Goldwater Scholar Creates Real-Time Air Quality Monitoring System to Implement in Newark

Vishva Rana ‘23, a Goldwater Scholar, has always been interested in addressing sustainable issues. The mechanical engineering major, minoring in innovation and entrepreneurship, has been working on a real-time air quality monitoring system and hopes to see it implemented in Newark’s Ironbound.

Last year she received the Albert Dorman Honors College's Moonshot Prize for her work to examine air pollution in Newark and to create access to data for its residents. This year, she worked on a prototype that she presented in the Summer Research & Innovation Symposium hosted by NJIT’s Undergraduate Research and Innovation program (URI).

Winning the Goldwater scholarship has given Rana the opportunity to network with the Goldwater community and alumni that also won the award. She believes their teachings will come in handy in the future as she moves forward with her career. 

The type of system Rana is working on consists of different sensors that will be located throughout a community. The sensors would be connected to a web or smartphone application that would display the air quality in real time, as a heat map. With her system, you will be able to see a comprehensive heat map of whole cities’ or communities’ air pollution. 

This system would allow residents and policymakers to gain an understanding of where specific pollution sources are, so they can make informed decisions.

As she develops her system, Rana has worked closely with Dr. Vatsal Shah from the civil and environmental engineering department, and William Lutz from  VentureLink@ NJIT. Lutz is director of commercialization and co-director of VentureLink@ NJIT. 

This summer she worked on a prototype, building a sensor and connecting to a heat map platform for testing. Rana presented her idea in the Highlander Foundry Program at Venturelink, which supports NJIT student entrepreneurship.

After working with Newark to implement her system, the Nutley, New Jersey native is exploring how to commercialize and scale to other cities struggling with access to clear air quality information.

Rana is already in talks with the Ironbound Community Corporation, a nonprofit organization advocating for community justice in the Newark neighborhood. The organization has already expressed interest in integrating the system in the community.

Her goal is to target municipalities in New Jersey and New York. Other industrial neighborhoods that may follow after the Ironbound are Trenton, Camden and neighborhoods in New York City. 

Rana has gone into the community to talk with the people and learn if they would be interested in having her system. “She took the customer engagement piece so seriously,” said Lutz, one of her advisers. “She went down to a coffee shop in the Ironbound, and was handing out flyers asking people for feedback about what they think about air quality and her tech, engaging the people who she would most like to help.

“Not everybody does that. Not everyone engages their community quite in that way, and that's really motivating too. She's such a bright person and whatever she does, I know she's going to be great at it.”

Rana believes that there’s a huge demand for sustainable systems, not just environmental sustainability, but even sustainability regarding infrastructure. “A lot of what we have in place today wasn't really built with sustainability, or long term permanence in mind. So a lot of issues that we see today are because of that infrastructure, like clean water, even pollution,” she said.

Her career goal is to obtain a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and conduct research on urban sustainability and Smart Cities. She’s also the current president of the student Entrepreneurs Society. 

“I definitely see myself working in sustainability as a researcher, or building systems and developing on previous systems to create these sustainable environments,” she said.