LANS ARE BACK!

verse, equitable and inclusive work and school environment.

“It's really interesting that when I'm having conversations with my soon-tobe 75-year-old mother about her experiences in the workplace, there are still [issues] that we see happening today,” Pearson said. “And so, when I'm having this conversation with my daughter who just graduated from high school, when she gets into the workforce, I would like something to be different.”

It is this desire for change, Pearson said, that drove her to pioneer the DEI initiatives at Rice. She began with prioritizing

Comet Cab comeback

Regular campus transportation will be reintroduced alongside developing changes

Following an extended suspension of regular campus transportation, the Parking and Transportation Office is preparing for Comet Cabs to return to full functionality by the end of the upcoming semester.

Assistant Director of UTD Parking and Transportation Elena Galli Grant, one of the administrators in charge of this process, said that the plan currently is to slowly reintroduce Comet Cabs to full operations in the fall.

“Right now, there’s been plans to run all of our major routes on campus for the fall, and we’re going to phase them in,” Grant said. “But we can’t say what that’s going to look like the first day of class.”

She also cited a couple of considerations that accompany the program’s revival, emphasizing the importance of complying with CDC guidelines and ensuring the safety of all parties involved.

“There’s a lot that goes into making these routes and making them safe,” Grant said. “And also, the campus has changed so much in the last year and a half. We have to redo routes, see what works. Back in February 2020, it was an alarming situation and things were scary because we didn’t even know what products killed COVID. We would use germicides and spray everything down between each route; we had disposable gloves, hand sanitizer, we would deep clean the Comet Cabs every single week.

So, it'll be similar when we come back; the good news now is that at least there's an abundance of supplies. Facilities management on campus has been really good about that.”

Comet Cabs have been employed sparingly during the pandemic for students on campus who require accessibility accommodations. Those services are guaranteed to be available beginning the first day of the fall semester, but incorporation of regular routes may occur more gradually.

“Right now, our plan is to get everything like we did before COVID, it’s just, we can't say for sure until we're in the situation,” Grant said. “I think most likely [we’ll] start bringing [Comet Cabs] back a few at a time, especially the more popular routes, like the ones that are further away. So, that's where we would start if we started phasing in. But,

Sensory overload

Professor creates affordable pollution sensors for DFW area

A UTD professor created low-cost air sensors that track pollutant levels in local communities and detect increases in air pollution in real-time.

Physics professor David Lary aspired to conduct a project that would make a mark on the world. 10 years ago, he established the Multi-Scale Integrated Interactive Intelligent Sensing (MINTS) initiative: a set of innovations and projects designed to detect and protect humans against potential dangers to society. The initiative utilizes machine learning and is compartmentalized into nine different sentinel factors.

“The purpose of developing this system is to keep people out of harm’s way,” Lary said. “The goal is to have preemptive protection and if an issue happens, to have actionable insights as quickly as possible.”

A particular focus of Lary’s over the last year has been creating a ground survey sentinel system to monitor pollution levels in local communities. For individuals dealing with respiratory issues such as asthma, increased pollutants can trigger attacks on the immune system, causing individuals to need medical attention. And while traditional EPA sensors provide detailed street-level measurements of pollution in a matter of seconds, Lary said that they’re debilitatingly expensive.

“The EPA sensors provide high quality and expensive observations and as a result, we can’t have one every half a kilometer, which would be optimal in tracking pollutions levels effectively,”

Lary said.

Another issue with EPA sensors is that they only update measurements hourly, typically on an additional hour’s delay. It would be more efficient for individuals to track pollution levels before going outdoors rather than two hours after.

As a result, Lary created a series of nodes using machine learning to make low-cost pollution sensors. These sensors require low maintenance and last

Managing Editor Ben Nguyen managingeditor @utdmercury.com (972) 883-2287

Copy Editor Sophie Boutouis copyeditor@utdmercury.com

Graphics Editor Alesandra Bell graphics@utdmercury.com

Photo Editor Anna Phengsakmueang photo@utdmercury.com

News Editor Nandika Mansingka news@utdmercury.com

Life & Arts Editor Lauren Dougherty life@utdmercury.com

Web Editor Trevor Tomer web@utdmercury.com

Outreach Editor Jacky Chao media@utdmercury.com

Opinion Editor Fatimah Azeem opinioneditor@ utdmercury.com

Contributors Palak Dave Astrid Hernandez Juhi Karnalkar Angela Li Quinn Sherer Aishni Shrivastava Smrithi Upadhyayula Isabelle Villegas