UBC launches connected-vehicle test facility on campus

UBC launches connected-vehicle test facility on campus

Photo credit: Clare Kiernan

Original article HERE

Contact Lou Corpuz-Bosshart, UBC Media Relations

University of British Columbia researchers today unveiled a national test bed for connected-vehicle research as part of an initiative to promote safe, smart transportation in BC and beyond.

The facility, called AURORA, includes a network operations centre, a mobile base station and five intersections equipped with roadside units on the southeastern portion of UBC’s Vancouver campus. It also includes traffic cameras, software-defined radios, a smart traffic signal controller and two test drive vehicles, with all units connected to the campus network by wireless links.

“This launch marks the first step in enhancing information sharing between vehicles, infrastructure and pedestrians, to improve safety and get people to their destination more efficiently,” said lead researcher David G. Michelson, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science. “With AURORA now open for research ventures and partnerships, academics, industry and government can collaborate in connected-vehicle research and testing in an integrated world-class facility right here at UBC.”

According to Michelson, the “smart intersections” on campus are now capable of communicating with connected vehicles, and the network will grow rapidly in terms of both size and capability with continued expansion planned for over the next year.

“When connected vehicles pass through these smart intersections, the new infrastructure will allow us to count vehicles, map vehicle trajectories, analyze driver behaviour, and share traffic and traffic signal information — while stripping the data of personal information to protect users’ privacy,” he added.

The AURORA connected-vehicle test bed is one of UBC’s important contributions to the development of smart cities, according to James Olson, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science.

“Transportation is one of the biggest challenges of smart cities, and AURORA is a first step in determining, through research, how smart roadside infrastructure can help both drivers and planners make better decisions,” said Olson. “Thanks to recent infrastructure investments and the formation of key research teams, UBC is well-positioned to support these efforts, in collaboration with industry and government.”

AURORA is funded in part by Transport Canada, the BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and other partners and organizations.

Quick Facts:

• AURORA is an acronym for AUtomotive testbed for Reconfigurable and Optimized Radio Access.

• AURORA researchers will test “driver assist” alerts and add more connected intersections to the network.

• The AURORA team is working with the Ministry of Forests and FPInnovations to develop both road traffic models and connected-vehicle technology that will improve safety on B.C.’s resource roads.

• AURORA researchers are working with Cisco Systems and Eleven-X to develop methods for using emerging low-power wide-area wireless networking technology to provide connectivity to smart road infrastructure on the province’s many highways that aren’t currently covered by the mobile cellular networks or other wireless providers.

• The AURORA system can help achieve “Vision Zero” — a transportation system with zero fatalities and zero serious injuries.

Karthik Pattabiraman awarded Distinguished Alumni Educator Award from University of Illinois

Professor Karthik Pattabiraman receiving the Distinguished Alumni Educator Award from his PhD advisor, Professor Ravishankar K. Iyer. (Photo supplied)

ECE professor Karthik Pattabiraman has been awarded a Distinguished Alumni Educator Award for Early Career Educator from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Computer Science. He received the award on October 19 at the 8th annual Alumni Awards Ceremony and Banquet in Champaign, Illinois. He was one of two alumni awarded in this category this year.

Professor Pattabiraman received his master’s degree from UIUC in 2004, and his PhD in 2009. He has been at UBC since 2010, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also received a UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship in 2016. His research interests are in dependable and secure computing, and software systems.

According to UIUC, the award “honors computer science alumni or faculty members who have made outstanding contributions to computer science education and recognizes alumni and faculty who excel at motivating computer science students.” The award has previously been awarded to faculty members from other top universities and research labs world-wide.

UIUC Computer Science is ranked top 5 in the world and has a long history of notable alumni.

Visit UIUC to see the full list of winners. 

ICICS Hosts “The Future of Digital Innovation”

Dr. Karen Cheung presenting on Innovation in Biotechnology. (Photo by Paul Joseph, UBC Photographer)

Article by: Craig Wilson, ICICS

On September 17 and 18, the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems (ICICS) hosted a networking event for research alumni from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg who now work in the USA or Canada. Under the theme of “The Future of Digital Innovation,” the event allowed these FAU Research Alumni members to meet each other, exchange ideas, and strengthen their affiliation with FAU, while learning more about parallel work being done at UBC.

On day one, FAU-affiliated researchers and senior administrators presented a series of talks in ICICS paired with their UBC counterparts. For example, Robert Schober, Head of the Institute for Digital Communications at FAU and a former UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) professor, gave a talk entitled “How to Communicate Inside a Human Body”. This was immediately followed by a presentation from UBC ECE Professor Karen Cheung on “Innovation in Biotechnology,” offering illuminating perspectives on this fascinating area of research.

The introduction of “Canada’s Digital Technology Supercluster” by UBC Vice President Research & Innovation Professor Gail Murphy and the presentation “Making Digital Innovation Happen: The FAU Ecosystem” by FAU Vice President Outreach Professor Kathrin Möslein highlighted the ongoing activities at both institutions to remain on the forefront of digital innovation.

The following day, ICICS director Robert Rohling and AMPEL director John Madden organized lab tours for the visitors that included the Robotics and Control Laboratory, the Advanced Materials and Process Engineering Laboratory (AMPEL) and HATCH, UBC’s incubator for tech-based startups, located in ICICS. Discussions are underway for a follow-up visit by HATCH staff to FAU’s startup incubator in the near future.

“The Future of Digital Innovation” was sponsored by Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and spearheaded at UBC by ECE Professor Vijay Bhargava. Dr. Bhargava received a Humboldt Research Prize in 2015 to work with collaborators at FAU, and was appointed FAU Honorary Ambassador in 2016, in which capacity he helped organize this event. FAU alumni and UBC ECE Professor Lutz Lampe opened the event with a talk entitled “A Bottom-Up Approach to Smart Grid Monitoring.”

Original article on ICICS website

Could a DIY ultrasound be in your future? UBC breakthrough opens door to $100 ultrasound machine

Article by Lou Corpuz-Bosshart, UBC Media Relations

Engineers at the University of British Columbia have developed a new ultrasound transducer, or probe, that could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners to as little as $100. Their patent-pending innovation—no bigger than a Band-Aid—is portable, wearable and can be powered by a smartphone.

Conventional ultrasound scanners use piezoelectric crystals to create images of the inside of the body and send them to a computer to create sonograms. Researchers replaced the piezoelectric crystals with tiny vibrating drums made of polymer resin, called polyCMUTs (polymer capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers), which are cheaper to manufacture.

“Transducer drums have typically been made out of rigid silicon materials that require costly, environment-controlled manufacturing processes, and this has hampered their use in ultrasound,” said study lead author Carlos Gerardo, a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering at UBC. “By using polymer resin, we were able to produce polyCMUTs in fewer fabrication steps, using a minimum amount of equipment, resulting in significant cost savings.”

Sonograms produced by the UBC device were as sharp as or even more detailed than traditional sonograms produced by piezoelectric transducers, said co-author Edmond Cretu, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

“Since our transducer needs just 10 volts to operate, it can be powered by a smartphone, making it suitable for use in remote or low-power locations,” he added. “And unlike rigid ultrasound probes, our transducer has the potential to be built into a flexible material that can be wrapped around the body for easier scanning and more detailed views–without dramatically increasing costs.”

Co-author Robert Rohling, a professor of mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering, said the next step in the research is to develop a wide range of prototypes and eventually test their device in clinical applications.

“You could miniaturize these transducers and use them to look inside your arteries and veins. You could stick them on your chest and do live continuous monitoring of your heart in your daily life. It opens up so many different possibilities,” said Rohling.

The research was published recently in Nature Microsystems & Nanoengineering.

Original press release on UBC News

ECE Team wins DSN Best Paper Award Runner Up

ECE PhD student, Guanpeng Li, and his advisor, Dr. Karthik Pattabiraman, received the Best Paper Award Runner Up at the 48th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), 2018. The conference took place from June 25-28 in Luxembourg City.

Their paper is titled Modeling Soft-Error Propagation in Programs, and was one of three papers to be nominated for the award out of nearly 300 submissions. The DSN conference is considered to be the most prestigious venue in the field of dependable computing.

The paper proposes a new technique, Trident, to estimate the error resilience of a program through static and dynamic analysis methods. Traditionally, error resilience was estimated through the use of fault injection experiments, which are very time-consuming. Consequently, researchers have proposed alternate techniques to estimate the error resilience of a program without performing fault injections. However, those techniques suffer from significant inaccuracies. The paper from the ECE team showed that it is possible to achieve high accuracy without the use of fault injections, thereby significantly accelerating the resilience estimation process. Says Dr. Pattabiraman about the paper, “Trident represents a fundamental advance in the way dependable systems are designed. In the past, practitioners were loathe to integrate resilience techniques into the software development process as such techniques took too long to run. In contrast, Trident is almost two orders of magnitude faster than traditional techniques, and can hence be integrated into the software development process easily.”

The work was done in collaboration with researchers from Nvidia Research in the USA, and was funded in part through a Strategic Grant from the NSERC. The ECE team hopes to integrate Trident into a production compiler in the near future. The Trident code is freely available.

Read the paper and view the presentation slides. 

Dr. Julia Rubin, Lina Qiu and Yingying Wang win Distinguished Paper Award at ISSTA 2018

Congratulations to Dr. Julia Rubin and ECE grad students, Lina Qiu and Yingying Wang, for receiving the Distinguish Paper Award at the 27th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing an Analysis! The conference took place from July 16-21 in Amsterdam.

Their paper is titled Analyzing the Analyzers: FlowDroid/IccTA, AmandDroid, and DroidSafe.

ECE led research team receives CIHR award for prostate cancer imaging tools

ECE’s Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi and Dr. Peter Black (Department of Urologic Sciences) along with their research team were awarded a CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research) Project Grant for their research project titled Multi-centre Temporal Ultrasound Image Analysis for Prostate Cancer Diagnosis.

The project aims to use ultrasound imaging technology with a machine-learning framework to establish patient-specific targeting techniques to detect early aggressive prostate cancer.

The team will receive $1,158,976 over five years for conducting the project.

More information on the award and the abstract.

From biomechanics to dentistry: The many roles of Amir Abdi

When Amir Abdi speaks about teaching and being an instructor, one thing is clear: he loves it. Amir’s passion and dedication to teaching has not gone unrecognized. He was the recipient of the Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant for the 2017/2018 school year.

“It is indeed an honour to be the recipient of the Killam GTA award and I’m humbly grateful that my efforts have not gone unnoticed,” says Amir.

The award is awarded annually by UBC and recognizes graduate students for their outstanding teaching, research and service to the community. Amir is currently a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, co-supervised by Dr. Sidney Fels and Dr. Purang Abolmaesumi.

Amir’s fondness for teaching has continually pushed him to become a better instructor. He acknowledges that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to teaching and learning. Instead, he recognizes that his role is fluid and he has to adapt to the needs of his students.

“The most vital thing I learned was to respect students’ differences in their approaches towards learning,” explains Amir. “Our learning tactics are not necessarily in sync with one another, which makes it challenging as you naturally expect your audience to learn along the same path as you did. That’s when you need to switch roles, put a facilitator’s hat on, and let the students go through a self-paced learning process in a flipped classroom setting.”

Amir, a computer engineer, has not taken a traditional path to become a PhD candidate at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His interdisciplinary background in dental surgery and computer engineering has helped shape his research path.

“I am hoping to make an exciting fusion between what is known as reinforcement learning with the worlds of biomechanics and dentistry.” says Amir. “I am investigating the possibility of predicting the outcomes of clinical interventions on the patient’s jaw based on a functional biomechanical model of the subject. The end goal is to create a virtual surgery tool that provides the clinicians with feedback regarding the post-operative quality of life of patients.”

Although his love and passion for teaching and research will likely steer Amir towards a path in academia, he’s also had the opportunity to explore the possibilities and potentials of being an industry researcher as a PhD intern in Google.

“It is hard to ignore the tempting opportunities of industry because I like to build stuff,” he acknowledges. “But I see myself aiming for a faculty position sooner or later.”

“Regardless, I will be where I can make the most contributions and feel more productive.”

Advanced Science cover features paper from ECE’s Kenichi Takahata and team

Advanced Science, May 2018 issue

The cover for the May 2018 issue of Advanced Science features a research paper written by Associate Professor Kenichi Takahata and his team consisting of Xing Chen, Babak Assadsangabi and Professor York Hsiang (a vascular surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital and UBC Faculty of Medicine). The paper is titled Enabling Angioplasty‐Ready “Smart” Stents to Detect In‐Stent Restenosis and Occlusion.

The featured paper discusses an intelligent version of a stent, a vascular implant, enabled by Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and radiofrequency technology that monitors and gives a warning of the most critical problem caused by the implant known as restenosis (narrowing or occlusion of arteries), which often occurs post implantation and can put patient lives at risk.

“This work has demonstrated the first intelligent stent that is compatible with today’s interventional procedure and tools and has shown wireless tracking of local blood flow via in vivo testing,” explains Dr. Takahata. “This is a breakthrough step that will promote the clinical and commercial application of smart stent technology.”

Advance Science is a renowned open-access journal with a high impact factor that covers a broad range of research areas in science and engineering, including life science and healthcare studies and applications.

Read the cover paper and check out the full May 2018 issue.

Francisco Paz aims to close the loop on student learning

Francisco “Pancho” Paz

Francisco “Pancho” Paz, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UBC, recently received a Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award recognizing his outstanding work as a Teaching Assistant and instructor for 2017/2018. The award is awarded annually to 16 UBC Teaching Assistants.

Pancho, who is committed to acadamia, is grateful for the countless opportunities to give back and contribute to post-secondary education. He is humbled by the recognition and credits the people around him for his success.

“I’m going to be honest, I never feel like I’m a good teacher,” says Pancho. “I felt very honoured to receive the award because a huge part of this comes from the recommendation of my supervisor, instructors, colleagues and students.”

Pancho continues to learn and grow from his teaching experiences in order to be a more effective educator. He draws inspiration from teachers that he’s had in the past.

“When I think of past instructors and what stands out the most, they were people who were really passionate and would transmit their work in a meaningful and interesting way,” reflects Pancho. “What makes instructors great is when they care for the student and have a passion for the process of teaching and what they’re teaching.”

Dr. Martin Ordonez, Pancho’s supervisor for the past six years, nominated him for the award and continues to be impressed by his patience and ability to communicate complex concepts to students. It’s clear to him that students and colleagues enjoy working with Pancho.

“Pancho is a leader and role model for other teaching assistants,” says Dr. Ordonez. “He develops strong connections with students and establishes a comfortable, stressless learning environment where students can feel safe to ask questions and are both encouraged and motivated.”

Pancho believes in the importance of putting yourself outside of your comfort zone to learn and grow. As a scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, he is able to collaborate with people from other disciplines. He finds that the biggest challenge is communicating and understanding different ways of thinking.

“The whole social sciences framework is different from natural sciences, which can be very dry as we want to communicate in the most succinct way possible,” explains Paz. “It can be hard to collaborate and find common ground when you come from different backgrounds, but it’s a fantastic opportunity for me to work with people from areas outside of engineering.”

Despite having spent most of his life in academics, Pancho still wakes up excited to go to work everyday. In addition to teaching duties, he is working on research that focuses on power electronics and renewable energy. He’s on the path to graduate at the end of the year and is open to working in the industry, but Paz believes his true calling is in academia.

“I really love teaching and research, so the role of the academic professor will be what I look for first after graduating.”