​NYU students, faculty, and researchers, as well as local community members, are invited to join us at NYU Tandon's downtown Brooklyn campus for the all-day Urban AI symposium organized by Takahiro Yabe, Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology Management and Innovation (TMI) and the Center for Urban Science + Progress at NYU Tandon, in collaboration with members of the Center for Spatial Information Science at the University of Tokyo.

​Speakers

​More speakers will be announced.

Dr. Daniel B. Neill
Dr. Daniel B. Neill is Professor of Computer Science, Public Service, and Urban Analytics at NYU’s Courant Institute Department of Computer Science, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and Center for Urban Science + Progress at NYU Tandon and directs the Machine Learning for Good (ML4G) Lab. His research focuses on developing new methods for machine learning and event detection in massive and complex datasets, with applications ranging from medicine and public health to law enforcement and urban analytics. He works to create, deploy, and evaluate data-driven tools and systems that can improve the quality of public health, safety, and security. He received his MPhil from Cambridge University and his MS and PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Debra Laefer — Re-envisioning Urban Subsurfaces
Dr. Debra Laefer is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering and at the Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at NYU Tandon. With degrees from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (MS, Ph.D.), NYU (MEng), and Columbia University (BS, BA), Prof. Debra Laefer has a wide-ranging background spanning from geotechnical and structural engineering to art history and historic preservation. Not surprisingly, Prof. Laefer’s work often stands at the cross-roads of technology creation and community values such as devising technical solutions for protecting architecturally significant buildings from sub-surface construction. As the density of her aerial remote sensing datasets continues to grow exponentially with time, Prof. Laefer and her Urban Modeling Group must help pioneer computationally efficient storage, querying, and visualization strategies that both harness distributed computing-based solutions and bridge the gap between data availability and its usability for the engineering community.

​Dr. Charlie Mydlarz
Dr. Charlie Mydlarz is a Research Associate Professor at the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the Music & Audio Research Laboratory at NYU Steinhardt. He has been working in the field of urban sensor networks throughout his career. His experience covers: multimodal sensor design, acoustics, embedded development, and time series data analysis. He has led the sensing efforts on four large government funded research projects ranging from noise monitoring to urban flood detection.

Dr. Yuuki Nishiyama — Measuring Human Well-Being in Cities Using Smartphone Data
Dr. Yuuki Nishiyama is an Associate Professor at the Center for Spatial Science in the University of Tokyo, Japan. He received his B.A. (Environment and Information Studies), M.M.G., and Ph.D. (Media and Governance) from Keio University, Japan in 2012, 2014, and 2017, respectively. He was a post-doc at the Center for Ubiquitous Computing, University of Oulu, Finland in 2018 and 2019. Since 2019, he has been at the University of Tokyo. His current research interests include technology-driven human behavioral sensing and modeling, behavior change theory using ubiquitous computing, and mobile/wearable sensing platforms. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, and IPSJ.

Dr. Yoshihide Sekimoto
Dr. Yoshihide Sekimoto directs the Human-Centered Urban Informatics Laboratory, established in April 2013, which is part of the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) at the University of Tokyo. He is currently the Director of the Center for Spatial Information Science (CSIS) and a Professor at the University of Tokyo. He received his Ph.D. in civil engineering from The University of Tokyo in 2002. He had previously worked at the National Institute for Land, Infrastructure and Management from 2002-2007 and the Center for Spatial Information Science at the University of Tokyo from 2007-2013.

Dr. Paul Torrens — Pedestrian AI
Dr. Paul Torrens is Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Tandon School of Engineering and a Professor in Tandon's Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Center for Urban Science + Progress at New York University. Paul's research focuses on modeling and simulation (especially the simulations that drive VR/AR) and location-aware technologies and Geographic Information Systems (especially next-generation systems for autonomy, edge computing, and spatial computing for mixed reality). Paul runs a large motion capture facility (the "Simspace") at NYU, where a lot of these technologies are put to work as engineered systems to support human-centered computing and urban computing.

​Dr. Takahiro Yabe
Dr. Takahiro Yabe is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Technology Management and Innovation (TMI) and the Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at NYU Tandon. His research focuses on computational social science and network science approaches to model the resilience of cities to disasters, pandemics, and disruptive mobility technology, and has been published in journals including Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Nature Machine Intelligence. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Institute of Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) and the MIT Media Lab with Alex 'Sandy' Pentland and Esteban Moro. He obtained his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2021, and his MS and BS from the University of Tokyo in 2017 and 2015, respectively.  

Dr. Takahiro Yoshida — Spatial Data Analysis for Climate Change and Cities
Takahiro Yoshida, PhD., is an Assistant Professor at Center for Spatial Information Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from University of Tsukuba in 2018. Then, he worked for National Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Urban Engineering, the University of Tokyo as a Postdoc researcher. The foundation of all his research interests is the geographical information science. His more specific interests are (1) spatial data analysis based on spatial statistics, spatial econometrics, and remote sensing, and its combination with compositional data analysis; and (2) climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas with complex systems of building environments, transport networks, and human behaviors.

​Schedule

​The schedule for this all-day conference will be available soon.

Visitor Information

​This event will take place in Room 400 at 5 MetroTech Center - Dibner Hall (5MTC 400) in downtown Brooklyn. Please visit the NYU Tandon website for directions and a campus map. Advance registration through Luma is required for campus access at NYU for external guests.

​
About the Center for Spatial Information Science at the University of Tokyo

​The Center for Spatial Information Science (CSIS) was established as an internal joint-use facility by the University of Tokyo. It can be used by researchers from various faculties and research institutions within the university for their respective research works. CSIS does not concentrate on one specific field but encourages lateral research connections.

​CSIS has worked with numerous researchers within the University of Tokyo and has actively pursued research with other universities, the private sector, and national institutions. In April 2006, CSIS became a national joint-use facility to build, develop, and spread spatial information science and to offer greater support for researchers around the country. CSIS also promotes higher education for openness and development of Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G).

​

About the Center for Urban Science + Progress at NYU Tandon

​The Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP) at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to the application of science, technology, engineering, math, and social sciences in service of urban communities across the globe.

​Founded as a partnership between NYU and the City of New York, CUSP leads research, educational, and entrepreneurial initiatives that advance the science of cities. By applying novel insights to urban issues, we develop data- and technology-driven approaches that drive positive impact. With an additional focus on training future leaders, CUSP offers interdisciplinary academic programs in applied urban science and informatics for graduate students and professionals.

​CUSP also engages with stakeholders across city agencies, start-ups, industry players, community-based organizations, and nonprofits to address urgent socioeconomic, environmental, and infrastructural challenges. The center’s ultimate objective is to improve urban quality of life by using data to innovate and refine inclusive, equitable, and sustainable practices for cities everywhere.