This summer, high school rising seniors from New York City and West Palm Beach, FL, participated in the My Streetscape Summer Research Institute led by the Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3) and The Trust Collaboratory. As the high schoolers interned with ongoing CS3 research projects, conducted interviews with pedestrians, and presented their streetscape research, mentors from across CS3 played an essential role in the students’ growth.
Mentors among CS3’s graduate students, staff, and faculty were pivotal to creating an engaging and educational experience throughout the six weeks of the high school program.
The mentors brought this opportunity to life, and we are pleased to recognize them for their exceptional dedication to training the next generation of smart city leaders.
Each mentor’s individual contribution to the students’ growth contributed to the success of the program and this formative experience for rising engineering professionals.
Traffic Accident Analysis and Prediction
In West Palm Beach, CS3 launched the inaugural Florida-based branch of My Streetscape in 2024.
Working with the Florida Atlantic University Department of Engineering and FAU Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry, Dr. Jason Hallstrom — CS3 Deputy Director and Chief Research Officer — led the West Palm Beach branch of the program.
Instrumental to the students’ success was Suvosree Chatterjee, Ph.D. candidate at FAU in addition to being a cybersecurity instructor and author of the book Network Intrusion Detection and Deep Learning Mechanisms. Chatterjee led the West Palm Beach students’ daily engineering lessons and guided them through Python data structures, field research, and interviews with pedestrians.
Safety for Older Pedestrians in Harlem
Columbia University Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics associate professor Dr. Sharon Di focuses on how Harlem streets can be safest for older pedestrians who cross them, with the long-term goal of improving local safety and accessibility features. Di worked with a team of graduate students and staff to best prepare the high schoolers to take on issues at the forefront of smart cities research. She also joined the students during their visit to the Jackie Robinson Senior Center to conduct fieldwork.
A Ph.D. student under Di, Yongjie Fu, is dedicated to using machine learning methods to tackle transportation problems in smart cities. He bridged the gap for the high schoolers between large-scale research and the tangible contributions that they can have, also preparing them for their future success in their fields of interest.
CS3 Research Engineer Joan Akibode, a graduate of Columbia University, worked with Di, Fu, and the students to combine their interdisciplinary lessons into concrete projects, models, and demonstrations. His project on Accessible Pedestrian Signals (APS), also known as “crosswalk buttons,” captivated the high schoolers as they undertook building miniature sensing devices, such as APS, reflective of real streetscape applications.
The Intersection of Autonomous Vehicles and Algorithms
Also working on one of Di’s projects, Qi Gao held daily engineering lessons with a team of high schoolers including building robots that model an intersection. Gao led the students through examining autonomous vehicles in the lens of their scaled-down intersection, providing insights for how to create safer intersections. Gao is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Columbia University with a focus on smart transportation, artificial intelligence for science, and deep learning.
Architecture of the Streetscape
The Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) contributed to students’ awareness of the architecture of the streetscape and fieldwork skills, with assistant professor Dr. Anthony Vanky, an urbanist and researcher in data-centric processes and sensing technologies. Vanky helped prepare the high schoolers for their final presentations, and trained exceptional GSAPP graduate students to teach the high schoolers about fieldwork and society.
Ki-Sang Yi, pursuing an M.S. in urban planning at GSAPP, has a background in studying technology and digital access with the program. She led lessons for the high schoolers on everything from ensuring that community members are at the center of research to examining the built environment around streets.
In the same GSAPP program, Timothy Yoshimura Small focuses on the intersections of climate science, critical cartography, and spatial justice. In addition to mentoring the My Streetscape high schoolers and leading their lessons, he serves as a Research Assistant in GSAPP.
Machine Learning for Street Safety
At CS3, Dr. Zoran Kostic applies machine learning to increase safety around micromobility — small vehicles traveling short distances. He translated his research into real-world experiences for the high schoolers over this summer.
Working under Kostic, recent Columbia M.S. in computer science graduate Sanjeev Narasimhan combined disciplines to teach the high schoolers about how machine learning works. Narasimhan has a strong background in machine learning, deep learning, and computer vision, which he is now applying at Northwell Health.
The Social Science of Technology
My Streetscape uniquely intertwines social science with engineering, fieldwork, and research. Cristian Capotescu, Associate Director of The Trust Collaboratory and Participatory Research Lead for CS3, hosted morning social science sessions with the students in New York City and West Palm Beach to teach the importance of human-centered, community-driven research.
Graduate student leaders in The Trust Collaboratory’s Community Research Internship in Trust & Technology (CRITT), a program for exemplary students in the Columbia University Department of Sociology, worked with all of CS3’s teams of mentors and high schoolers to instill important social science lessons.
For Miguel Beltran, a passion for sociology can be traced back to his youth, as he shared at the start of the program. Beltran recently earned his Master of Arts in Sociology from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, where his research focused on the evolution of cameras in New York City using a mixed methods approach. Beltran’s passion for giving back to youth has sustained from growing up in Glendale, CA, to New York City where he helped high schoolers craft their research proposals, formulate research questions, select their methodology, conduct interviews, and more.
Jenny Fondren, on the path to completing the Columbia University master’s in sociology, brought her skills working with youth to the My Streetscape Summer Research Institute. Her extensive experience includes serving as a Graduate Student Mentor at Columbia College prior to expanding her role with The Trust Collaboratory. Through CRITT, Fondren researched youth in public spaces, identities and spaces, different policing of people and behaviors in public spaces, and participatory research methods. In this role, she helped lead outreach and coordinated research with disability organizations in New York serving blind and low-vision populations.
With a focus on urban and economic sociology, Brady Kennedy brought unique participatory research contributions to the My Streetscape high schoolers. At CS3 and The Trust Collaboratory, Kennedy has been exploring the social dimensions of street navigation systems for blind and low-vision New Yorkers as part of the StreetNav CS3 research project. In his master’s in sociology pursuit, Kennedy is in the process of submitting a review paper on participatory research methods in the context of smart cities. He is currently developing a guide to community engagement and participatory design methodologies aimed at public sector workers and technical experts involved in the development of smart city initiatives. The My Streetscape high schoolers benefited from lessons in participatory research as Kennedy lent his vast experience.
As a Fulbright Scholar in the Columbia University Master of Arts in Sociology, Nicole Lum has a background and expertise in social research. Through CRITT, The Trust Collaboratory, and CS3, she joined high schoolers, social scientists, community members, engineers, and more to advance the program through ‘learning by doing.’
Mentor in Summer 2025
We are always welcoming interested students to share their interest in mentoring before applications open. Reach out to CS3 Inclusive Education Manager Fernanda Martinez at fm2777@columbia.edu to learn more about mentoring or other opportunities to get involved with CS3.