschel with the 2017 IMAS award, highlighting his leadership of “the LIGO team in harnessing the power of LIGO detectors to map the universe.”

A Senior Research Scientist at the M.I.T. LIGO Laboratory and Kavli Institute, Dr. Fritschel has worked with gravitational wave detection for over 25 years, collaborating with Weiss, his colleague, mentor, and LIGO co-founder who spoke at NYU Tandon last year. Recently named a co-recipient of the 2018 Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize for his leadership role in the development of Advanced LIGO detectors, Dr. Fritschel has co-authored multiple articles on the subject, and is a council member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC).

The Long-Awaited ‘Chirp’

Jumping across time, from the black hole merger 1.3 billion years ago to the theories of Isaac Newton and Einstein, Dr. Fritschel described the scientific discoveries and theories that spurred the development of the LIGO observatory and its goals of proving physical detection was possible.

With support from the National Science Foundation, Weiss, Thorne and Barish led a team of physicists and engineers to construct the laser interferometer observatories in both Washington State and Louisiana. Describing how the interferometers work, Dr. Fritschel explained that two L-shaped arms — spread out over 4 miles — house suspended mirrors, beam splitters, and a special cavity to repeatedly reflect micron laser beams back and forth until they eventually merge together, creating an interference pattern that allows for measurement of the most miniscule distance changes. Gravitational waves, Dr. Fritschel acknowledged, are incredibly faint and since 2008, LIGO endeavored on extensive enhancements to its detectors, developing Advanced LIGO (of which Dr. Fritschel helped lead). With its greater sensitivity, the detectors simultaneously measured the 2015 wave, or ‘chirp’ heard around the world, demonstrating the brief but monumental moment the wave passed through the Earth.

Dr. Fritschel described LIGO’s continued detection of gravitational waves, including this past August’s detection of waves from merging neutron stars. Much of the future of gravitational wave detection and mapping of the universe rests on the collaborative efforts of detectors across the world (and even one that will be in space), he explained.

Moderating the evening’s panel, Lynford led a unique conversation between Fritschel, Andrew MacFayden, NYU Associate Professor of Physics and the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, and Szabolcs Marka, Walter O. LeCroy Jr. Professor Physics at Columbia, on the far-reaching impact of LIGO’s work, the next generation of wave detection and discoveries about neutron stars, and advice for the future physicists and engineers — the students at universities like NYU Tandon.

Fritschel offered some words of wisdom: “If you find yourself working on a problem you find interesting and challenging, and you’re working with a great team, that’s what will keep you going, even if you don’t know where it will lead.”

Originally published at: https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/ligo-scientist-details-history-gravitational-wave-detection