Professor, Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEPP), Virginia Tech; Joann Boughman Innovation Fellow at USG; Acting Director, Center for Future of Work Places and Practices (CFWPP); Head of Outreach and Engagement, Center for European and Transatlantic Studies (CEUTS)
The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy has just published a Tool Tips article I wrote on how I’m using Google Glass and Apps to support my teaching at Virginia Tech. The multimedia format of the journal offers a unique opportunity to embed pictures and videos in the article that provide a rich context to the platform I’m using and what students thought of the experience.
This morning we held our first IITK-VT partnership summer meeting, during which we welcomed three visiting scholars from IITK to Virginia Tech. Anshita Agrawal, Abishek Saraf, and Saurabh Dixit will be spending eight weeks at Virginia Tech working with Prof. Sunil Sinha, Prof. Brian Kleiner, and me. The scholars will undertake research focusing on resilient water infrastructure, construction safety, and sustainable infrastructure development, and will support the development of a new course on urban infrastructure that will offered this fall semester.
The pictures below were taken during our meeting using Google Glass.
On May 2, 2014, James Bryce successfully defended his dissertation in Civil Engineering. His research focused on how to model the environmental impacts of infrastructure management alternatives applied to pavements. James found that by modifying infrastructure management approaches slightly, the energy consumption attributed to the lifecycle of a pavement network can be reduced significantly. By developing an approach to visualizing the interaction between the most cost effective approach and the approaches where energy consumption is minimized, James created a way for transportation agencies to make more informed decisions regarding the environmental and economic impacts of their pavement management plans.
James will begin a position as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham (UK) in July as part of the Sustainable Pavement & Railway Initial Training Network, a project commissioned by many partner institutions throughout the European Union. The focus of his research will be to define sustainability assessment factors and current state of the art sustainable practices within the European road and rail network.
I served on James’s doctoral committee with Gerardo Flintsch (Committee Chair), Nadarajah Sivaneswaran, Christian Wernz, and Pam Murray-Tuite.
The pictures below were taken through Google Glass during James’s defense.
On April 16, 2014, Nathalie Graham successfully defended her capstone project for her Masters degree in Natural Resources. Nathalie’s project examined extended producer responsibility (EPR), a policy approach that aims to incentivize greener design and internalize the full environmental costs of a product by making its producer responsible for its entire life cycle. She analyzed EPR laws in the European Union and the United States to develop policy recommendations for packaging waste in the US.
In addition to her Masters degree from Virginia Tech, Nathalie holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and International Relations from the University of California, Davis. Before graduate school, Nathalie worked for several environmental and corporate accountability organizations.
I served on Nathalie’s committee with Desiree Di Mauro (committee chair) and Kieran Lindsey.
On Sunday, May 4, a conversation between Robert Ashford, Joyce Rothschild, Woody Crenshaw, and I aired on Talk at the Table with Andy Morikawa. During our conversation, we explain the basic idea of binary economics and how it relates to critical issues such as growing income inequality and sustainable development.
This afternoon, students in the International Development Planning Studio (IDPS) presented their final project proposals to a review panel of international development experts from Virginia Tech. This final session of the studio provides students with an opportunity to showcase and defend what they have been able to develop over the past 14 weeks. This year, I was very pleased to have Susan Marmagas (Public Health), Michael Bertelsen (Director, OIRED), Kurt Richter (Associate Director, OIRED), and John Browder (SPIA) serve as members of the review panel. I’d like to congratulate the students on making it through the event and for giving a series of professional and high-quality presentations.
The images below (taken #throughglass) capture a few key moments from the final studio session.
This morning, the Dean’s Advisory Committee (DAC) for the University Libraries had its inaugural meeting in the new multipurpose room in Newman Library. Over the next year the 22 DAC members from across the university will work to identify opportunities to put Virginia Tech at the leading edge of library services. The images below were taken #throughGlass.
In the video below, Brian Mathews and I provide some insight into how faculty and students are using Google Glass at Virginia Tech.
[Acknowledgments: I’d like to thank Carlos Waters for his help in editing the above video. I’d also like to thank Virginia Tech’s Networked Learning Initiatives and InnovationSpace for the resources they have made available for members of the VT Glass team.]
For additional information on how faculty and students are using Glass at Virginia Tech, see the recently published Tech Teams White Paper.
On Friday, April 11, I joined faculty and students at Virginia Tech in a mini-conference to debate “Development and Humanitarianism.” The event was hosted by Prof. Brett Shadle and Prof. Patricia Nickel to bring together researchers who engage in critical examinations of development and humanitarianism, and researchers who engage in development and humanitarian work. I fall into the latter group, which is why it was a pleasure to meet Prof. Ilan Kapoor (the keynote speaker) and learn more about his postcolonial view on development.
On Friday, March 28, Mark Seiss – the first “on-the-ground” statistician at Virginia Tech – successfully defended his doctoral dissertation in statistics.
Mark’s research covers several aspects of survey methodology, from questionnaire design to final estimation. His first paper develops an approach to matrix sampling designs, where a subset of questions are administered to a respondent in such a way that the administered questions are predictive of the omitted questions. The proposed methodology compares favorably to previous matrix sampling methods when applied to data collected from a household survey conducted in Nampula, Mozambique. His second paper documents how statisticians can help improve the quality of data collected from surveys by carefully analyzing the data soon after it is collected. In addition to correcting data entry errors, the approach provides surveyors with continuous support throughout the fieldwork, enhancing their training and reducing the number of errors being made as the fieldwork progresses. His final paper proposes a model-based approach to the estimation of the mean squared error associated with synthetic (indirect) estimates. Mark applied the proposed mean squared error estimation methodology to simulated data and estimates from the 2010 Census Coverage Measurement (CCM). He found that the proposed mean squared error estimation methodology compared favorably to the previous methods in the literature, while allowing for area-specific estimates.
I served on Mark’s doctoral committee with Eric Vance (committee chair), Leanna House, and Inyoung Kim.
The pictures below were taken in 2011, when Mark acted as the “on-the-ground” statistician during a household survey in rural Nampula, Mozambique.
Ralph P Hall 