Center for Smart Streetscapes

CS3 Fall Retreat
2025-11-05 - 2025-11-07 | Tarrytown, New York, Tarrytown, New York
The Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) will host its Fall Retreat for CS3 students, faculty, and staff.
This is a CS3 internal event.

CS3 Industry Speaker Series: Dr. Patrick Alrassy
2025-11-10 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Hybrid
Join the Center for Smart Streetscape (CS3) Student Leadership Council (SLC) for an engaging session in our Industry Speaker Series, featuring leaders at the forefront of smart cities, transportation innovation, and urban technology. This event offers students and researchers the opportunity to learn from professionals shaping the future of intelligent infrastructure and to explore pathways for collaboration, internships, and career growth within the evolving smart streetscape ecosystem.
About Our Speaker
Dr. Patrick Alrassy is a Staff Research Engineer at Meta’s Super Intelligence Lab, where he works on new Generative AI Evaluation frameworks. He specializes in building evaluation benchmarks for large language models across domains such as STEM, law, finance, and creative reasoning. Dr. Alrassy holds a Ph.D. in Civil & Engineering Mechanics from Columbia University, and an affiliate to Columbia’s Smart Cities Center, where his research advanced smart cities and large-scale telematics data for safer road networks. His prior work spans spatial AI, autonomous systems, particularly self-driving cars in the startup space.
This event is open to all Columbia University, Florida Atlantic University, Lehman College, and Rutgers University Students.

SLC Monthly Meeting December 2025
2025-12-04 11:30 - 12:30 | Zoom
Monthly meeting for the CS3 Student Leadership Council (SLC).
This is a CS3 internal meeting.

CS3 2026 Innovation Summit: AI For Purposeful, Vibrant Streetscapes
2026-02-05 09:00 - 17:30 | The Forum at Columbia University, 601 West 125th Street, New York, NY, 10027, United States
Welcome to the CS3 2026 Innovation Summit: AI for Purposeful Vibrant Streetscapes
Join the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3), an NSF Engineering Research Center, for the 2026 Innovation Summit: AI for Purposeful, Vibrant Streetscapes—a convening of researchers, industry leaders, public-sector innovators, and community stakeholders working to move AI beyond buzzwords and into measurable, real-world results.
The 2026 Summit centers on redefining what AI means in urban contexts—disentangling hype from reality and examining how data-driven technologies can be responsibly designed, deployed, and governed to deliver tangible public value.
This event is invite-only. Approved registration is required for admission.
This page will serve as the central hub for the day. Here you will find:

Full program schedule
Session details
Speaker info
Slides & resources (as available)
Key links and logistics

Bookmark this page—resources will be updated.
Full Program Schedule
8:00 | Doors Open
Coffee served
9:00 – 9:15 | Welcome & Opening Remarks
Shih-Fu Chang, Dean of the School of Engineering, Columbia University
Andrew Smyth, CS3 Director & Principal Investigator, Columbia University
9:15 – 10:00 | Keynote & Fireside Chat: Scaling Public-Private Innovation for the Next Generation – Empowering Agencies to Harness AI and Technology
Speaker: Kristin White, Transportation Industry Executive, Head of Transportation Strategy & Partnerships, Google Public Sector
Moderator: Andrew Smyth, CS3 Director & Principal Investigator, Columbia University
10:00 – 10:50 | Panel Discussion: From Sensors to Systems: Real-Time Traffic Analysis for Faster Decision-Making
What does it take to turn real-time sensor data into actionable traffic insights? This panel explores a collaboration between city agencies, industry, and academia aimed at building and validating accurate traffic models for New York City. Speakers will discuss technical approaches to sensor fusion, the challenges of forecasting in complex urban environments, and what it will take to move from research to real-world implementation.
Speakers:

Ahmed Darrat, Chief Product Officer, INRIX
Robert Holbrook, Executive Director of “Get Stuff Built”, Office of the Mayor of NYC
Mehmet Turkcan, Associate Research Scientist, CS3

Moderator: Olivia Moore, Managing Director, CS3
10:50 – 11:10 | Perfect Pitch Competition – Session 1
Hear 90-second “elevator pitches” from the Center’s students. The audience will vote to select the competition winner, who will go on to represent the Center in a nationwide engineering research competition.
11:10 – 11:30 | BREAK
11:30 – 12:30 | VALIDATE Accelerator Demo Day
Accelerator teams present their demos in Edge AI for Streetscapes, Safe and Privacy-Preserving Sensing, and Digital Twin Platforms
12:30 – 2:00 | Lunch & Research Poster Session
2:00 – 2:25 | Keynote Address: Evolution of AI
Speaker: Christopher White, President, NEC Labs America
2:25 – 2:45 | Perfect Pitch Competition – Session 2
Hear 90-second “elevator pitches” from the Center’s students. The audience will vote to select the competition winner, who will go on to represent the Center in a nationwide engineering research competition.
2:45 – 3:15 | Faculty Lightning Talks
Shree Nayar, T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University: Minimalist Vision
George Sklivanitis, Schmidt Research Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Florida Atlantic University: Beyond Connectivity: Resilient, Secure and Sensing-Integrated Wireless Streetscape Networks
Jorge Ortiz, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University: CityOS: A Privacy-First Operating System for Sensed Environments
3:15 – 3:35 | BREAK
3:35 – 4:25 | Panel Discussion: Testbed Perspectives on Local Value of Technology in Streetscapes
This session explores how CS3 testbeds and deployment partners translate research into measurable public value by aligning technology with everyday user needs and public-sector operations. The conversation will surface lessons from both street-level community experiences and city and county operations. Insights from CVG Airport will highlight how airports can help validate smart streetscape technology before moving to full city-scale operations.
Speakers:

Chris Roog, Community Redevelopment Agency Executive Director, City of West Palm Beach, Florida
VJ Rajvanshi, Director of Planning, Middlesex County, New Jersey
Brian Cobb, Chief Innovation Officer, Cincinnati/Kentucky International (CVG) Airport

Moderator: Bill Kenworthey, Regional Leader of Planning and Urban Design, HOK
4:25 – 4:30 | Closing Remarks and Awards
4:30 – 5:30 | Networking Reception
Resources & Downloads
PDF Program
Resources will continue to be updated post-event.
Logistics & Venue Info

Address + map
Columbia University 601 West 125th Street Mail Code 9802 New York, NY 10027
Room locations
Accessibility information
Restrooms
The Forum has gender-inclusive restrooms on the concourse level and on the 3rd Floor. Gendered restrooms are found in the concourse level and 2nd Floor. All the gendered bathrooms include changing tables, and the 2nd Floor women’s restroom includes a lactation room.

Emergency info

​​Questions?
Contact: streetscapes@columbia.edu

Snapdragon Multiverse Hackathon
2026-02-06 11:00 - 2026-02-07 19:00 | Columbia University
Enter the Snapdragon Multiverse at Columbia University!
Join the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) on February 6-7, 2026, for an immersive hackathon, sponsored by Qualcomm, where innovation meets connectivity. Teams of 3–5 will dive into the future of multi-device communication, building experiences that redefine how devices work together.
Every team will receive a Copilot+ PC powered by Snapdragon® X Series processors as the central control hub and a Samsung Galaxy S25 featuring Snapdragon 8 Elite. Want to go further? Bring your own Snapdragon-powered devices or microcontrollers to craft seamless, intelligent cross-platform solutions.
From syncing sensors to orchestrating edge workflows to designing multi-screen interactions, this is your chance to prototype the next generation of connected computing within the Snapdragon ecosystem.
Form your team, pick a track, and start creating. Each challenge is designed to showcase Snapdragon’s power across PCs, phones, and microcontrollers—your playground for limitless innovation.
This event is open to all undergraduate/graduate students and postdocs at Columbia University, as well as CS3 partner institutions (Lehman College, Rutgers University, and Florida Atlantic University).
Register by January 21, 2026! https://luma.com/mfwgyqby
Track 1: Real-time CV Assistant

Platforms: Compute, Mobile device
AI Branch: Computer Vision, Edge AI
Objective: Develop an application performing real-time computer vision analysis (object tracking, scene understanding, anomaly detection, or gesture recognition) optimized for on-device inference, optionally enhanced by cloud augmentation.
Example: License plate detection app to track cars coming in and going out of a parking lot.

Track 2: Conversational AI Companion

Platforms: Compute, Android, Cloud, or Wearable
AI Branch: Natural Language Processing, Generative AI
Objective: Build an interactive conversational AI application capable of voice or text-based interaction, delivering real-time contextually aware responses for tasks like wellness coaching, tutoring, coding assistance, or creative storytelling
Example: AI dungeon master that can be used to create and narrate dungeons and dragons adventures.

Track 3: RL Agent Arena

Platforms: Compute, Cloud, Microcontroller
AI Branch: Reinforcement Learning, Simulation
Objective: Build an interactive environment representing a real-world scenario and train an agent or team of agents to solve the scenario. Bots should have access to the environment state at a minimum, but models could use AI tools or data augmentation techniques to improve their performance above the baseline environmental inputs.
Example: Build a bot to dynamically handle traffic lights at an intersection in a simulated environment.

Submission Requirements

Each team must submit a proposal for an AI use case application leveraging open source software that would run natively on a Snapdragon-powered laptop.
The proposal must be the work and/or idea solely owned by the team members.

Prizes

Top Prize (selected by judges):

One (1) Meta Quest 3 512GB All-n-One Mixed-Reality Headset for each member of the team
Qualcomm DevRel support to complete application
Blog + Live Stream opportunities

Team’s Choice (team popular vote, by location):

One (1) Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses for each member of the team
Qualcomm DevRel support to complete application
Blog + Live Stream opportunities

Expect hands-on support, networking, marketing, and amplification opportunities as well as prizes for the winning teams. Don’t worry – there will be swag for everyone! Note that the winners will be selected overall, not per track.
Let’s come together and re-define what multi-device collaboration looks like – powered by Snapdragon.
Registration open until January 21st – secure your spot today!
Only one project proposal submission per person is allowed.
Snapdragon and Qualcomm branded products are products of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.
Questions?
Email streetscapes@columbia.edu.
