Applied Research

A team of scientists and engineers has proven they can track the ups and downs of COVID-19 by testing samples of wastewater for evidence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Next up: plumbing these same depths to monitor the presence of other pathogens or illness-markers, and sharing the results with public health agencies to help them better protect our citizenry.

Learn More About Wastewater Epidemiology

Most of Illinois is cropland. Increasingly, however, these fields face threats including climate change. A partnership dubbed ASAI seeks to sustain farming by combining the powers of satellite and aircraft surveillance and artificial intelligence to monitor the shifting conditions of crops and soil to maximize yields while minimizing environmental impacts.

During the pandemic, we learned that videoconferencing and social media can help people maintain much-needed connections. Social co-creation platforms amped up by artificial intelligence could take us a step further: They could enable individuals, including those in often excluded groups, to collaborate in music production, and boost their wellbeing in the process.

Brain disorders and diseases afflict one in six people, with epilepsy alone affecting an estimated 3.4 million Americans. To help medical researchers find new treatments across multiple diseases, the Illinois Brain Analytics Institute hopes to build on the University of Illinois NeuroRepository on epilepsy to create a massive database.

What if bridge decks could actually tell us if they’re starting to fail before it’s obvious? Equipped with a network of wireless devices known as high-sensitivity, low-frequency accelerometers, they might be able to. How? These embedded devices, which measure vibrations, would relay their findings through augmented reality app on a smartphone.

Machines that learn from mammoth amounts of data can mimic human intelligence in more and more situations, but these AI-based systems are inherently fragile. The team’s mission is to build robust and trustworthy AI applications in areas such as autonomous vehicles and drones, robots in manufacturing and assisted living, robotic surgery, and finance.

A blueprint or even a to-scale architectural model is a useful tool in construction, but they are nothing compared to seeing a structure in augmented reality, inside and out, in 3D and — better yet — 4D, which enables a viewer to see images over time. This visualization technology could lower costs, speed up construction, and improve safety.

Healthcare is hobbled by problems so knotty that they’ve been essentially impossible to solve, resulting often in poorer outcomes for patients. A team called Create Wisdom is trying to solve at least one of them. In a pilot project, they’re using artificial intelligence to find telltale patterns in chest X-rays that could help doctors more effectively treat patients.

Robots have transformed manufacturing, mining and logistics, boosting productivity and relieving people of repetitive and hazardous tasks. A team working under the Center for Digital Agriculture wants to make sure farming is next. To make that happen, researchers are developing low-cost “agbots” that could monitor, weed, spray, and harvest crops.

Transformation to an autonomous economy can happen organically, but it might happen more thoroughly and quickly if there are support resources. This team’s ambition is to create an innovation center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign dedicated to advanced technology in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing.

An estimated 37 million American adults — or more than one in seven — have chronic kidney disease. The Kidney Wellness Institute of Illinois hopes to improve their quality of life and medical treatment by, among other things, using virtual reality devices to increase patient adherence to exercise regimens and dietary instructions.

A team of engineers wants to build a state-of-the-art acoustic-generation space that would rival those available only to the large companies that dominate the hearing-aid industry today.  It would be available to everyone through a web-portal interface, encouraging collaboration and helping to establish Illinois as a hub of innovation for audio technology.

More than 30 million Americans have type 2 diabetes, but it’s estimated that one in five of them don’t even know it. By using artificial intelligence to sift through electronic health records for relevant markers, a team proposes to develop a prototype enabling medical professionals to more easily detect the disease and identify effective treatments.

The U.S. has more than 600,000 bridges, and many of them are in need of repair or even replacement. To avoid catastrophe, crews must be dispatched to inspect them all, a time-consuming and sometimes dangerous job. A DPI team is investigating how to outfit drones with multiple sensors to do these tasks more efficiently and safely.

Meteorologists have become more accurate with weather forecasting, thanks largely to exponential growth in computing power. A team of atmospheric scientists and mathematicians wants to be better. By harnessing machine learning, they aim to be able to predict weather patterns up to six months from now.

Could regulators change ride-hailing for the better? The Mobility on Demand Lab hopes to guide them. The team is working with Uber and other companies to conduct real-world experiments to test the impact of policy interventions, measuring, for instance, the effect lower fares have on usage.

To combat climate change, the world is turning increasingly to electric vehicles, which depend on an expanded and reliable energy infrastructure. This shift raises a new concern — how to make sure the digital network isn’t disrupted by hackers or weather. This team is investigating ways to build in that resiliency.

More than 40 million American adults have some hearing loss. This team proposes the creation of a Hearing Health Institute to develop new approaches to treatment The effort would leverage artificial intelligence to analyze a rich repository of varied data sources including neuroimaging, genetic, and clinical profiles.

Software designers typically focus on functionality and performance, adding security only as an afterthought or ignoring privacy altogether. This team will draw from cryptography, machine learning, software engineering, and trustworthy computing to produce practical, scalable systems to provide consumers with the privacy they want.

Social media misinformation — and its corrosive power to alter everything from elections to friendships — is one of the biggest scourges of our time. This team, in collaboration with industry partners, hopes to build easy-to-use software that could identify and tag misinformation on social media.