EE2020 Kickoff webinar

Thursday, June 4, 2020
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM Eastern

Thank you for joining us for the EE2020 webinar series kickoff! A recording of the program is now available.

Featured Topic

The theme for EE2020 is Envisioning the Future of Environmental Protection. Our planned host city of Chicago is home to initiatives that are experimenting with sensors and other computing technologies that have the potential to transform the way we understand our environment. The Chicago Array of Things (AoT) is like an experimental fitness tracker for the City of Chicago. Funded by the National Science Foundation, AoT is a network of internet-connected sensors, computers, and cameras that measure the environment, health, and vitality of the city. The devices use both traditional sensing as well as programmable AI functions to analyse images and sound, providing a new mode of observational measurement not possible with traditional sensors.  For instance, AI "at the edge" (inside the devices) allows for measuring things like traffic or pedestrian flow and density through image analysis.

The AoT is a collaborative effort among leading scientists, universities, local government, and communities to develop experimental capabilities to measure real-time data on urban environment, infrastructure, and activity for research and public use. The project team includes Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Discovery Partners Institute as well as scientists from around the world.  Key partners also include the City of Chicago and numerous community groups.  The initiative has the potential to allow researchers, policymakers, developers and residents to work together and take specific actions that will make cities healthier, more efficient and more livable. 

The AoT team has recently embarked on a new and larger initiative called "SAGE: A Software Defined Sensor Network," which is developing new devices with more powerful edge computing, updated sensors for Air Quality and other variables, and for deployment not only in cities but in environmental and ecological sensor networks across the country.  

The AoT project is a great example of how new technology—and the "Intelligent" Internet of Things (IIoT) in particular—can transform urban living and city planning. These same technologies have important implications for the future of environmental protection. What can we learn from their application in Chicago's Array of Things and the SAGE project?

Featured Speaker

Charlie Catlett
Senior Research Scientist
University of Illinois Discovery Partners Institute

Charlie Catlett joined the University of Illinois’ Discovery Partners Institute as senior research scientist after two decades as a senior computer scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. He also is a senior fellow at the University of Chicago’s Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation. His current research focuses on urban data analytics, urban modeling, and the design and use of sensing and “AI-at-the-edge” computing technologies embedded in urban infrastructure and the environment. He was the principal investigator of the NSF-funded “Array of Things” (AoT), an experimental urban infrastructure to measure the city’s environment with sensors and embedded (“edge”), remotely programmable artificial intelligence hardware. He also is a co-principal investigator of the NSF-funded “SAGE: Software-Defined Sensor Network” project, a joint effort including Northwestern University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and others.

Catlett served as Argonne’s chief information officer from 2007-2010. Before joining UChicago and Argonne in 2000, he was chief technology officer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. From NCSA’s founding in 1985, he participated in the development of NSFNET, one of several early national networks that evolved into what we now experience as the Internet. During the exponential growth of the web following the release of NCSA’s Mosaic web browser, his team developed and supported NCSA’s scalable web server infrastructure.

Catlett founded the Urban Center for Computation and Data (UrbanCCD), now part of the Mansueto Institute, at the University of Chicago in 2012. He was recognized as one of Chicago’s “Tech 50” technology leaders by Crain’s Chicago Business in 2014, and nationally as one of “25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers” of 2016 by Government Technology magazine. He also is the recipient of the Argonne Board of Governors 2019 Distinguished Performance Award. Catlett is a computer engineering graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.