Xinrong Li, Ph.D. - US grants

This CI-TEAM project will demonstrate how to empower local governments, policymakers, students and K-12 teachers to take advantage of cyberinfrastructure (CI) in the environmental arena. Specifically, the project will develop educational modules on CI for environmental monitoring and modeling and combine them into four mini-courses targeted at personnel in local governments, policy-makers, students in environmental science, geography, biology, engineering, public administration, social science and highschool teachers. The work builds upon and goes beyond the ECOPLEX (Environmental Conditions Online for the DFW MetroPLEX) program created by the University of North Texas and the City of Denton that has been running for six years. The innovative research and development to support the education modules include: a wireless sensor network to monitor soil moisture over a watershed; a low-cost total column ozone automated monitor; and a web portal that supports sophisticated analysis and modeling tools. The educational modules will focus on: wireless sensor use and deployment, databases and documentation, data analysis and modeling, and environmental decision policymaking. The modules will eventually be merged and modified, into one three-credit hour course, which would be offered as elective credit possibly with a hybrid of on-line and on-site instruction mode to educate graduate students in several fields as well as allow current high school teachers and local government personnel the opportunity to participate in the course for continuing education credit while they are in the work force.

This project targets a very broad stakeholder audience responsible for environmental observation, education and decision making across multiple levels of public entities, particularly in local governments, high schools and universities, thus will have very broader impacts. It prepares the next generation of scientists and engineers and also the citizenry to be able to interpret data in order to make informed environmental decisions. This improved information awareness of such considerable cross-section of society will have profound and broad effects on the quality of individual choices and public policy. An intensive outreach program directed at the general public of all ages with emphasis on traditionally underrepresented groups will also be implemented based on: a field-based lesson at the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area (LLELA), a week-long Watershed Summer Day Camp and a Watershed Family Fun Science Saturday offered at the Elm Fork Education Center (EFEC). Upon completion of this project, these programs will be offered at LLELA and EFEC every school year. All materials including lessons, training program, and datasets will be available on the project web portal and thus available to the public at large.

Proposal #: CNS 07-09285
PI(s): Huang, Yan
Acevedo, Miguel F.; Fu, Shengli; Li, Xinrong; Thompson, Ruthanne
Institution: University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203-5250
Title: IAD: Infr for Environmental Monitoring and Modeling using Large-Scale Sensor Networks

Project Proposed:
This project, developing a publicly available environmental monitoring computer research infrastructure, incorporates open sensor network platforms and tools with intertwined wired and wireless sensors and actuators to support computing research and education. Through the one-stop web interface, users will be able to perform over-the-air programming on the wireless sensor networks and collect, model, and visualize real-time environmental data about water, land, and air from thousands of miles away. A channel measurement toolbox will be developed to capture propagation characteristics for the field of wireless sensor networks. Extensive data, including RF signal strength and throughput, will be collected for different scenaris. The work contributes to develop the Texas Environmental Observatory (TEO) that builds upon and goes beyond the ECOPLEX (Environmental Conditions Online of DFW MetroPLEX). TEO provides a real life testbed for projects that would be impossible without the deployment of large-scale environmental monitoring sensor networks and the fine-grained spatio-temporal sensor data.

Broader Impacts: The infrastructure enables immediate interdisciplinary research and education projects that include energy efficient map interpolation, robust localization models, code designs for cooperative communication in wireless sensor networks, high resolution near real time environmental monitoring and modeling, and modeling for K-12 teachers/students.

While autonomous vehicle companies focus on manufacturing driverless cars, electrification and connectivity technologies can upgrade the industry by allowing vehicles to communicate with the driving circumstance to achieve better safety with less emission. A key obstacle to the development of the electric, connected and autonomous vehicle system is the shortage of synergy research from needed domains. The proposed Center for Electric, Connected and Autonomous Technologies for Mobility (eCAT) will concentrate on interdisciplinary research, aiming to initiate and accelerate the transformation of mobility methods from conventional vehicles to electric, connected and autonomous vehicles by creating innovative electric, connected and autonomous technologies.

A partnership between Wayne State University (WSU), University of North Texas (UNT), and Clarkson University (Clarkson), the center not only serves as an apparatus of academic researchers collaborating with industry on important problems, but also provides industry partners opportunities to access advanced synergic research produced from a diverse group of researchers. The UNT Site will particularly focus on developing novel perception algorithms and system architecture to support connected autonomous vehicles. The UNT’s eCAT will leverage the Connected Autonomous Vehicular System Lab, the Center for Integrated Intelligent Mobility Systems, and long-running relationships with industry to bring significant contributions to the center.

The Center will not only advance the science and technologies of electric, connected and autonomous vehicles, but also accelerate both knowledge and intellectual property transfer between academia and industry through collaborative partnerships. This will allow for the rapid transformation of the state-of-the-art mobility technologies from research labs to industry. Educational efforts will be devoted to (1) curriculum design for the BS/MS programs, (2) summer camp development for K-12 students, (3) broadening participation in computing and engineering, at WSU, UNT, and Clarkson. Research results will be disseminated through our annual conference - MetroCAD, publications, and the development of publicly-available open-source projects.

Data obtained from this project will include experimental, computational, text-based, and/or curricular data. All data products will be retained for a minimum of three years after conclusion of the award or three years after public release (publication), whichever is later. WSU, UNT, and Clarkson will have password-protected shared network drives to facilitate data sharing within the teams, with collaborators, and indeed anyone in the community with an interest in the NSF-funded data. A landing page for navigation to archived data will be created at http://ecat.center.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.