Intersections - The Unconventional Engineer Vol.2 by NYUTandon

WE DEFEND 5

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

W E P OWE R

ENGIN

At Tandon, we’ve long recognized that innovation occurs not only within disciplines, but at the intersections between them, and while not “staying in our lanes’’ can be messy and, at times, downright uncomfortable, some of our most exciting work is occurring in areas

CYBER SECURITY

where different knowledge bases and skill sets are coming together in novel ways to solve a particular issue. As dean, I’m in the lucky position of witnessing this unconventional web of partnerships being forged — across departments, schools, fields, and even continents — to advance areas of vital importance. I’ve been watching our faculty, students, and alumni pull together to build creative and smart, connected and secure, sustainable and healthy, urban communities. And while Tandon is home to people of many different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and ways of working, it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me what we all have in common: an uncommon willingness to leverage those differences to make real progress in advancingly difficult but worthy areas. And that gives me great hope for the future.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

SUSTAINABILITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEERING OPPORTUNITY

11 Data Science / AI / Robotics

URBAN

19 Urban

DATA SCIENCE AI ROBOTICS

NYU TANDON

Sustainability

33 Wireless

HEALTH

37 Health

WIRELESS

41 Cybersecurity

EMERGING MEDIA

45 Emerging Media

49 Engineering Opportunity

Celebrating uncommon achievements in an uncommon year Despite an undeniably challenging year, NYU Tandon continued to rack up major achievements thanks to our collaborative way of working.

A leap of 44 positions since 2009 to #36 in the 2022 U.S. News and World Report Best Graduate Engineering School Rankings

A 450% increase in research expenditures over the last decade

Increased gender parity, with women making up 46% of the class of 2023

97% of undergraduate students receiving job offers or entering graduate school within 6 months after graduation

Recent undergraduates’ starting salaries 29% above national average for STEM

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

#1 computer graphics and visualization program in the country according to CSRankings

Top-5 cybersecurity master’s degree programs according to CSO

#1 civil engineering masters according to Intelligent.com

#2 best master’s of financial engineering program according to TFE Times and top-5 quant finance master’s programs on Risk.net

#5 Top Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) College in the U.S. according to Animation Career Review

DATA SCIENCE / AI / ROBOTICS

We make AI systems smarter & fairer THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIBLE AI: Where data science and social science unite for the common good The evolution and wider use of artificial

Stoyanovich and her colleagues aren’t focused

intelligence (AI) is creating an ethical crisis

only on NYU Tandon students or on the technical

in computer science that strikes at the core

and computer science aspects of Responsible AI,

of who we are. Institute Associate Professor

either. The Center’s other efforts span policy and

of Computer Science and Engineering Julia

public education initiatives through collaboration

Stoyanovich, who co-founded the Center for

at the hyper-local and global level, including:

Responsible AI and is a member of the Center for Data Science, explains that when we ask

•M ounting a transatlantic panel series

AI to move beyond games, like chess or Go, in

open to the public to explore how AI works,

which the rules are the same irrespective of a

the impact it has, the pitfalls it can pose,

player’s gender, race, or abilities, and look for

and the framework needed to ensure its

it to perform tasks that allocate resources or

responsible use across sectors from medicine

predict social outcomes — such as deciding who

to finance to art.

gets a job or a loan or which sidewalks in a city should be fixed first — we quickly discover that

•W orking with the Queens Public library and

embedded in the data are social, political, and

P2PU to develop a free, five-week course and

cultural biases that distort results, because the

related public video content that gives citizens

human programmers inputting the data can have

a “101” on AI, and empowers them to advocate

conscious and unconscious biases of their own.

for policies that prevent its abuses.

She’s dedicated to rooting out that bias and training a new generation of engineers about the

•C reating a widely available (and highly

social implications of the technology they build.

engaging) comic book series, “Mirror, Mirror,”

AI can’t really be used effectively unless it’s also

with the help of the Center’s artist-in-residence,

used responsibly, she says — and good, unbiased

Falaah Arif Khan, to spread the word about the

data is key.

importance of using data wisely.

JULIA STOYANOVICH Associate Professor

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Da t a S c i e n ce / A I / Robotics

MAKING IT AN AWARD-WINNING YEAR The National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards are given in support of early-career faculty members who have the potential to serve as academic role models and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. This past year, two more researchers joined the over 50% of NYU Tandon’s junior faculty members who hold CAREER Awards or similar younginvestigator honors. They’re both tackling the task of creating better, more efficient AI systems, each from their own angle. • Deep learning (DL) technology is now used increasingly in physics, medicine, and chemistry, and for applications like image, speech, and video recognition; image segmentation; and natural language processing. Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Anna Choromanska was honored for research focusing on new, more efficient ways of training DL models — a process that typically consumes resources, time, and money, compromising the progress of public and private sectors that rely on DL, and limiting its deployment in new applications. Choromanska’s project aims to overcome these issues by describing universal properties of DL systems that hold across a variety of DL models and data sets, thus making possible a new generation of DL training strategies that are efficient, accurate, and scalable. • Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Christopher Musco was honored for his focus on new ways of processing and analyzing massive data sets from such sources as

scientific simulations, urban data, and web content. Typically, datadriven discovery and decision making for science, engineering, and industry requires enormous computational effort, making the process both costly and time consuming. The goal of Musco’s work is to develop new algorithms capable of efficiently processing the world’s largest datasets without the need for the world’s largest supercomputers. To achieve this, Musco and his team are employing a powerful algorithmic technique known as “matrix sketching,” the purpose of which is to quickly compress a large dataset (represented as a matrix of numbers) down to its most essential information by eliminating redundancy and noise. Additionally, this year, Yann LeCun — Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Silver Professor of Computer Science at Courant, and Professor at the NYU Center for Data Science and NYU Center for Neural Science — was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. An ACM Turing Award Laureate and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, LeCun is widely celebrated for his seminal breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, specifically deep learning and convolutional neural networks — the very foundation of modern computer vision, speech recognition, speech synthesis, image synthesis, and natural language processing. Without his work, it’s safe to say, physicians might not be using AI to accurately diagnose disease, autonomous vehicles might not be a reality, and Siri and Alexa might not be so responsive to your voice commands.

Institute Professor MAURIZIO PORFIRI’S research spans many areas, including the structural properties of the Venus’ flower basket sponge which could lead to advanced designs for structures.

Data Science / AI / Robotics Health Sustainability Urban

We make data work across disciplines Maurizio Porfiri is an NYU Tandon Institute Professor with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Civil and Urban Engineering, and as a core faculty member at the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). Even with the premise that it takes multidisciplinary expertise to solve important problems, it’s an impressive array for just one engineer. Perhaps even more impressive is the wide variety of research that Porfiri — who is currently principal investigator or coprincipal investigator on nine National Science Foundation-funded projects — undertakes. Named to Popular Science’s “Brilliant 10” list for his work with biologically inspired aquatic robots, he has also delved into issues involving gun violence, smart materials, and COVID-19, among other topics that might not seem to have much in common on the surface. Dig a little deeper, Porfiri asserts, and the commonality becomes clearer.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

How do animals behave? How do people reach consensus? How does a pandemic spread? What happens when particles collide? These all involve dynamic, complex systems, and that’s the underlying layer, he explains. Once you decide upon the questions you want to answer — whatever those questions may be — you need to study the interactions taking place. It’s easy to see, then, why Porfiri’s lab at NYU Tandon is called the Dynamical Systems Laboratory. Once Porfiri — the recipient of Tandon’s Excellence in Research Award — begins exploring an issue, his work involves analyzing time-series data to come up with inferences, modeling systems in order to extrapolate information, and examining the control problems that emerge. His novel methods for measuring spatial dependencies makes even small data act BIG.

Among some of the NSF-funded projects he has undertaken at the intersections of data and health, materials, and social behavior: •E ngaging stroke patients and others with upper-limb weakness in interesting citizen-science initiatives that can be integrated into their otherwise tedious physical therapy regimes with the use of haptic joysticks to increase compliance and improve the experience of telerehabilitation •B uilding a mathematical model specifically for the city’s unique social and transportation structures using data from New Rochelle — the New York suburb first seriously afflicted by COVID-19 — to help health and government leaders make smart, up-to-date testing and contact-tracing decisions

•D isentangling causes from effects in coordinated swimming among large schools of fish in order to contribute a mathematically principled, experimentally grounded approach to quantifying information flow in groups of dynamical systems •D etermining how the use of artificially intelligent tools in the medical field affects physician work practices and the expert-patient relationship •A dvancing the understanding of the sometimes surprising causal relationships among potentially contributing factors to firearm-related harm, such as prevalence of gun purchases, state legislation, media exposure, and perceptions of firearm safety

•P redicting how the cascading effects of migration from flooded areas of Bangladesh will ultimately affect 1.3 million people across the country by 2050 — work that has implications for coastal populations worldwide •S tudying the remarkable structural properties of the Venus flower basket sponge (E. aspergillum) to gain insight into how the organism’s latticework of holes and ridges influences the hydrodynamics of seawater — work that could lead to advanced designs for buildings, bridges, marine vehicles, and anything that must respond safely to forces imposed by the flow of air or water

Data Science / AI / R o b o t i c s

We make robots work . . . in the air •A ssistant Professor of Electrical & Computer and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Giuseppe Loianno is exploring ways of making drones more stable mid-flight while carrying swinging loads. Typically, engineering aerial drones to maintain stability while lofting cargo is an expensive and complex endeavor. Research by Loianno and his team at the Agile Robotics and Perception Lab (ARPL) has made such capabilities possible in smaller, more affordable drones. The investigators are able to keep the drone in control over its payload, which dangles underneath, solely with onboard equipment. “We want drones to be capable of operating efficiently in less-than-optimal conditions, such as crowded urban areas with lots of physical obstacles or locales where GPS is difficult to access,” graduate student Guanrui Li says. “Drones can be sent into situations no person would want to be in, such as inspecting a nuclear reactor or undertaking a perilous search-and-rescue mission. One day you may even look up and see a team of drones delivering a heavy package to your door.” •A drone that can operate safely near dangerous power lines? That vision is becoming a reality thanks to Manifold Robotics, a company launched by alum Jeffrey Laut (then a student) and Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri. Manifold recently partnered with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, which granted them a license for its power line detect-and-avoid technology, and will be working to keep unmanned aerial vehicles safe while inspecting power lines (or while flying anywhere near them).

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Data Science / A I / R o b ot i c s

Health

. . . on the ground • Robots capable of the sophisticated motions that define advanced physical actions like walking, jumping, and navigating terrain can cost $50,000 or more, making real-world experimentation prohibitively expensive for many. Last year, a team at NYU Tandon helped design a relatively low-cost, easy-and-fast-to-assemble quadruped robot called “Solo 8” that could be upgraded and modified, opening the door to sophisticated research and development to teams on limited budgets, including those at startups, smaller labs, or teaching institutions. This year, the team has refined the robot, now called “Solo 12,” which has even more capabilities. For organizations without the resources to undertake the open-source project on their own, it’s now possible to buy Solo 12 either fully assembled or in kit form, thanks to a partnership with Barcelona-based PAL Robotics. Solo 12 is not the only robot perambulating around Tandon’s Machines in Motion Laboratory, which is run by Associate

Professor of Electrical & Computer and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Ludovic Righetti. His team also recently developed Bolt, a biped robot capable of dynamic walking thanks to a novel algorithm. “If you understand how humans and animals move, you can devise algorithms that will allow biped and quadruped robots to move in a similar fashion,” Avadesh Meduri, a graduate student who works in the Lab, explains. “If you can figure out a way for robots to walk on uneven terrain without falling or grasp delicate objects without breaking them, they could be used in endless ways. There are too many practical applications to list completely here: everything from better-performing exoskeletons for those without use of their limbs to robots capable of climbing scaffolding to aid construction workers, entering burning buildings to save inhabitants, assisting in surgery, and deactivating landmines. We’re in an exciting and transformative period. Robots are going to be making people safer, healthier, and more productive.”

•L ike toddlers, bipedal robots are inherently unstable. Sometimes the problem comes from the terrain it is navigating: is it uneven or rocky? Sometimes the robot itself has insufficient control or an unwieldy design. Other times, outside interactions are a factor: a legged robot that is pushed hard enough will inevitably topple. Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Joo H. Kim, who heads Tandon’s Applied Dynamics and Optimization Laboratory, and his team of graduate student researchers have introduced an algorithmic framework that can estimate the balance stability states of a biped system and used it to demonstrate walking and push recovery control. The goal, he has explained, is to know if a robot is well-balanced enough, discovering that in advance computationally, rather than out in the field, where a toppling robot could do damage to itself or its surroundings.

SOLO 8, an open-source research quadruped robot

Data Science / AI / R o b o t i c s

Wireless

. . . in the cloud There are many real-world — and, someday,

complex robots. However, state-of-the-art control

off-world — applications for lightweight,

algorithms for legged robots can only tolerate

energy-efficient, fully autonomous robots. Yet

very low control delays, which even ultra-low-

the more autonomous a robot is, the greater

latency 5G edge computing can sometimes fail

its computational requirements. Onboarding

to achieve. A multidisciplinary team of Tandon

the components to handle this computational

researchers — including Ludovic Righetti and

function adds weight and cost and reduces the

Siddharth Garg, Sundeep Rangan, and Elza Erkip

potential for applications in hostile environments.

of the Department of Electrical and Computer

It might thus be desirable to offload intensive

Engineering and members of NYU WIRELESS

computation — not only sensing and planning,

— are now investigating cloud-based whole-

but also low-level whole-body control — to

body control of legged robots over a 5G link. In

remote servers in order to reduce on-board

simulations, their novel approach has significantly

computational needs. 5G wireless cellular

reduced on-board computational needs while

technology, with its low latency and high

increasing robustness.

bandwidth capabilities, has the potential to unlock cloud-based high-performance control of

Data Science / AI / R o b o t i c s

Wireless

Urban

. . . and in outer space What do Coney Island and Mars have in common? Ask the NYU Robotics Design Team. It takes a lot to capture the attention of New Yorkers, but carrying an autonomous Mars rover on the subway from Downtown Brooklyn to Coney Island will generally do the trick, according to the members of the NYU Robotics Design Team. The team used the iconic beach while preparing to take part in NASA’s annual Robotic Mining Competition, which challenges students from across the country to design and build a fully autonomous robot capable of mining regolith, the powdery substance that covers the surface of Mars. While fun, the contest has a serious purpose: In order to sustain human life on Mars and enable a return trip back to Earth, NASA is researching In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). If robotic excavators can be developed to extract raw resources, they can then be converted into water, fuel, building media, and other useful materials.

The sand at Coney Island, augmented with a base layer of gravel, stood in for Martian regolith as the team tested PIPER (Project Inter-Planetary Excavation Rover), drawing awed crowds as the autonomous machine excavated the material and deposited it at a collection point — with the goal being to gather as much as possible, as quickly and efficiently as possible. The long subway rides and testing paid off: the team won the top prize in the innovation category, thanks in large part to an unusual set of legs that could raise and lower the excavator as needed; placed first in the live video presentation category, which had been instituted during COVID because competitors could not travel to the Kennedy Space Station to demonstrate their work; and were named one of the top teams overall. They also placed third in the public outreach category, because of the work they had done throughout the year with the city’s K-12 teachers and students — particularly challenging at a time of remote learning.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Data Science / AI / Ro b ot i c s Wireless

PRESENTING ON A GLOBAL STAGE The IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation is widely acknowledged to be the world’s largest and most important gathering devoted to those fields, and in 2021 NYU Tandon researchers made their presence felt, conducting multiple workshops, speaking on panels, and presenting 18 papers on a variety of topics, including advancements in human-robot interfaces, multi-target visual tracking, and robotic stability.

The NYU Robotics team works on the Mars rover in the MakerGarage (above) and tests it on the beach in Coney Island Associate Professor LUDOVIC RIGHETTI, seen here working on a robotic arm, is developing ways for robots to perform complex functions without the burden of onboard computational hardware

URBAN C2SMART, a Tier 1 USDOT University Transportation Center, leads transportation research efforts at NYU and provides opportunities for students to work on real-world urban mobility problems.

Urban

Da t a S c i e n ce / A I / Robotics

Health

Sustainability

Wireless

We make cities better places to live work and play C2SMART: The research center at the forefront of all things urban C2SMART (Connected Cities with Smart

The Center has deep connections to the

high-accuracy sensors on the cantilevered

Transportation), a USDOT Tier 1 University

city and several key initiatives. One of the

section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

Transportation Center launched in 2016,

most innovative and timely initiatives of

(BQE). This section of the BQE, which was

uses cities as living laboratories to study

C2SMART researchers was in developing a

studied and reviewed by Mayor de Blasio’s

challenging transportation problems and

deep-learning object-detection method to

Expert Panel, is a critical transportation

find data- and tech-driven solutions. Their

use live video feeds from public Department

link in New York City and the center of

research encompasses autonomous mobility,

of Transportation (DOT) cameras installed

a multibillion-dollar rehabilitation effort.

ride sharing and micro-mobility, infrastructure

on city streets to determine pedestrian

Through C2SMART’s work on the panel, a new

resiliency, transportation/traffic safety, big

and traffic volume densities on city streets

approach to measuring and understanding

data for planning for smart cities, equity in

remotely using existing infrastructure. This

the load on the structure was observed.

transportation, accessibility for disadvantaged

effort, originally envisioned to estimate the

Subsequently, C2SMART was formally added

travelers, and more.

ability for pedestrians to social distance,

to NYCDOT’s team with real-time monitoring

allowed researchers to also observe the

of the structure using new technologies,

With a focus on accelerating technology

drop and recovery of pedestrian, bicycle,

including high-tech weigh-in-motion (WIM)

transfer from the research phase to the

and vehicular traffic volumes using existing

sensors. This pioneering research project

real world, researchers at C2SMART are

infrastructure. This provided a new data

has the potential to change the way weight

making state-of-the-art predictive artificial

source while also not exposing researchers to

limits are enforced on our aging and critical

intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML)

potential risk of transmission of COVID while

infrastructure.

models, as well as high-fidelity transportation

collecting data. As part of this work led by

simulation models, to decision-makers to

Senior Research Associate Jannie Gao and

These two efforts over the past year extend

address a wide range of urban mobility

Professor Kaan Ozbay, they used innovative

Professor Ozbay’s visiom when establishing

problems and break down the barriers to

AI-based approaches for image processing

C2SMART as a USDOT Center, and have

innovation. Over the course of the last year,

that have been widely recognized in the field.

helped C2SMART grow into a premier

C2SMART also focused on the effects of

research center for solving important urban

the pandemic on urban mobility, given the

C2SMART researchers Professors Hani Nassif

mobility and infrastructure problems using

unprecedented shift in demand and usage

and Kaan Ozbay, are working hand-in-hand

AI and ML-based data analytic and big data.

with changed travel demand, economic

with NYCDOT to address one of the most

C2SMART continues to also be a trusted

activity, and social-distancing and stay-at-

pressing infrastructure problems of the

research provider for the New York State

home policies.

city by collecting real-time data using

Department of Transportation (NYSDOT),

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Urban

with research projects ranging from traffic

such as congestion pricing — since measuring

management software to bridge deterioration,

demand for emerging transportation

under their $12 million on-call partnership.

technologies and policies can vary depending on a multitude of factors, and those effects

C2SMART’s FloodSense project was launched

are not well-captured with industry-standard

in 2020, led by (Elizabeth Henaff, Tega Brain,

static travel demand models.

Andrea Silverman, and Charlie Mydlarz), and is part of the NYC FloodNet consortium, in

Research by Joseph Chow, Deputy Director

partnership with CUNY and the NYC Mayor’s

of the Center, recently published in the journal

Offices of Climate Resiliency and the Chief

Transportation Science, involves development

Technology Officer (www.floodnet.nyc). The project developed a publicly accessible platform that provides real-time flood information through revolutionary sensors capable of overcoming common sensor challenges (including durability, connectivity, and power). The sensors are designed to help cities respond to emergencies by providing real-time information on flood depth, frequency, and duration. A data dashboard is currently under development to also allow community members to access flood data and additional data streams, such as rainfall data, 311 flooding complaints, and social media feeds, as well as the digital infrastructure necessary to log, process, and present this data for quick and efficient response. “The New Normal: Combating Storm-Related Extreme Weather in New York City,” a recent report by the NYC Mayor’s Office, outlines a series of planned initiatives to improve the resiliency of New York City in light of recent Hurricanes Ida and Henri. Among them are

To see the future of transportation, look no further than the 100th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The event typically brings together 14,000 experts and practitioners from around the world to discuss emerging trends in transportation and infrastructure, with an eye to the future of how we get from point A to point B. At this year’s TRB, C2SMART once again made their mark. More than 100 C2SMART faculty, postdocs and students gave presentations at the event, covering everything from how ridesharing technology affects mass transportation usage to the cultural perceptions of autonomous vehicles and how that affects their adoption.

of an algorithmic model that optimizes Electric Vehicle (EV) charging for car-sharing fleets, solving a major challenge as society moves to EVs that are cleaner than internal combustion engine vehicles but take longer to fuel. We’re also concerned with safety and accessibility. Professor Ozbay and his students are continuing to advance the field of traffic safety by taking advantage of the unique data obtained from connected vehicles and drones. As part of this work, in 2021 they published their traffic safety related research in Analytical Methods in Accident Research and Accident Analysis and Prevention journals with a focus on better understanding the causal relationships among actual crashes and near-crash events with the goal of developing proactive safety models. Professor Ozbay’s team is leading the task of field evaluation of a smart app for pedestrians

a proposed expansion of the Flood Sensor

with visual disabilities as part of the one-

Network developed by the FloodNet

of-a-kind multi-million-dollar USDOT NYC

team citywide.

Connected Vehicle Pilot test lead by NYCDOT.

The emerging transportation modes and

Joint work between NYU and UTEP at the

technologies we’re exploring have made an

Center led by C2SMART Associate Directors

impact. The Center’s researchers created

Kelvin Cheu and Joseph Chow used machine

the first open-source multi-agent simulation

learning to explore the possibilities of an

model for New York City, called MATSim-NYC,

algorithm called a recommender system —

to support agencies in evaluating policies

like the technology Amazon uses to suggest

products, or that Netflix uses to recommend movies — for mobility-on-demand services. Public paratransit services, private rideshare companies, and future autonomous vehicle fleets could use them to improve operations and lower costs. Our students are a priority. In the fall of 2020, C2SMART launched the “C2SMART Student Learning Hub,” free for all consortium member students. Students were able to access learning from a variety of course domains, including data science, computer science, and traffic simulation. The Hub is designed to offer students hands-on experience to learn the tools and skills they will need as they advance their careers, whether in academia, industry, or within government agencies. Throughout Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, the Student Learning Hub offered a variety of courses, taught by a range of experts in the transportation field. This semester, we have attracted 105 students, across 14 universities, from 6 states in the US and 7 countries internationally. We worked with agency and industry partners to deliver programs and provided our students with access to researchers and professionals to learn both professional and academic skills. This initiative has been recognized by USDOT as a UTCleading effort to be adopted more widely.

CUSP, located in the former MTA headquarters in downtown Brooklyn, works to create a more livable sustainable urban environment in New York City

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Urban

Data Science / AI / Robotics

Emerging Media

Health

Sustainability

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CENTER FOR URBAN SCIENCE + PROGRESS: We make urban environments more livable using data and New York City as a living laboratory

If you’re looking to be part of datainformed, tech-driven solutions to urban problems, there’s simply no better place to go than Brooklyn — home to the Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP). Being fully embedded in the fastest-growing technology ecosystem in the country means there’s an unprecedented amount of data to work with and a plethora of ways to apply it in service of cities worldwide. Researchers at CUSP have a front-row seat to explore ways to make cities more resilient, more accessible, and more sustainable, while providing tools to city agencies and governments to evaluate how to make those changes happen in a smarter, more effective, and more equitable way. •L et’s start with the fact that in a city of 8 million, there are often 8 million points of view, but one thing that seems to resonate for a vast majority of city dwellers is noise; and while the city that never sleeps in a badge we wear with pride, sometimes a good night’s sleep is a necessity. Noise pollution is the single most reported complaint to New York City’s 311 system and it is a concern across various city agencies, from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to the Department of Buildings. With the support of the NSF and City health and environmental agencies, CUSP — led by Professor Juan Pablo Bello, who also directs the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL) at NYU Steinhardt — launched Sounds of New York City (SONYC), a first-of-its-kind comprehensive research initiative to understand and address noise pollution

in New York and beyond. The project — which involves large-scale noise monitoring — leverages the latest in machine learning technology, big data analysis, and citizen science reporting to more effectively monitor, analyze, and mitigate urban noise pollution. The ultimate goals of the team, which includes Co-PIs Associate Professor Luke DuBois and Professor Oded Nov, are to create technological solutions that enable city agencies to take effective, information-driven action for noise mitigation. Bello is an author on the paper “Deep Convolutional Neural Networks and Data Augmentation for Environmental Sound Classification,” which recently won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Signal Processing Society (SPS) Signal Processing Letters Best Paper Award. In it, they set forth the idea of employing deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) — a class of neural networks originally developed for computer vision tasks — to learn discriminative spectro-temporal patterns in environmental sounds. They were among the first researchers ever to explore this application. • I n other CUSP news, Associate Professor of Urban Analytics Daniel B. Neill — who is also an associate professor of computer science and public service at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the Courant Institute Department of Computer Science — is leading a three-year research project centered

on the growing use of AI by urban, public sector organizations, work that will include the creation of open-source tools for assessing and correcting biases. The end result, his team hopes, will be to reduce incarceration by equitably providing supportive interventions to justice-involved populations, to prioritize housing inspections and repairs, to assess and improve the fairness of civil and criminal court proceedings, and to analyze the disparate health impacts of adverse environmental exposures, including poor-quality housing and aggressive, unfair policing practices, thus advancing social justice for the most vulnerable among us.

Urban

This year Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering and CUSP faculty member Debra Laefer was honored by the New York State GIS Association, a group of Geographic Information Systems professionals, for her use of geospatial data in 3D-mapping the spread of Covid-19. Her study also set the groundwork for new machine-learning models to speed the analysis of how a virus spreads in urban areas.

Urban

Health

Sustainability

We make cities safer when disaster strikes YU Tandon researchers are at the N forefront of urban resiliency. Consider what happens when a transformer overloads — a not uncommon occurrence. Because an overload in one area may cripple services in distant neighborhoods, full knowledge of subsurface infrastructure is critical to improving natural hazard resilience, identifying threats and vulnerabilities, and designing effective mitigation strategies. CUSP faculty member and Professor of Civil and

Urban

Sustainability

Urban Engineering Debra Laefer is now bolstering the ability of first New York City and, ultimately, of cities nationwide to prepare for and respond to crises and disasters by making critical information on community infrastructure robust, open, transparent, and easy for key stakeholders to share and act upon. Her latest project, called Unification for Underground Resilience Measures (UNUM), aims to create seamless, interoperable, 3D data storage and visualization systems — and encourage stakeholders to share data with appropriate security measures in place.

Wireless

We make the power grid stronger, safer, and more efficient Assistant Professor of Electrical and

economics of the power grid requires

Dvorkin, also a faculty member at

Computer Engineering and Goddard

performing computations over large-

Tandon’s Center for Urban Science and

Junior Faculty Fellow Yury Dvorkin is

scale, hierarchical, multi-agent networks,

Progress, is dedicated to ensuring that

conducting research that lies at the

and furthermore, as power grids adopt

the complexity of integrating new smart

heart of the national debate over climate

more customer-end and renewable

technologies and legacy infrastructure

change and energy security — areas with enormous and direct societal implications. He explains that as a researcher, he feels responsible for taking every meaningful step possible to contribute scienceinformed input to that debate and inform both decision-makers and the general public about evolving perils — and the best strategies to address them. His work revolves around the mathematical modeling of energy systems

generation technologies, it becomes more important to account for their inherent uncertainty and lower controllability, which in turn complicates modeling and computational efforts even more and impedes capturing the economic value of emerging smart grid technologies. It is also important to consider how these smart grid technologies can help achieve ambitious goals in other sectors, for example transportation electrification.

doesn’t lead to more operationally conservative, less efficient, less reliable, and more wasteful practices. Among his work has been his creation of a stochastic and risk-informed market design, which cost-effectively accommodates the stochasticity of renewable generation resources and provides adequate incentives to market participants – a boon since traditional deterministic market designs face deteriorating efficiency as more renewable generation

and the development and application

As more electric vehicles are adopted

of control, optimization, and system-

in the U.S. , it grows increasingly vital to

known for his research on smart electric

theoretic methods for their operations

ensure that every electric vehicle driver

power distribution, which has helped

and planning. It’s a complex undertaking:

has access to reliable and affordable

grid operators control and manage

accurately representing physics and

charging infrastructure.

electric power distribution processes by

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

resources are deployed. He is also well-

Urban Data Science / AI / Ro b ot i c s Wireless

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Zhong-Ping Jiang, who directs Tandon’s Control and Network (CAN) Lab, has been elected to Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe). Jiang — who is also an affiliated member of Tandon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Telecommunications (CATT) and C2SMART — focuses on interdisciplinary problems that cross the borders between wireless communications and urban issues to advance connected and autonomous vehicles, robotic networks, cyber-physical systems, and more. He was elected as a foreign member of Academia Europaea on the basis of his outstanding contributions to the nonlinear small-gain theory and a theory for learning-based control being developed at Tandon.

carefully evaluating power availability and deliverability in the presence of “smart” demand response and distributed energy resources, while concurrently using better methods to achieve optimal power flow and operate grid infrastructure under uncertain conditions.

scale decarbonization under the leadership of the current administration. In the U.S., large-scale infrastructure systems like power grids often cross state jurisdictional boundaries, and Dvorkin is credited as the first researcher to present a model to account for these split jurisdictions, calling upon game theory and high-

a sufficient number of “smart” resources, such as electric vehicles, and he is the first to carry out simulations of such attacks and evaluate their impacts using real-world data. Alarmingly, Dvorkin’s group has discovered that exploiting a vulnerability in smartphone apps for charging stations, malicious actors need to compromise

Dvorkin is often called to comment on power issues before government committees and in the media, and he has deep expertise in answering questions of where and in what quantities to roll-out emerging energy technologies to ensure their most efficient usage, maximize their complementarity, and reduce overall capital investment. Answering these questions, he explains, requires bridging the divide between policymaking and the economic-engineering modeling of power system expansion, especially as the nation embarks on an ambitious deep, society-

performance algorithms.

only about 500 vehicles to cause a brown or blackout in Manhattan, a finding he immediately conveyed to ConEdison. He also recently ascertained that the COVID-19 pandemic was exacerbating socioeconomic disparities in access to urban infrastructure and quality of electricity service and designed a real-time dashboard so emergency responders could prioritize the most vulnerable communities.

Among his most recent work is investigating emerging vulnerabilities, both engineering and social, that arise in electric power systems as they increasingly rely on new information and communication technologies – and are increasingly exposed to high-impact disturbances such as cyberattacks, natural disasters, and epidemics. He has, for example, developed a modeling framework to analyze cybersecurity threats that arise in electric power distribution systems with

SUSTAINABILITY

We make our planet more sustainable URBAN FUTURE LAB: The entrepreneurial hub making climate a priority NYU Tandon’s Urban Future Lab (UFL), led by

four private companies’ technologies as it rolls

Managing Director Pat Sapinsley, is the center of

out a landmark law limiting greenhouse gases

cleantech innovation in New York. It’s leading the

from buildings. Three of the four have ties to

way to a more sustainable world by connecting

the UFL: WexEnergy, developers of a simple,

people, capital, and purpose to advance market-

cost-effective window retrofit that improves

ready solutions to address climate change.

energy performance, and Zinc8 Energy Solutions, which offers safe, robust, and long-duration

They recently launched the Carbon to Value

energy storage to utilities, commercial and

(C2V) Initiative, a unique, multi-year program

industrial sectors, micro-grids, and renewable

driving the creation of a thriving innovation

energy developers, are current UFL members,

ecosystem for the commercialization of

and another, Radiator Labs, makers of a smart

carbontech — technologies that capture and

radiator cover that eliminates overheating,

convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) into valuable

is a graduate.

end products or services. The startups in their inaugural cohort include Air Co., which

The UFL is not helping only U.S. startups. This

transforms CO₂ into high-purity alcohols that

year it joined a collaboration to help electric

can be used in spirits, sanitizers, and other

mobility, climate tech, and distributed energy

products; Carbfix, which provides a natural and

businesses from the U.K. find a foothold on this

permanent carbon storage solution by turning

side of the pond, providing a landing pad for

CO₂ into stone underground; and Mars Materials,

Innovate UK’s Global Incubator Programme

developers of a new pathway for carbon fiber

(GIP), which is designed to cultivate and support

production using CO₂ as a raw material. (C2V has

the launch of innovative cleantech companies

also established an advisory council comprising

with a strong potential to scale internationally

corporate, academic, and government thought

to new markets.

leaders: among them are representatives of ConEdison, the Consulate General of Canada,

The program has provided eight U.K.-based

Mitsubishi, the New York State Energy Research

businesses with the opportunity to explore

and Development Authority, and Unilever.)

the potential of the U.S. market and access to world-class mentors. The cohort will consist

The fledgling companies in the C2V cohort are

of businesses in electric mobility, distributed

finding plenty of inspiration at the UFL: This

energy, and technologies focused on reducing

year New York City announced that it would

greenhouse gas emissions or addressing the

support changes to its building code to include

effects of global warming.

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Sustainability Engineering Opportunity Urban

DRIVING SUSTAINABILITY This year Forbes, in partnership with Audi of America and NYU Tandon, hosted the fourth annual Forbes Idea Incubator, which challenged Tandon’s female students to brainstorm ways to close the gender gap in EV buyers. That gap has been well-documented: under half of those now purchasing EVs are female, and studies have indicated that many women fear that EVs are more expensive than gas vehicles to purchase and maintain and won’t have enough range before the next charge, potentially leaving them stranded. This year’s winning idea was Electrocar, a product that allows girls from ages six to 10 to build a model electric car and control it with an accompanying app, which also features games, educational information, and more. Coming in at second place was EVX, a social media platform that educates environmentally conscious young drivers, builds community, and gives personalized recommendations. The winners shared in the Audi Drive Progress Grant, a $50,000 fund providing financial assistance for student tuition and related expenses.

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Associate Professor ANDRÉ TAYLOR in his lab developing greener, cost effective rechargeable batteries and perovskite photovoltaic systems

Sustainability

Engineering Opportunity

We make power sources more efficient and manufacturing more sustainable Associate Professor of Chemical and

materials a reality — a cost-effective and greener

Biomolecular Engineering André Taylor was

alternative to high-cost lithium-ion batteries.

recently honored as one of 1,000 Inspiring Black Scientists in America. Inspiring, however, doesn’t

Taylor’s lab is also addressing the dangers that

really cover it: several other adjectives also apply,

electromagnetic radiation poses to mobile

including forward-thinking, pioneering, and

devices, by developing a cost-effective process

world-changing.

for making strong, flexible films that allow light in but keep electromagnetic interference (EMI)

Taylor, who came to NYU Tandon following

out. The novel approach, using a unique family

a tenured professorship at Yale, reaches for

of EMI-blocking materials called MXenes, led to

the sun: much of his work involves designing

a 38% enhancement of EMI-shielding efficiency

revolutionary photovoltaic systems and

over conventional methods. A paper on his

envisioning new ways to fabricate them at

lab’s work on MXenes, published in Advanced

scale, using sustainable, longer lasting, and

Functional Materials, was cited as one of the

more durable materials. For example, over the

journal’s most downloaded for the year. Better

past decade Taylor and researchers in his lab

add most-influential to that list of adjectives.

have pioneered a new family of organic solar cells — such as those using natural photoactive

Additionally, this past year Taylor led a team

materials like perovskite — that could be cheaper

of investigators that created a means of

to fabricate than silicon-based cells, more

vastly increasing the speed and efficiency

efficient to use, durable enough to withstand the

of a key doping process for perovskite solar

ravages of weather, and flexible for applications

cells, one that also sequesters CO2. Headed

in everything from electric vehicles to wearable

by Taylor and Jaemin Kong, a postdoctoral

electronics, or even backpacks that charge

associate, along with Assistant Professor Miguel

cell phones.

Modestino — also in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering — the team

Most industries are benefiting from rapid

additionally included researchers from Samsung,

advances in battery technology, and Taylor’s

Yale University, Korea Research Institute of

work in this area includes innovations in low-

Chemical Technology, the Graduate Center of the

cost rechargeable battery designs, including

City University, Wonkwang University, and the

one using electrodes coated with easy-to-obtain

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology,

asphalt. This research could, for example, make

making it a truly global effort — as well as one

rechargeable sodium-ion batteries based on low-

that surmounted the boundaries of academia and

cost, abundant, easily processed, and non-toxic

the private sector. 28

Sustainability

We make a dirty process cleaner Taylor is now involved in a collaboration

involve moving away from thermally

of a positive and negative electrolyte

meant to spark — literally — a

driven chemical reactions and separation

stored in two separate tanks. When the

fundamental change in how the U.S.

processes that require heat from fossil

liquids are pumped into the battery cell

chemical industry operates. The goal is to

fuels and moving towards reactions that

stack situated between the tanks, a redox

address the most daunting task looming

use electricity generated by renewable

reaction occurs and generates electricity

over the industry: how to make industrial

resources, like wind and solar. While this

at the battery’s electrodes.

chemistry — especially petrochemistry

migration has already started to occur,

— greener and more sustainable, partly

with penetration of renewable sources

Several NYU researchers recently

to meet the escalating demands of

into the U.S. electrical grid doubling in

published a paper in the journal Cell

greenhouse emission regulations. The

the past decade, the technologies for

Reports Physical Science that looks at

nascent, multi-institutional effort will

integrating these sources into cost-

improving the energy storage capabilities

be called Decarbonizing Chemical

effective electrified chemical processes

and economics of these RFBs.

Manufacturing Using Sustainable

has remained practically non-existent.

Electrification, or DC-MUSE.

The researchers didn’t simply tweak “After meeting with many chemical

RFB technology to improve its energy

DC-MUSE’s aim is to develop technologies

industry representatives, we learned

density or reduce their costs. Instead of

and strategies to help the U.S. chemical

that technologies that would enable

just plugging RFBs into renewable energy

industry migrate from thermal-based

electrification on the industrial scale don’t

sources to store their intermittent energy

manufacturing processes to electricity-

exist at this time,” said Yury Dvorkin,

production, they demonstrated how you

based ones. A range of government

who is participating in the project. “The

could use RFB concepts to completely

regulations aimed at achieving zero-

industry needs support to develop these

integrate chemical manufacturing into the

carbon emissions are driving this

technologies so they can be adopted in a

whole energy storage process.

migration. These greenhouse emissions

way that’s economically feasible.” One of

regulations will progressively come into

the areas that Dvorkin and his colleagues

Tandon Assistant Professor of Chemical

effect in the coming decades, culminating,

believed they needed to focus on was

and Biomolecular Engineering Miguel

for example, in the European Union’s

overcoming emerging reliability issues

Modestino, a co-author, said, “In principle,

aim to reduce 95 percent of 1990 level

that inhibit and increase the cost of using

you can imagine chemical plants acting

greenhouse emissions by 2050. These

renewable energy in the electrical grid.

as energy storage reservoirs, but at the

and other international regulations on

In other words, how do you ensure that

same time producing chemical products.

greenhouse emissions could threaten up

there are no supply interruptions to the

The storage value it provides lowers the

to 12 percent of all U.S. exports ($220

delivery of electricity when energy from

cost for the production of the chemical

billion), if the U.S. chemical industry is not

the sun and wind can be intermittent?

that you want to make at the end of the

able to decarbonize its processes. The

At the moment, energy storage

day.” Modestino added that this approach

task is clearly enormous, not just for the

technologies are not entirely up to the

also allows the chemical companies to

industry itself but for the larger economy.

task of balancing out the intermittency

integrate fluctuating sources of electricity,

Taylor has explained,“Thirty percent of

of renewable electricity. As a result, NYU

like renewables. You can thus decarbonize

U.S. industrial CO2 emissions comes

Tandon researchers have been looking

the industry in a way that is both

from the chemical industry, and 93% of

at storing energy in the form of chemical

economic and functions well with the

the chemical processes use fossil fuel

bonds, as opposed to electrons, as a

dynamics of a renewable-driven grid.

heat. We’re talking about changing a

possible solution.

whole industry that also involves a huge

The DC-MUSE project has expanded

societal impact, encompassing 70,000

In energy storage approaches like this,

dramatically since its ideas first took root

products, and 25% of the U.S. gross

energy is stored chemically in the form

a few months ago. The project has already

domestic product.”

of hydrogen, and that hydrogen is reused

put together a group of 30 investigators

later in a fuel cell. The fuel cells used to

from 11 universities and three National

Many experts believe that the first step

capture the energy are referred to as

Laboratories that cover a wide spectrum

in overhauling the chemical industry will

redox-flow batteries (RFBs). RFBs consist

of research areas.

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At NYU Tandon, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Ryan Hartman is leading a group to develop plasma catalysis technology for these types of chemical reactions. Taylor’s and Modestino’s groups are working on electrochemical reactors for chemical manufacturing. And Dvorkin has been working on integrating these plants within the grid. Other groups outside of NYU are investigating using membranes for separations and system integration. In addition, the NYU team has been consulting with faculty at the law school and the business school on how to design policies that can enable the economic transition towards renewable energy-driven chemical manufacturing. As DC-MUSE picks up momentum, its architects at NYU envision the project as a go-to Center for the fundamental engineering research that is needed to enable these technologies. Said Modestino, “The way that we see it is that you do the research in the lab, you develop with lab-scale demonstrations, but then through partnerships with companies you’ll develop them into processes.” Taylor concluded: “From the applications we’ve seen into our program, we know that people want to pursue things that actually have an impact on changing society and improving the world. People want to discover something fundamental, but if it has a broader societal impact, people can see its importance. This is why I do research in this area.”

Sustainability Data Science / AI / Robotics Health Urban

We make reducing emissions our mission If you’re looking for a food that strikes a perfect balance between sustainability and nutrition, We Are the New Farmers, an urban farm in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, has just the thing. The company, founded by alumni Jonas Günther, Michael Udovich, and Daniel Bernstein, grows and sells fresh spirulina, a type of microalgae known for its nutritional density and a favorite with smoothie aficionados. In addition to its health-boosting power, spirulina requires 19 times less carbon dioxide to produce the same amount of protein as beef and uses less water and land than tofu, making it one of the most environmentally sustainable crops in the world, as the co-founders discovered while working on a vertical farming project in Tandon’s MakerSpace, where the idea took root. It’s been a banner year for Sunthetics, a startup founded in 2018 by Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Miguel Modestino and two of his students, Myriam Sbeiti and Daniela Blanco (now alumni). The company — which is cleaning up the chemical manufacturing industry by developing sustainable, electrically driven chemical processes to replace traditional heat-powered ones and is now pairing its reactors with a machine-learning platform for further efficiencies — was admitted to the Heritage Group Accelerator Powered by Techstars, a highly competitive program that allowed them to spend 13 weeks scaling their businesses and go to-market strategies. Additionally, Blanco was named to both Inc. magazine’s “Female Founders 100” and MIT Technology Review’s “Latin American Innovators under 35“ lists. The high-profile icing on the cake: the entire world is now getting to hear about Sunthetics thanks to Own the Room, a National Geographic documentary streaming on Disney+. The filmmakers followed Blanco and her fellow contestants as they competed in the 2019 Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA), an annual competition for founders who were launching startups while still in college. And even if you remembered hearing that Blanco had triumphed at the competition, Own the Room provides plenty of edgeof-your-seat moments (along with some that will have viewers reaching for the tissue box).

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Assistant Professor MIGUEL MODESTINO, MYRIAM SBEITI and DIANIELA BLANCO, the braintrust behind Sunthetics.

WIRELESS

We make major leaps in wireless We make millimeter waves as ubiquitous as microwaves

ERNST WEBER, President of Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1958 - 1969)

Electrical engineer Ernst Weber’s work with electromagnetic waves in the microwave region of the radio spectrum was vital to U.S. radar systems during World War II, and in 1945 he founded our school’s highly regarded Microwave Research Institute. A few decades later, microwave ovens could be found in almost every home. In 2013, Theodore “Ted” Rappaport — David Lee/Ernst Weber Professor of Electrical Engineering, Founding Director of NYU WIRELESS, Professor of Computer Science at NYU Courant, Professor of Radiology at NYU School of Medicine — published a seminal article on the possibilities of the millimeter-wave (mmwave) spectrum, paving the way for the powerful cell phones and other wireless devices most of us use today. Now, Rappaport, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) this year, and his colleagues are exploring what comes next.

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THEODORE “TED” RAPPAPORT Founding Director of NYU WIRELESS, Professor

THOMAS MARZETTA Director of NYU WIRELESS, Professor

Wireless

We make 6G a not-so-distant reality

There’s no question: the fundamental research that made 5G possible involves massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and mmWave technologies. Without them, there would be no 5G network as we now know it.

These two researchers, who were so instrumental in developing the technologies that have enabled 5G, are now turning their attention to the next generation of mobile communications — 6G and beyond.

Rappaport served as the key thought leader for 5G by planting the flag in the ground nearly a decade ago, arguing that mmWave would be a key enabling technology for the next generation of wireless. Distinguished Industry Professor Thomas Marzetta, the current director of NYU Wireless, was the scientist who led the development of massive MIMO while he was at Bell Labs and has championed its use since. (Marzetta was elected to the NAE in 2020.)

The world is taking notice: Rappaport and Marzetta recently appeared on the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher list, which recognizes true pioneers in their fields over the last decade, demonstrated by the production of papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year. Of the world’s scientists, Clarivate™ Highly Cited Researchers are truly one in 1,000.

Wireless

Data Science / AI / Robotics

Sustainability

We take a deep dive into deep learning

Increasing amounts of data are now being collected

to devise new methods to compress data before

on mobile and internet-of-things (IoT) devices.

transmission, thus reducing bandwidth costs while

Researchers are interested in analyzing this data to

still allowing for the data to be analyzed at the base

extract actionable information for such purposes as

station. Departing from existing data compression

identifying objects of interest from high-resolution

methods optimized for reproducing the original

mobile phone pictures. The state-of-the-art technique for that data analysis employs deep learning, which makes use of sophisticated software algorithms modeled on the functioning of the human brain. Deep learning algorithms are, however, too complex to run on small, battery constrained mobile devices, and the alternative – transmitting data to the mobile base station where the deep learning algorithm can be executed on a powerful server – consumes too

images, the team is developing a means of using deep learning itself to compress the data in a fashion that only keeps the critical parts of data necessary for subsequent analysis. The resulting deep learningbased compression algorithms will be simple enough to run on mobile devices while drastically reducing the amount of data that needs to be transmitted to mobile base stations for analysis, without significantly

much bandwidth.

compromising the analysis performance. The research

Now, Professor Yao Wang and Institute Professor

mobile device users, enable extended battery lifetimes,

Elza Erkip of Tandon’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NYU WIRELESS, along with Institute Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Siddarth Garg, are seeking

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

will provide greater capability and functionality to and promote more efficient sharing of the wireless spectrum for analytics tasks. It’s a wireless win for all.

ELZA ERKIP Institute Professor

Wireless

YAO WANG Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, Professor

WE MAKE WAVES IN THE WORLD OF 6G A layperson might not fully understand the title of Shihao Ju’s latest paper, “Millimeter Wave and Sub-Terahertz Spatial Statistical Channel Model for an Indoor Office Building,” (published in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications special issue on Terahertz Communications and Networking), but it’s easy to understand the promise his work holds for the development of 6G wireless communications and the drive and determination that propelled him to NYU Tandon. IN HIS OWN WORDS: “The most important factor in my choosing to come to Tandon is that it’s home to the NYU WIRELESS research center, which is known all over the world. Professor Ted Rappaport, who launched the center in 2012, is among the most highly respected figures in the field. He is the author of the paper “Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work,” which pioneered the idea of tapping the underutilized spectrum between 30 to 300 Gigahertz for 5G radio and beyond, at a time when few other experts were even considering the possibility. I admired him so much as a scientific pioneer that I wrote to him, and he encouraged me to apply to Tandon. My most recent paper was written in collaboration with fellow graduate students Yunchou Xing and Ojas Kanhere, under the direction of Professor Rappaport. In it, we discuss the fact that sixth-generation (6G) wireless systems will need to offer unprecedented high data rate and system throughput, which can be achieved in part by deploying systems transmitting and receiving at millimeter-wave (mmWave) and Terahertz (THz) frequencies (30 GHz - 3 THz). These regions of the electromagnetic spectrum are capable of massive data throughput at near zero latency, which is key to future data traffic demand created by wireless applications like augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), autonomous driving, and remote medicine. Importantly, the linchpin for the successful deployment of mmWave and THz systems for 6G wireless communications will be their performance in indoor scenarios, so accurate THz channel characterization for indoor environments is essential in designing transceivers, air interface, and protocols for 6G, and even beyond. We propose a unified indoor channel model across mmWave and sub-THz bands based on our measurements, and we hope this can serve as a reference for future standards development above 100 GHz.” Ju is now planning to conduct channel measurements at mmWave and sub-THz frequencies in indoor factories next, making him just one of the Tandon researchers seeking to transform manufacturing. He explains that factories in the manufacturing industry are becoming the hottest and most significant application scenario for 5G and beyond. With advanced wireless technologies, smart factories will one day be enabled to reduce the cost and dramatically improve productivity

HEALTH

We make health care better, from check-up to check-out Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Jin Montclare explores engineered proteins and other macromolecules for a range of health and environmental applications, from targeting human disorders and drug delivery, to tissue regeneration, and fabrication of nanomaterials for electronics. Her research has, for example, led to new ways of removing pesticides from crops, ferrying chemotherapeutic agents to cancer cells in synthesized macromolecules. Recently Montclare and researchers at the Montclare Lab are finding new ways to manipulate hydrogels, 3D materials comprising stimuli-sensitive polymers perhaps best known for their ability to retain large amounts of fluid. With a focus on engineering even more versatility into hydrogels by making them “smart,” she and her students have found ways to control how and when they assemble and disassemble by altering such factors as temperature and pH. She also discovered how transition metal cations (positively charged ions) could confer static and dynamic mechanical strength on hydrogels, enabling them to carry a molecular payload and “know” when to release it. Last year Montclare, along with Professor of Biomedical Engineering Daniel K. Sodickson, also a professor of radiology, and neuroscience and physiology at NYU Langone Health, were named Fellows of the prestigious National Academy of Inventors (NAI). JIN MONTCLARE Professor

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Health

Data Science / A I / Robotics

We build algorithms, responsible medical AI, and groundbreaking sensors When a health issue arises, quick, accurate diagnoses are the best way to stave off bad effects down the line. Now, new technology is making that even easier. Consider the use of algorithms and AI-powered medical technologies. Technology like smart insulin pumps can provide physicians with exact feedback for how often a diabetic patient needs insulin, and can adjust dosages on the fly to reflect their own individual needs. This kind of information, available to both doctors and patients, has been referred to as Bring Your Own Algorithm medicine — a way to help put power in patients’ hands. However, this technology may complicate patient-doctor relationships, as physicians may not understand the inner workings of the algorithm (and distrust their recommendations because of it) and patients may not understand why their doctor may suggest something other than what an algorithm suggests. In a recent paper, a number of researchers, including Professor of Technology Management and Innovation Oded Nov, Institute Professor Maurizio Porfiri, and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering John-Ross Rizzo, explored how the increased availability of algorithms makes this potential disconnect worse, and how to alleviate concerns.

be provided to clinicians (users who do not understand the technology but are experts in the application domain) and patients (users lacking knowledge of technology and application domain). The researchers are exploring how proper scientific communication — not just blackbox calculations — can lead to better outcomes for patients and keep the doctor-patient relationship harmonious. But while monitoring something like insulin levels is relatively straightforward, measuring something like dopamine levels is inexact. Dopamine molecule activity in the brain is associated with important functions such as motivation, motor control, reinforcement, and reward. Researchers and clinicians commonly monitor neurotransmitter activity in the brain through electrochemical microsensors made of carbon. However, due to their limited sensitivity, existing microsensors can detect only large changes in dopamine levels. They can also record from only one site in the brain at a time. A team led by Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Davood Shahrjerdi has found a new way of enhancing the performance of

electrochemical micro-sensors. This discovery could lead to the detection of biomolecules, such as dopamine, at lower concentrations than is possible today. To support the multi-site mapping of dopamine activities in the brain, the NYU Tandon research team recently developed planar micro-sensors using a carbon nanomaterial, called nano-graphitic carbon. The sensors are incredibly small — comparable to a neuron’s cell body — and the sensor performance can be adjusted by engineering the material structure of the nano-graphitic carbon. Their research also found surprising evidence that the amplitude of the sensor output in response to dopamine molecules was increased by reducing the operation voltage. The investigators demonstrated sensors with record performance by combining the new voltage-dependent phenomenon with their approach of engineering the material structure. They’re now looking at monitoring other brain chemicals with similar sensors, mapping out much more of the brain’s functions than were previously possible.

One way to tackle this issue involves the use of explainable systems, focusing on both user types (patients and clinicians). Much of the research on explainability and interpretability of black-box systems has included visualization of neural networks, analyzing machine learning systems, and training easily interpretable systems to approximate black-box systems. The intended audiences for these approaches are often computer scientists. More work is needed on how explanations should

Associate Professor WEIQIANG CHEN and his “cancer-on-a-chip”

Health

We make treatments more targeted Treating cancer means learning about cancer — how tumors begin, how they grow, and how they spread. For Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Weiqiang Chen, studying such a big problem requires starting small — the size of a chip. Chen, also a faculty member of the NYU Langone Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, has helped develop a method to study certain kinds of cancer in an engineered environment — a “cancer-on-a-chip” that can provide an easy way to study how aggressive cancers act under the normal conditions of the humans body, and provide a window to how cancers might be treated in the future. The cancer-on-a-chip technology can mimic the specific tissue environment of a patient who is affected by a type of cancer, using the cancer cells from their own body. Then specific treatments can be tested on the chip, to ensure that they might be helpful in the body writ large. This removes some of the risk

of treatment — making sure that the therapy will do more good than harm in a specific patient. They can also study the specific immune response that the body is likely to initiate, giving more data that a physician can use to suggest a treatment regimen. Chen is utilizing these artificial environments to study leukemia and glioblastoma, but other cancer treatments may be developed thanks to this technology. But new treatments aren’t being found just in chips. A holy grail for orthopedic research is a method for not only creating artificial bone tissue that precisely matches the real thing, but does so in such microscopic detail that it includes tiny structures potentially important for stem cell differentiation, which is key to bone regeneration. Now, an NYU Team led by Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Elisa Riedo demonstrated that it is possible to produce bone replicas on a scale meaningful for biomedical studies and applications, at an affordable cost. These bone replicas support the growth

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of bone cells derived from a patient’s own stem cells, creating the possibility of pioneering new stem cell applications with broad research and therapeutic potential. This technology could revolutionize drug discovery and result in the development of better orthopedic implants and devices. The system they developed allows them to sculpt, in a biocompatible material, the exact structure of the bone tissue, with features smaller than the size of a single protein — a billion times smaller than a meter. This platform, called bio-thermal scanning probe lithography (bio-tSPL), takes a “photograph” of the bone tissue, and then uses the photograph to produce a bona-fide replica of it. Its time- and cost-effectiveness, as well as the cell compatibility and reusability of the bone replicas, make bio-tSPL an affordable platform for the production of surfaces that perfectly reproduce any biological tissue with unprecedented precision.

Health

WE MAKE FRESHER AIR AirOn was created by five friends who met at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. Alim Williams, Diallo Sambury, Kadeem Joseph, Ramon Parchment, and Shane Garraway came together to find a solution to create face masks that can protect against harmful bacteria in the air. The company’s AirFusion Mask is a breathable filtered mask that can be adjusted for comfort. It uses smart technology to allow the user to breathe fresh air and includes an N95 filter and a rechargeable turbine system that moves exhausted air from the nose and mouth.

Health

Data Science / AI / R o b o t i c s

Using breakthroughs in wireless to improve telehelath.

Wireless

We make rehabilitation more accessible Stroke, the leading cause of motor

accessibility limitations, and possibly at

between remote therapists and their

disabilities, is putting tremendous pressure

their homes. While the technology has

patients. The results could be robots

on healthcare infrastructures because

not been used on a large scale yet, the

fully capable of the complex medical

of an imbalance between an aging

COVID-19 crisis brought the need for

procedures that are required for

society and available neurorehabilitation

telehealth services of all types into

proper rehabilitation.

resources. Thus, there has been a surge

sharp focus.

in the production of novel rehabilitative

Atashzar’s work relies on a number of

technologies for accelerating recovery.

Now, Assistant Professor of Electrical &

advances, from robotics to wireless

Despite the successful development

Computer Engineering and Mechanical &

communications to groundbreaking new

of such devices, lack of objective

Aerospace Engineering S. Farokh Atashzar

health technologies. Tandon researchers

standards besides clinical investigations

is deeply involved in solving this pressing

are already taking advantage of these

using subjective measures have led to

and timely problem.

advances. Professor of Mechanical and

controversial recommendations regarding several devices, including robots.

Aerospace Engineering Vikram Kapila is Atashzar points out that telerobotic

creating robotic dialysis machines that

rehabilitation was not possible in the past,

can be operated by doctors remotely.

The topic of robotic neurorehabilitation

in part, because of concerns about the

The impetus for the work was the

has attracted a great deal of interest

reliability and resiliency of the network

COVID-19 crisis, where dialysis patients

because it can significantly reduce the

and security of data transfers. Latency,

had to share hospital space with people

load on healthcare systems and accelerate

jitter, and packet loss can not only

infected or exposed to the virus at

the rehabilitation process. Telerobotic

deteriorate the fidelity of information

all times. Rather than directly expose

rehabilitation is the next natural extension

rendering. Atashzar has proposed novel

dialysis patients to infectious diseases,

of the current technology, causing even

passivity-based and small-gain-based

this technology allows medical personnel

more of a buzz since patients can receive

stabilizers to address the stability issue

to perform the life-saving measure from

an immersive, personalized experience

while maximizing the performance and

outside the patients’ rooms, creating safer,

regardless of their geographical and

transparency of force-motion coupling

healthier hospital conditions.

CYBERSECURITY

We make software and supply chains safer . . . and the cybersecurity workforce of the future more robust We make hardware harder to hack Aided by advances in sensors, artificial intelligence, robotics, and networking technology, digital manufacturing (DM) is revolutionizing the traditional manufacturing industry. In order to stay competitive, many medium- and small-scale enterprises are becoming part of larger, cybermanufacturing business networks. That poses some danger, however. Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Nikhil Gupta (a member of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity) and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ramesh Karri (co-founder and co-chair of the Center) are coming to their aid by examining the cybersecurity risks in the emerging DM context, assessing the impact on DM, and identifying new approaches to keeping DM safe and efficient. Typically, data encryption protects data in transit: it’s locked in an encrypted “container” for transit over potentially unsecured networks, then unlocked at the other end, by the other party for analysis. But outsourcing to a third party is inherently insecure. An emerging type of encryption, called fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), is now being considered the “holy grail of encryption” because it enables multiple users to process encrypted data while the data or models remain encrypted, preserving data privacy throughout the analytics process, not just during transit. Now, Research Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Michail Maniatakos is working with Assistant Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering Brandon Reagen to design a revolutionary new microchip (codenamed “Trebuchet”) that will accelerate and enable practical

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

applications of FHE. Their work — done in collaboration with data security company Duality and supported by a $14 million grant from the DARPA — is of particular value to AI systems because it allows data scientists to train some of the most advanced machine learning models on encrypted data, enabling organizations to leverage greater amounts of diverse sensitive data for training. The supply chain involved in manufacturing chips is complex, and most foundries are overseas. That means that once a chip is fabricated and returned to the customer, a question arises: has a deliberate flaw, known as a Trojan, been inserted during the fabrication process for malicious purposes? Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Farshad Khorrami is working with Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ramesh Karri, research scientist Prashanth Krishnamurthy, and colleagues in Germany to study new ways of detecting the sabotage of integrated microchips during their fabrication. With funding from the Office of Naval Research, the team is developing a novel detection technique that employs transistor short-term aging effects in integrated circuits (ICs). In the process, they’re building a specially designed testbed that they anticipate will become a vital resource for the broader hardware security community by providing access to physical ICs with Trojan-free and infected variants of circuits ranging from moderate-sized cryptographic circuits to complex microprocessors, and a Field Programmable Gate Array-based interface to interrogate and test the ICs using their own methods.

Cybersecurity Engineering Opportunity BRANDON REAGEN Assistant Professor

WE GROW — AND DIVERSIFY — THE WORKFORCE In 2016, thanks to Professor Nasir Memon, then chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, NYU Tandon launched its Bridge Program, meant to help those without a background in computer science prefer for a master’s degree in a STEM field. The program attracted a small but passionate cohort of 50 students, from a Princeton psychology major who always loved computers but was sidelined by dreams of Olympic pole vaulting to an economics and anthropology student who saw the chance to create online education opportunities in underdeveloped nations. The upcoming Bridge cohort is still passionate, but it’s a lot larger: at 1,000 students strong, it represents a huge increase in size from just a few years ago.

SIDDARTH GARG Institute Associate Professor

BENJAMIN TAN Research Assistant Professor

Cybersecurity

Data Science / A I / Robotics

We make software more secure •M achine-learning systems are becoming

& Engineering and Electrical & Computer

affecting our day-to-day lives, but also

Engineering Brandon Reagen and a

in those observing them, including

team of collaborators, including Nandan

face expression recognition systems.

Kumar Jha, a Ph.D. student, and Zahra

Companies that make and use such

Ghodsi, a former doctoral student under

widely deployed services rely on

the guidance of Institute Associate

so-called privacy preservation tools

Professor Siddharth Garg, are rethinking

that often use generative adversarial

the basic functions that drive the ability

networks (GANs), typically produced

of neural networks to make inferences on

by a third party to scrub images of individuals’ identity. But how good are they? The answer is not very. according to Institute Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Siddarth Garg, Research Assistant Professor Benjamin Tan, and Ph.D. candidate Kang Liu. In a paper presented at the 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the team explored whether private data could still be recovered from images that had been “sanitized” by such deep-learning discriminators as

Concurrently growing by leaps and bounds is Tandon’s Cyber Fellows initiative, which offers scholarships that result in one of the lowest-cost online master’s degrees in the country and encourages a diverse pool of highly skilled technical graduates ready to step into the growing cybersecurity gap made evident by the increasing number of major attacks like SolarWinds and Pegasus. Launched in 2018 with an inaugural class of 100, Cyber Fellows has seen enrollment increase by a factor of 10.

•A ssistant Professor of Computer Science

pervasive not only in technologies

privacy protecting GANs (PP-GANs) and had even passed empirical tests; they discovered that those tools could, in fact, be subverted to pass privacy checks, while still allowing secret information to be extracted from sanitized images. With privacy tools having such broad applicability across sensitive domains — including removing location-relevant

encrypted data. •W hen neural networks compute on encrypted data, there’s a heavy toll in time and computational resources, and many of these costs are incurred by rectified linear activation function (ReLU), a non-linear operation. The team has developed a framework called DeepReDuce that offers a solution through the rearrangement and reduction of ReLUs in neural networks. They say that while a fundamental reassessment of where and how components are distributed in neural networks is needed, it’s entirely possible to skip many time-intensive and computationally expensive ReLU operations and still get high performing networks at two to four times faster run time.

information from vehicular camera data, obfuscating the identity of a person

•T he inquiry is not merely academic.

who produced a handwriting sample, or

As the use of AI grows in concert with

removing barcodes from images — the

concerns about the security of personal,

research provides a timely, actionable

corporate, and government data security,

warning about the insufficiency of

neural networks are increasingly doing

existing privacy checks and the potential

computations on encrypted data,

risks of using untrusted third-party

making the team’s work important

PP-GAN tools.

across many sectors.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

JUSTIN CAPPOS

Cybersecurity

D a t a S c i e n ce / AI / Robotics

Urban

Associate Professor

We make hacking harder The SolarWinds attack of 2020 demonstrated the lengths to which state actors will go to sabotage government and corporate systems. It was also a shot across the bow, a clear warning that our software supply chains need to be secure from development to delivery to the end user. Because he has devoted much of his career to making these protections a reality, it also put Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Justin Cappos in the spotlight: it was Cappos and his team who developed the government-funded system in-toto, to thwart attacks of the kind that took down countless federal servers when bad actors tucked malware into SolarWinds updates. In-toto, an easy-to-use framework that cryptographically ensures the integrity of the software supply chain was, developed in collaboration with former Tandon Ph.D. student Santiago Torres-Arias, now a professor at Purdue University. It has been integrated into several major software projects, including those hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Using a blockchain-like verification of interactions, in-toto requires that each step in software development, testing, packaging, and, finally, distribution processes conforms to the layout

specified by the developer and confirms to the end-user that the product has not been altered for malicious purposes, such as by adding backdoors in the source code. By doing so, in-toto ensures that all steps can be trusted. Because of the decentralized nature of software development, opportunities for an attacker to insert malicious code or otherwise compromise the finished product are manifold, but in experiments re-creating more than 30 real-life software supply chain compromises that impacted hundreds of millions of users, the Tandon team found that in-toto would have effectively prevented at least 83% of those attacks. However, even before the advent of in-toto, Cappos was already well-known in the security community for developing The Update Framework (TUF), aimed at preventing the insertion of malicious software into the “last mile” of the software update process: delivery of patches to devices, servers, and other software-driven technology; and for Uptane, an adaptation of TUF to secure the over-the-air updates to vehicles that is now standard practice in the automotive industry.

Google, and Amazon, and Uptane is now deployed through its inclusion in the Linux Automotive Suite to numerous automakers worldwide. Tools like Uptane are of critical importance now, given that newer-model automobiles are so highly computerized. But they will become even more important as machine-learning systems delivering self-driving functionality are installed in more and more fleets. The threat is not idle: according to industry experts, cyberattacks on vehicles increased 700% between 2016 and 2019 — attacks, ranging from tracking a driver without their knowledge to forcing a car to drive off the road or disabling its braking system. Beyond the world of software updates, Cappos is an often-cited advocate for the judicious use of social media, online financial tools, and services, the security of which many people take for granted.

TUF has been adopted in a number of high-profile projects by organizations like the Linux Foundation, IBM, Microsoft,

EMERGING MEDIA

Emerging Media

Engineering Opportunity

We make the world more accessible — and more exciting We make life more user-friendly • I ndustry Assistant Professor Regine Gilbert and her students are now partnering with the Advanced Research In STEAM Accessibility (ARISA) Lab, an organization dedicated to making science enriching and open to all. The Tandon team will be participating in ARISA’s Eclipse Soundscapes Project, an initiative that had been inspired by anecdotal accounts that suggest animal behavior may change during a total solar eclipse. According to one story, at the moment of totality, when the moon blocked out the sun, a chorus of crickets began chirping. As soon as the light returned, the crickets stopped. The project’s creators realized that if eclipses affect the earth in ways that can be experienced and measured using a variety of senses, not merely sight, even the visually impaired could get excited about eclipse research. Now, through a series of workshops led by subject matter experts from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, citizen scientists will collect audio recordings from eclipses and analyze acoustic data to determine how disruptions in light and circadian rhythms may affect ecosystems. • All workshops, materials, and learning interfaces will be designed to the highest degree of accessibility, with an emphasis on physical, social, and cognitive inclusion, and that’s where Gilbert and her students come in: they’ll be designing, implementing, and testing all citizen-scientist web interfaces for the project, which was recently approved for a five-year cooperative agreement from the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Science Activation Program. •T he VIP Consortium — a network of 45 schools in 12 countries that have implemented an initiative called Vertically Integrated Projects — holds an annual competition to choose the best projects and student teams, and this year, a group of Tandon students took home the second-place prize. •S ixth Sense, the only American-based team to place in the competition, is developing technology aimed at helping people with visual impairments navigate their surroundings. The team is building a machinelearning system that can detect physical obstacles faster than the human eye. The user simply dons a backpack containing all the needed electronics, as well as a belt containing several actuators, each of which touches a specific spot on the wearer’s abdomen. When a camera attached to the backpack detects an obstacle, a signal is sent to the appropriate actuator, which vibrates to let the user know. (If the actuator on the upper right abdomen vibrates, for example, that signals an obstacle to the upper right of the wearer’s position.) The students point out that the system can be especially helpful for those who live in densely populated areas, where navigation is difficult. They foresee it being more cost-effective and convenient than existing methods, which generally involve bulky, handheld devices or headphones, which pose a danger since people with visual impairments often rely on auditory clues to function.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Studying the Metaverse to account for potential dangers

Emerging Media

Health

Engineering Opportunity

We make our real and virtual worlds more expansive • Associate Professor of Civil and

imagination, with real-life pop stars

many in the education and healthcare

Urban Engineering Semiha Ergan

holding concerts on virtual platforms

sectors. (The latter is especially vital,

points out that people spend more

and collectors paying large sums

he has pointed out, at a time when an

than 90% of their time indoors,

of money for one-of-a-kind digital

estimated 40% of all Americans exhibit

making it imperative to understand

objects that confer status in the richly

poor health literacy.)

how the built environment influences

detailed 3D environments of the

human experience and to assess

new universe. Industry Professor of

Williams launched ARsome in 2016,

how architectural design features

Integrated Design and Media Carla

while he was still a student, and among

impact them. Ergan, who also has an

Gannis, a veteran of creating such

his first products was an interactive AR

appointment in Tandon’s Department

environments, warns however, that

scavenger hunt for a Boston museum.

of Computer Science and Engineering

the metaverse can pose just as many

He later developed an interactive

and is an associated faculty member

dangers as the real world, and she’s

experience outside the public library in

at CUSP, is using noninvasive sensors

teaching her students to consider the

Hartford, Connecticut, home of Mark

to measure physiological metrics such

implications of their work. “We really

Twain, to make a statue of the famed

as skin conductance, brain activity,

need to think, as we’re contemplating

19th-century writer come to life when

and heart rate and placing subjects in

the metaverse, about accountability,”

patrons pointed their smartphones or

virtual reality environments to find out.

she has told interviewers. “Are we just

tablets at it. Mystic Aquarium, one of

Do larger windows lead to lower blood

going to perpetuate the problems we

the most popular aquatic museums

pressure? Do narrow doors provoke

have in grounded or base reality? The

in the country, has been another

anxiety? The quantitative data she is

ills of human culture and society can be

partner: ARSome has developed an

gathering is proving very interesting to

persistent, unless we’re actually thinking

AR experience that allows young

architects and designers, so if the next

ethically about these things.”

subscribers to personalize an avatar

building you enter induces a marked feeling of well-being, you just might have Ergan to thank.

and learn about a new creature each •A lum Benjamin Williams is leveraging

month through interactive games,

his Management of Technology degree

videos, and activities. With AR

as the CEO of his own company,

technology now being used in a wide

ARsome Technology, which designs

variety of sectors — from retailing and

shared online space made possible

custom augmented reality (AR)

manufacturing to theme-park design

by augmented and virtual reality

software and systems for a variety

and book publishing — ARSome is

technology, is capturing the popular

of clients and strategic partners —

poised to grow even further.

• The concept of a metaverse, a

AR/VR: its not what’s next, it’s what’s now

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

Emerging Media

We make “Epic” realities Disney Imagineering, Industrial Light & Magic, Amazon Web Services, T-Mobile, the New York Times — it’s an impressive list of companies, and they’re all flocking to NYU Tandon’s online course for digital filmmakers, content directors, producers, technologists, and students who want to work with the Unreal Engine, a suite of tools that allows for the creation of cuttingedge entertainment, compelling visualizations, and immersive virtual worlds. Considered the most advanced and powerful platform of its kind, it has been used by the makers of blockbusters like The Mandalorian and mega-selling games like Fortnite, and by countless architects and car designers, among other professionals, to support their work. The course was developed by Todd Bryant, Visiting Industry Assistant Professor, alongside colleagues in the Tandon Integrated Design & Media (IDM) program — co-directed by Technology, Culture & Society Department Co-Chair R. Luke DuBois and Industry Associate Professor Scott Fitzgerald — with the help of a grant from Epic Games (makers of Fortnite). Up next? A worldbuilding course in which participants will explore relationships to nature in virtual worlds, and another focused on mixed reality filmmaking and the key issues, challenges, and best practices of visual storytelling. By training the existing workforce and students in real-time virtual production pipelines, IDM faculty hope to bridge the gap between talented individuals working in real-time 3D technologies and the studios and agencies using those pipelines to develop projects.

Emerging Media

DESIGN STUDENTS WIN BIG For design students in the Integrated Design and Media program, getting a degree at an engineering school offers a unique opportunity to explore the technology behind great art and design. That approach helped put these students over the top in DesignRush’s Global Student Design Competition 2021. Four Tandon students — Sally Lee, Cassandra Liau, Thao Minh Nguyen, and Claudia Shao — were recognized for their work at the intersection of art and engineering. Their projects — ranging from a mobile application that tracks users’ physical and mental health by using a 5g medical kit to a digital film-festival ad campaign — offered a glimpse into the unique way the department approaches design as a discipline.

In addition to a cutting-edge curriculum, IDM boasts state-of-the-art facilities, some located in Building 22 of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. These include a 44-camera Optitrack motion capture studio that has already been used by the American Ballet Theater, and a volumetric studio that can handle the real-time feeds from 20 Intel RealSense cameras. (Volumetric video captures objects or spaces three-dimensionally in real-time, and they can then be transferred to web, mobile, or virtual worlds to be viewed.) But what’s the use of having access to all this tech if you’re not going to dive into production yourself? IDM faculty have created Planet Real-time, a variety and interview show entirely about real-time rendering made inside the Unreal Engine. The format gives guests the ability to be interviewed from home while controlling an avatar in the virtual environment with motion and facial capture and to share their experience with a range of projects, from purely art-driven non-commercial pieces to AAA games. With the help of Epic and Unreal Engine, NYU IDM is definitely ready for its close-up now.

ENGINEERING OPPORTUNITY

Cybersecurity

Data Science / A I / Robotics

We rethink online education to expand access to advanced engineering degrees “What’s measured gets managed” is a

of highly skilled applicants. It provides

To that end, Memon is building a variety

well-known phrase that’s exceptionally

the scale to offer a more flexible and

of programs and initiatives at NYU

true in academia. And higher education

affordable master’s degree without

Tandon aimed at opening the STEM

has become very focused on measuring

compromising quality. And at a time

fields to a wider pool of students at all

and optimizing for admissions selectivity,

when there’s a nationwide awakening

stages, including:

viewing it as an indirect measure of

to systemic inequality that has seen

student and program excellence.

increased commitment to eliminating

• The NYU Tandon Bridge program

potentially unfair barriers to entry, it also

that levels the playing field by

This makes sense when demand is

offers an accessible pathway for people

offering students with a non-technical

increasing and supply is fixed, as with

who may not have otherwise considered

background an affordable, flexible way

in-person education where you can

graduate degrees.

to develop the skills necessary for a

only fit so many students in a room. But in online education, when the same constraints don’t apply, using selectivity as a proxy for excellence is not only fundamentally flawed — it’s deeply problematic. And it creates unnecessary and artificial barriers to the education at scale that society needs. Multiple studies have shown that our current workforce is underemployed. This is especially true for millennials, who are carrying massive college debt, often can’t afford a traditional graduate program, and have increasingly turned to online education. And higher unemployment amid the COVID-19 pandemic is driving more people (and notably women) to reconsider career paths and look online to

If multiple people share a similar background and equally impressive qualifications for an online program, universities should, in theory, be admitting all of them. If everyone is equally qualified, and course design, community-building, and technology platforms are optimized for large attendance numbers, the number of students has a negligible impact on program quality. But as long as selectivity is a factor in rankings, administrators worried about institutional reputation are incentivized to make subjective decisions to reject some people for the sake of keeping admission rates low. This unnecessary zero-sum game

make that happen.

between quality and reach — and the

At the same time, we have skill gaps

qualified students to at-scale programs

in critical areas that require advanced degrees. The demand for qualified

high reputational cost of admitting more — could explain, in part, why for-profit and public universities have made great

graduates in STEM fields, in particular,

strides in offering affordable online

is immense and still growing. In

degrees, but many private institutions

cybersecurity alone, Cybersecurity

have not.

Ventures projects 3.5 million unfilled jobs

STEM master’s degree at Tandon or a partner institution • The Cyber Fellows initiative, a cutting-edge online cybersecurity master’s degree offered for a fraction of the cost of similar credentials to qualified applicants, that also offers select in-person skill-building experiences like the Cyber STRIKE simulated training exercises • Innovative partnerships with public and private sector organizations, like TIAA, the NYC Cyber Command, and Zscaler to create co-curricular activities that provide up-to-the-minute, real-world training and tools; give students a chance to earn badges in field-critical technologies; and even offer tuition discounts for qualified candidates • “MicroMaster’s” and other certificate programs with practical relevance and utility to employers Many of these initiatives, like the NYU Tandon Bridge program, have expanded

Vice Dean for Academic and Student

their reach as a result of Memon’s

Affairs and Professor of Computer

perspective on viewing fellow higher-ed

Online education offers more people

Science and Engineering Nasir Memon,

institutions as valuable collaborators, not

a portal to valuable new skills, and

who heads NYU Tandon Online, explains

competitors. For example, Memon has

employers therefore have a greater pool

that a multi-pronged approach is vital.

formed a growing roster of partnerships

globally this year.

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

with other institutions who will accept the Bridge certificate on applications for their own master’s programs. NYU Tandon also just launched a dual-degree program in Cybersecurity with Drew University. And both the NYU Tandon Bridge and Cyber Fellows programs are seeing expansion in reach, including 2020 annual enrollment growth of more than 60% and 250% respectively over the prior academic year. Memon points out that it’s now imperative to rethink selectivity and devise more modern and meaningful admissions and evaluation benchmarks that take into account other factors, like the diversity of the student body, measurable improvement in relevant skill sets, and the economic contribution of alumni post-graduation. Some institutions have started to tackle this issue, including the University of Colorado, Boulder, which has begun exploring performancebased admissions for their scaled degrees, and Boston University, which is looking at effective ways to measure increases in graduates’ specific skills and competencies. But there’s much more to be done, a larger conversation that must happen around the value that atscale programs provide, and how we can collectively incentivize the right decisions.

CyberStrike prepares the Fellows for future realtime threats and attacks. (above) CyberFellows meet to start a new term. (left)

CHANDRIKA TANDON, Board Chair Chair, NYU President’s Global Council Chair, Tandon Capital Associates Vice Chair, NYU Board of Trustees STACIE GROSSMAN BLOOM Vice Provost for Research and Chief Research Officer STEVEN M. COHEN Chair (former), Empire State Development Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel (former), MacAndrews and Forbes GARY D. COHN Vice Chairman, IBM President & COO (former), Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Director (former), US National Economic Council ANTHONY F. CONCOLINO TANDON ‘82 Head of Cloud Cybersecurity Controls, Wells Fargo Immediate Past President, Polytechnic Alumni Association JOHN FRANKEL TANDON Parent ‘19 Founding Partner ff Venture Capital JAMES HAHN Founding Partner Asia Alpha Private Equity CHARLES HINKATY TANDON ‘70, ‘72 Retired President & CEO Del Laboratories, Inc. Trustee Emeritus, NYU ROBERT V JONES TANDON ‘87 Co-founder, President and CEO, PreSafe Technologies President, Polytechnic Alumni Association TAL KERRET President Silverstein Properties, Inc. JELENA KOVAČEVIĆ, ex officio William R. Berkley Professor and Dean NYU Tandon School of Engineering

MARK LESLIE TANDON ‘66 Managing Director Leslie Ventures Trustee, NYU ALEXANDER LURYE TANDON ‘92, STERN ‘98 Chief Risk Officer Balyasny Asset Management, LP C. DANIEL MOTE, JR. Regents Professor & Former President University of Maryland Mechanical Engineering STAN POLOVETS Co-founder & Chairman of the Board of Directors Genesis Prize Foundation DASHA RAY RETTEW President and Senior Executive Advisor Reservoir Advisors Trustee, NYU RAVINDER SAJWAN TANDON ‘84 CEO Renew Group Private Limited RAMESH SRINIVASAN Senior Partner, New York McKinsey & Company JOSEPH S. STEINBERG Chairman Jefferies Financial Group, Inc. Life Trustee, NYU RANJAN TANDON, ex officio Founder and Managing Member Libra Advisors and Tandon Family Office DANIEL TISCH Managing Member Towerview LLC PHIL VENABLES Vice President Google Chief Information Security Officer Google Cloud FRED WILSON Managing Partner Union Square Ventures

NYU TANDON UNCONVENTIONAL ENGINEER VOL. 2

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Dean of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering Jelena Kovačević Associate Dean for Communications and Public Affairs Sayar Lonial

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Director of Creative Strategy and Digital Communications Sheldon Smith Graphic Designer Victoria Caswell Coordinator Lennys Santana

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