CS3 Monthly Research Exchange

At each CS3 Monthly Research Exchange, faculty and student researchers in the field of smart urban planning will take the stage to share their latest findings, breakthroughs, and urban projects.

Gaurav Jain, Ph.D. Student at Columbia University

• Gaurav Jain is a Ph.D. candidate in the computer science department at Columbia University, advised by Prof. Brian A. Smith in the Computer-Enabled Abilities Lab (CEAL). His research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Vision, and Accessibility. Gaurav’s work focuses on developing AI-driven interactive systems that augment blind and low-vision people’s access to visual experiences. He has developed systems that embed AI within street intersections for independent and safe outdoor navigation for blind pedestrians. Gaurav’s work also introduces new approaches for navigation assistance, studying how technology can enable blind people to explore unfamiliar environments. Additionally, he has contributed to digital media accessibility, developing systems that generate audio representations for sports broadcasts, enabling blind viewers to visualize the action by themselves.
• Presentation Abstract: Leveraging street cameras to support precise outdoor navigation for blind pedestrians.

Alon S. Levin, Ph.D. Student at Columbia University

• Alon S. Levin received a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering (magna cum laude) in 2020 and a M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering in 2021, both from The Cooper Union. His research interests are in full-duplex wireless, compressed sensing, PHY layer algorithms, and cognitive radio.
• Presentation Abstract: We present a set of experiments utilizing wideband real-time adaptive full-duplex (FD) radios, demonstrating simultaneous transmission and reception on the same frequency channel. Each FD radio consists of a paired antenna interface, a switched-capacitor delay-line-based configurable Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) that implements Self-Interference Cancellation (SIC), an FPGA that optimizes the RFIC configuration in under 1.1 seconds and can adapt to environmental changes in under 0.3 seconds, and a Software-Defined Radio (SDR) transmitting OFDM-like packets. We demonstrate a real-time adaptive FD radio that achieves the SIC necessary to reach the noise floor across a wide bandwidth of 100 MHz, enabling a FD wireless communication link.

The CS3 Monthly Research Exchanges are internal and open only to CS3 affiliated students, faculty, and staff. If you are interested in learning more about the research happening at CS3, please contact our team at streetscapes@columbia.edu.