The Makeability Lab took part in the Drumheller Half Marathon—a wonderful new(ish) tradition hosted by the Allen School's own Race Condition Running Club. CSE ugrads, grads, postdocs, faculty, and staff participated. It was so much fun! The course begins with a short segment down the upper vista, followed by 110 laps around Drumheller Fountain. Runners will enter first loop from the east of the finish line and begin by running counterclockwise. The direction will flip every 20 minutes, and runners must change directions only by rounding the marker placed at the north end of the finish line. Here's a few pictures and my GPS log from the run.

We had a wonderful time this week doing a "lab exchange" with MIT's City Form Lab. On Wednesday, Chu Li and Jon Froehlich gave a talk to the MIT group and on Friday, the MIT group reciprocated and gave a talk to us. Inspirational and fun!

Congrats to Chu Li for presenting our work on Project Sidewalk and sidewalk equity for the World Information Architecture Day in Seattle. Pictures below courtesy of Zhihan Zhang.

Congrats to Stefania Druga for passing her iSchool PhD dissertation defense today on the topic of Creative AI Literacies for Families. I was honored to serve on the PhD committee. Such timely, important work exploring how to develop children and family AI literacy and involve them in AI-assisted creation! Also, best title slide ever, which was generated via DALL E-2 using the new Microsoft Designer—an AI-assisted design tool (how fitting!).    

On May 14th, 2023, Xia Su visited the User Interface Research Group at University of Tokyo. He introduced the Makeability Lab, as well as Project Sidewalk and RASSAR, to Professor Takeo Igarashi and the lab members of the User Interface Research Group. 

We had a wonderful time this week doing a "lab exchange" with MIT's City Form Lab. On Wednesday, Chu Li and Jon Froehlich gave a talk to the MIT group and on Friday, the MIT group reciprocated and gave a talk to us. Inspirational and fun!

We were honored and delighted to give a talk on SciStarter in honor of MLK Jr.'s Day of Service. You can view the slides here.

In the words of Dr. King:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere

These words still resonate today as we continue to attempt to address systemic inequities in human mobility and transit access—for which Project Sidewalk is but one small movement forward.

SciStarter is a platform for community science featuring over 1,000 research projects, including Project Sidewalk. If you join SciStarter, you can get credit for using Project Sidewalk—just make sure you're using the same email addresses on both platforms.

Huge news: Michael Duan was selected as a Finalist for the extremely competitive CRA Undergraduate Research Award based on his work on Scaling Crowd+AI Sidewalk Accessibility Assessments and Sidewalk Gallery.

This is the first time in the Makeability Lab's history that one of our ugrads earned such a distinction. Congratulations Michael on this well-deserved recognition. The Allen School should be producing a story about this soon.

See the full list of awardees here.

We are incredibly excited and proud of PhD student Manaswi Saha, who was just honored with the 2020 Google PhD Fellowship for her work on Project Sidewalk and urban accessibility. Congrats Manaswi on this well-deserved recognition for your important work.

An excerpt of the official blurb from the Allen School News website:

Saha, who is one of 53 students throughout the world to be selected for a Google Fellowship, will use those tools to fill an informational gap between citizens and the local government and stakeholders showing where improvements in sidewalks need to be made to make them accessible to all. 

“Since the beginning of my academic career, my research interests have been towards socially impactful projects. Public service, especially for underrepresented communities, runs in my family,” Saha said. “The driving force for the work I do stems from my role model, my father, who dedicated his life towards rural and agricultural development in India. His selfless efforts inspired me to explore how technology can be used for the betterment of society. With this goal in mind, I set out to do my Ph.D. with a focus on high-value social problems.”

Saha works with Froehlich in the Makeability Lab on one of its flagship ventures, Project Sidewalk. The project has two goals: to develop and study data collection methods for acquiring street-level accessibility information using crowdsourcing, machine learning, and online map imagery and to design and develop navigation and map tools for accessibility.

Manaswi Saha gave an invited Google Tech Talk on Project Sidewalk and interactive accessibility geo-visualizations. The talk slides are here.

Makeability Lab member Manaswi Saha was an invited keynote speaker to the Washingtion State Ridesharing Organization (WSRO) conference. She gave a talk on Project Sidewalk entitled Project Sidewalk: Mapping the accessibility of the physical world at scale using interactive computational tools.

Congrats Manaswi and thanks for representing the Project Sidewalk team.

Makeability Lab PhD student, Manaswi Saha, has been accepted into the ASSETS'19 Doctoral Consortium where she will present and receive feedback on her doctoral work entitled "Interactive Tools for Assessing and Understanding Urban Accessibility At Scale". Congratulations Manaswi!