An image from Find and Connect, the app on which Billy Huang worked as a City Scholar.
Billy Huang and Zikora Okonkwo are both computer engineering majors at UIUC Grainger College of Engineering, heading into their last year of study. Billy, who’s from Shanghai, wanted a change of pace from Urbana-Champaign and the opportunity to work and study in a big city. Zikora, an area native from Homewood, Illinois, listened to her father’s suggestion that she spend a semester closer to home.
For both, the City Scholars program was perfect.
About City Scholars
City Scholars allows Grainger undergraduates — primarily computer science and electrical and computer engineering majors — to spend a semester living, working, and studying in Chicago. In addition to their studies, City Scholars are matched with companies for a 20-hour-per-week internship.
At the same time, the program allows corporate partners to identify, hire and retain some of the world’s most talented engineers and computer scientists and encourages students to reinvest their skills into long-term careers in Chicago. In addition to cultivating relationships with marquee corporate partners across Chicago, the purpose of City Scholars is to establish a tech talent pipeline between Grainger Engineering and Chicago’s tech ecosystem.
The City Scholars program has placed 462 interns since 2018 and partnered with more than 60 Chicago tech companies since inception.
This spring, Billy and Zikora were DPI’s first City Scholar interns, each working with a DPI researcher on a project with real-world impact.
Ephemeral social networking
Research scientist Alvin Chin has been working on Find and Connect, an ephemeral social networking app.
Chin explained that Find and Connect would be especially useful at in-person conferences and events, where, for users who opt into it through the app for the event, it could find other users within a close physical proximity and recommend them as connections on social media.
“If Alvin and I were talking, we’re probably in a proximity of less than two or three meters,” Billy said. “There’s an algorithm that detects, using Bluetooth, if we’re in that proximity, and if we are, it logs that as an encounter. The encounter is later used to form recommendations on social media for connections … it’s almost like a Google Maps for people.”
Chin started Billy off on the project by having him review relevant research papers and frameworks of the app architecture. After a few weeks, Billy began developing the iOS version of the app from scratch on Xcode, so that by the end of the semester the team had a working demo.
“I was impressed at how quickly he was able to provide deliverables to me as well as how quickly he was able to code the app for mobile social networking on iPhone,” said Chin, “which is not an easy task to do. He went above and beyond my expectations.”
In April Chin held a workshop, “Bridging Diverse Connections Through Mobile Social Networking,” where Billy demoed the app and presented a poster. Billy also helped to create a version of the iOS app that will be used for testing at a poster session at the SRI Congress in June.
Wastewater data science
When she reviewed the companies hosting City Scholars, Zikora saw DPI’s wastewater project and thought, “This project’s really cool.”
As a statistics minor, she was excited about the opportunity to do data analysis as well as coding. She spent the spring working with water scientist Marcia Silva, DPI’s associate director of R&D, creating machine learning models to analyze wastewater quality. An unexpected bonus for her was gaining experience presenting the charts and graphs she created based on her data to utility companies.
“At first, it was definitely daunting,” Zikora said, “because it just seemed like I had so much to do: so much to do research on, so much data gathering, so much data cleaning. It was definitely a lot. But Marcia helped me with organizing, creating a schedule, like, OK, what should we get done today? What should we get done this week?”
After work
In addition to their internships and classes, the City Scholars cohort met weekly to visit companies in Chicago — and had time for some fun, too. A highlight for both of DPI’s City Scholars was the Bulls-Clippers game at the United Center in February.
In addition to memories, both Billy and Zikora will also have peer-reviewed publications to show for their work. Billy and Chin coauthored a paper that has been accepted to a conference, and Zikora worked closely with Silva and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District on a paper, which is now ready for submission.
Silva said she would not have expected a college sophomore to be focused on peer-reviewed publication, but of the more than 120 students she has mentored, Zikora stood out — even in the mere four-plus months they worked together.
“She wanted to fly,” Silva said, “so I just gave her wings.”
Although both students are interested in careers as software developers, Silva has encouraged Zikora to consider a PhD.
Graduate students too
Grainger Engineering in Chicago also houses its master of computer science in Chicago program at 200 S. Wacker Drive: the same building as DPI. As a result, in addition to the City Scholars, DPI hosted four master’s student interns:
- Qijian Wu and Yifan Zhu, who will begin their second year in Grainger, worked with full-stack developer Anuj Gautam on machine learning models with DPI’s epidemiological wastewater monitoring system.
They worked on synthetic data generation for an epidemiological dataset. Since the machine-learning models for the system need a large amount of data, Qijian and Yifan used existing data to create even more data to train the models.
In nine weeks, Wu and Zhu created a prototype that Gautam’s team can build on. In addition, it was a learning experience for Gautam, who supervised interns for the first time.
“Even though I was just supervising them,” he said, “I need to know what I’m talking about.”
- Charles Marshall, who finished his master’s degree this spring, worked with Business Analyst Cathy Ye on coding, machine learning, and research in the development of IMPACT (Innovative Matching Platform for Academic Collaboration and Teaming). The IMPACT Tool centralizes scholarly articles, grants, and researcher profiles to accelerate matching for research collaborations and funding opportunities. By leveraging AI-driven summarization, advanced search, and user-friendly dashboards, it optimizes collaboration between academia, industry, and funding agencies.
- Jiahe Jiang, who is on track to finish his master’s degree in December, worked with Yuanye Ma, who studies how individuals’ perceptions and behaviors are shaped by different methods of privacy communication and user interface.
Author: Jeanie Chung