The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $1.75 million to the Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) to increase the impact of its software infrastructure by enabling and accelerating research by the scientific community in sensor design, mobile computing, privacy, data analytics and visualization.
Called mResearch, the project will enable Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) researchers to deploy their innovative software in scientific studies on health, smart homes and the workplace via the enhanced MD2K e-platform. The resulting discoveries and tools will help individuals improve their health, wellness, and work productivity.
Currently, MD2K’s mCerebrum (for smartphones) and Cerebral Cortex (cloud analytics) are being used in a dozen scientific studies across the country to collect more than 300 terabytes of mobile sensor data from more than 2,000 research participants. The studies have led to new computational models that allow the detection of conversation, smoking, eating, craving, stress, and cocaine use. The open source software, developed by MD2K over the course of four years, supports the development and validation of models and algorithms for inferring digital markers of health, wellness and productivity, and associated risk factors.
The enhancements made by the mResearch project will result in a MD2K software architecture that is complete, open and modularized, and that includes all aspects of sensor data collection, data processing algorithms, cloud-based machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) integration. The enhanced MD2K software will facilitate reproducible and extensible CISE research with high-frequency mobile sensor data.
The mResearch project is a collaboration among five universities. It will be directed by Dr. Santosh Kumar from University of Memphis and includes Dr. Emre Ertin from The Ohio State University; Dr. Benjamin Marlin from University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Dr. James M. Rehg from Georgia Institute of Technology; and Dr. Mani B. Srivastava and Dr. Vivek Shetty from University of California, Los Angeles.