• November 09, 2020

    Two UW Student Teams make Finals of MetroLab Student Cup

    Two University of Washington student teams were selected as finalists for the mobility track for the inaugural MetroLab Students Cup, and one of those two UW teams was awarded as the mobility track winner.

    The MetroLab Student Cup is a competition where students from across the MetroLab member universities submitted written applications describing civic research projects they completed in collaboration with partners in their communities. Projects focused on providing new analysis, policy, or technical insights to difficult civic priorities and challenges. Twelve finalists were identified, three each among four different categories: COVID-19, Health & Resilience, Mobility, and Environment. These twelve finalists then participated in live pitch competitions, judged by civic research experts and professionals.

    The winners from each live pitch competition will present in a final round to determine the grand prize winner. The UW team that was named the winner of the mobility track will now compete against the winners of the three other tracks on November 17, 2020 at 2:00pm. That team, comprised of Ziyuan Pu, Ruimin Ke, Ian Nisbet, and Luyang Gong, proposed and presented on recent collaboration with the City of Bellevue, WA, including: how they have collaborated and why their relationship with Bellevue is important; curbside usage as an interesting and important problem to address; their Mobile Unit for Sensing Traffic (MUST) sensor/edge-AI algorithms; and their vision of smarter infrastructure managements.

    MetroLab Network is an international collaborative of 28 cities, 6 counties, and 35 universities focused on civic research and innovation, which was launched jointly by 40 mayors and university leaders as part of the White House Smart Cities Initiative in 2015.

    “We believe that data- and technology-oriented research and innovation will lead to more effective, targeted, adaptive, and creative government and community services, improving social services, mobility options, urban spaces, public health, and more. It will enable sustainability goals and climate resilience. It will foster trust in government, train the next generation of the public workforce, and cultivate a civic-minded public. It will enable responsible and transparent applications of data and technology in government.”