Lab Updates

IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Recognizes ESE Professor’s Research

B. Brian Park, a professor in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, has received the 2014 George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award for Outstanding Research for a paper in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. Park co-authored the work with former Ph.D. student Joyoung Lee, now an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Awards for years 2014-2017 were announced in the journal’s December 2020 issue.

Park and Lee’s paper, “Development and evaluation of a cooperative vehicle intersection control algorithm under the connected vehicles environment,” was published in the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 81–90, Mar. 2012.

In 2015, the Board of Governors of IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society approved a proposal to name the Best Paper Award in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems as the George N. Saridis Best Transactions Paper Award. According to the announcement, 2014-2017 winners were named “after nearly five years of preparation and planning, and almost one year of hard and concentrated effort by the Award Committee.”

Read the full announcement here.

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems is a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a premier publication for basic and applied research to expand knowledge on transportation. It focuses on the design, analysis and control of information technology as it is applied to transportation systems.

Park also is an affiliated faculty member of UVA Engineering’s Link Lab, an interdisciplinary center for cyber-physical research, and director of the Traffic Operations Laboratory.

Computer Science Ph.D. Student-Led Research Team Wins National Institutes of Health-Organized Challenge

Josephine Lamp, a University of Virginia computer science Ph.D. student, is leading a team of researchers in novel approaches to diagnostics for advanced heart failure. The research project has been named a winner of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Big Data Analysis Challenge: Creating New Paradigms for Heart Failure Research.

Benton H. Calhoun Elected IEEE Fellow for Pioneering Design of Ultra-low-power Circuits

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has elected Benton H. Calhoun as a fellow for original and fundamental contributions in integrated circuit design. Calhoun, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, specializes in energy-efficient, sub-threshold circuit design and applications that enable self-powered wireless sensing systems. These wireless sensing nodes are so low power that they no longer need to use batteries. Instead, they operate on power harvested from their environment.

Esen Yel Recognized for Excellence In Autonomous Systems Research

Esen Yel, a systems engineering Ph.D. student at UVA Engineering, will give the prestigious Link Lab Student Seminar in recognition of her work to advance drones and self-driving vehicles, or autonomous systems. The seminar is the preeminent talk given by a student in the 280+ person lab; being chosen as the presenter is also a hallmark Link Lab award in recognition of excellence in research.

Daniel Quinn Receives Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Fish and birds use complex high-speed maneuvers when chasing prey or escaping predators. How water and air flow around these animals during maneuvers is mostly unknown. Mapping out these flows will help biologists better understand the relationship between fish, birds, and their environment. Mapping out these flows will help bio-inspired roboticists, who currently rely on models of low-speed, symmetric gaits when designing and testing robots. Understanding the flows that govern rapid maneuvers will enable a new generation of fast, flexible, ultra-maneuverable bio-inspired robots. The principal goal of this project is therefore to discover the fluid dynamics that govern high-speed, asymmetric swimming/flying gaits. The project integrates educational activities, including virtual tours where students from rural high schools teleconference into the lab and remotely control a robotic swimming rig.

This project is made possible by a unique rig that creates high-frequency, asymmetric flapping motions in a water channel. The rig uses a scotch-yoke mechanism to double the frequencies traditionally available to studies of swimming and flying, and it floats on air bushings in order to simulate autonomous maneuvers. The performance of fish- and bird-inspired propulsion strategies are then quantified by a combination of Particle Image Velocimetry and dynamic force measurements. These experiments will inform adaptations to models of unsteady aerodynamics as they pertain to swimming and flying animals and robots. The experimental-theoretical campaign will focus on three specific research goals: (i) Determine what three-dimensional flow features govern the thrust and efficiency of high-frequency bio-inspired gaits, (ii) Determine what three-dimensional flow features govern the maneuverability of asymmetric bio-inspired gaits, and (iii) Determine what wake-driven models predict the performance of high-frequency, asymmetric, tunable-stiffness fins and wings. More generally, the project's overarching goal is for the unique semiautonomous rig and the associated modeling to create new precedents and templates for those integrating fluid dynamics into the next generation of intelligent machines.

Homa Alemzadeh and Research Team Present CognitiveEMS Research at NIST Annual Meeting

Homa Alemzadeh and her research team have come a long way since winning a $1.1 million grant in 2018 to build an artificial intelligence assistant to help first responders make good decisions during emergency situations. As first reported in 2018, the project’s goal is to develop a wearable, voice-activated assistant that collects sound data from the incident scene and, in response, provides dynamic feedback that would help the responder by suggesting appropriate medical interventions.

Humans of Link Lab: Faysal Hossain Shezan

Faysal, class of 2022, is a native of Dhaka, Bangladesh and when he’s not working towards his PhD, enjoys spending time with loved ones, traveling, and gardening. At the Link Lab, Faysal works with affiliated staff Dr. Yuan Tian on projects related to safety and privacy issues in emerging systems.

Humans of Link Lab: Minghui Sun

Minghui Sun, class of 2021, enjoys having dinner parties in order to meet new people and in his free time also likes to read, swim, kayak, and travel. In the Link Lab, he works with faculty affiliate Cody Flemings on projects related to safety in engineered systems.

Humans of Link Lab: Jianyu Su

Jianyu Su, a native of Hubei, China; is an avid bodybuilder in his free time and also enjoys being amongst friends and real world problem solving. He is pursuing a PhD in the University of Virginia School of Engineering’s Systems Engineering program and works with Professor Peter Beling at the Link Lab on projects related to artificial intelligence (AI) for multi-agent systems. 

Humans of Link Lab: Faria Tuz Zahura

Faria Tuz Zahura, class of 2022, when not working towards her PhD loves to paint nature scenes. She is a student resident at the Link Lab where she works on urban coastal flooding projects with the Associate Director of the Lab, Dr. Jon Goodall.