Come Join NJIT's 2021 Research Institutes, Centers and Laboratories Showcase

Noise has an outsized impact on quality of life for urban residents, but it can be hard to monitor and regulate. Cities, which have limited resources to enforce noise codes, often chase transient sources that disappear before inspectors arrive hours or days later.

In a talk next Tuesday at NJIT’s 2021 Research Institutes, Centers and Laboratories Showcase, Mark Cartwright, an assistant professor of informatics, will describe the development of machine-listening tools to automatically monitor urban noise pollution. They include the collection and annotation of data and the training and compression of models to identify and characterize these sounds.

“We aim to provide cities and residents with technology to help them better understand the harmful noise patterns in their cities and to more efficiently utilize their limited resources for enforcement and mitigation,” explains Cartwright, who will share the virtual stage with approximately 30 new faculty members who joined NJIT over the past two years. Each will give three-minute presentations on their work.

Yelda Semizer, an assistant professor of the humanities, will describe her efforts to understand the mechanisms of peripheral vision and visual search using computational modeling, behavioral psychophysics and eye-tracking, with a focus on quantifying visual clutter and how it impairs performance in visual search tasks.

Amir Varkouhi, an assistant professor of chemistry and environmental science, will discuss his work on cell and gene therapy approaches toward the creation of a novel biotherapeutic platform to combat COVID-19.

“We are very proud to have this outstanding group of new faculty join the NJIT research enterprise, with its more than 135 research institutes, centers and laboratories in key areas that address grand challenges in healthcare innovations, sustainable communities, and smart data analytics and machine learning,” said Atam Dhawan, senior vice provost for research. “We already see interdisciplinary collaborations yielding exciting results, from sensors and machine learning-based models to test and monitor the pandemic spread of COVID-19, to technologies to help communities supply clean water, renewable energy, smart transportation, to cybersecurity, to responsible social networking and data-driven business management.”

Each year, the showcase aims to open up new research vistas and spawn collaborations among NJIT faculty. This year, Dhawan says, the adapted virtual forum will introduce many faculty members to each other for the first time.

The morning will begin with a keynote speech by serial entrepreneur and executive Colin Brenan, the founder and CEO of 1CellBio, Inc., who has more than 30 years of experience in building high-growth, early-stage life science companies based on in-licensed university research. His current company provides single-cell analysis used in a wide range of applications from tumor profiling, to stem cells, to embryo development, to the identification and validation of new drug targets.

The directors of NJIT’s five research institutes – the Institute of Data Science, the Institute of Space Weather Sciences, the Leir Research Institute for Business, Technology and Society, the Institute of Brain and Neuroscience Research and the York Center for Material Characterization and Device Fabrication – will also give brief updates on the explorations of their broader ecosystems.

2021 NJIT INTEGRATED RESEARCH SHOWCASE WEBEX EVENT LOG-IN INFORMATION FOR ATTENDEES:

To connect by computer, click this link: https://njit.webex.com/njit/onstage/g.php?MTID=ebf764c2768d547f59e4dbe52...

OR

Go to njit.webex.com; enter the meeting number: 120 297 0264; press enter; enter your name, email, and the Event password, which is NJIT (all uppercase); and click “Join Now”

Connect by telephone: Call: 1-650-479-3207; enter the meeting number: 120 297 0264 followed by #; then, for the Attendee ID number, press #