Research Areas

1. Population Health Analytics helps insurers, providers and government health agencies gain actionable insight about the present and future health state of their population and optimize the use of their resources to improve health outcomes and reduce cost. Using data from electronic health records and public data sources, we use statistical modeling, simulation and machine learning to forecast metrics such as emergency room visit and hospital re-admission rates. We also can classify healthcare populations with a holistic risk profile which includes socioeconomic and behavioral factors. This makes it possible to estimate the impact of and recommend interventions for chronic health conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

2. Urban Mobility Analytics focuses on helping public transit agencies and transportation service providers understand and respond to the rapidly changing landscape of urban transportation services, and user attitudes and behavior.  To support the emerging Mobility as a Service trend, we mine multimodal trip data to understand user choices in combining different modes of transit.  Our actionable insights then support providers in planning and optimizing their offerings in the broader Mobility context.

3. Connected Vehicle Ready Systems considers fusing data from existing infrastructure to mimic the future benefits of Connected Vehicle (CV) technology today, architecting systems that enable a graceful and seamless transition to CV technology as it becomes available, and closing the loop—providing stakeholders and systems the right information at the right time to support decision making and enhance automation.  Our work follows an open innovation model, where we collaborate with key domain partners like the Mobility Transformation Center at the University of Michigan.

4. Our work on Public Transit Systems supports public transit agencies with advanced analytics for decision making regarding quality of service, operations, demand modeling, and network design. Our work feeds into global Conduent technology platforms used by transit agencies in North America, Europe and Latin America.

Our previous work has covered the spectrum from social media data mining, customer care analytics and cloud-based risk analytics, to fraud detection in insurance claims and prepaid card services, and analytics for K-12 education.  Our research areas also extend to “horizontal” technology components that apply across applications and verticals in areas such as feature learning and information fusion using Deep Learning, advanced simulation models, and spatio-temporal analytics.

1. Gain Scale, Efficiency, and Precision Through Automation:  By automating unskilled, repetitive tasks, such as object recognition, categorization, and high volume counting, video analytics solutions can save labor cost and, in some cases, improve precision and accuracy. For instance, through object recognition technology and computational expertise, we delivered a state-of-the-art image –based solution for finding and reading license plates at highway speed. Once license plates are recognized the system is able to match registered drivers from a database and charge the appropriate toll to the driver’s account. By selecting only events worthy of human review, we can accelerate research, eliminate labor cost and prevent errors or omissions that result from loss of human attention

2. Extend the reach of subject matter experts across space and time: Video analytics can be used to augment the reach of experts who advise patients or clients based on visual observation. Healthcare workers may be able to better channel patients to the proper specialist, or triage patients or accident victims. With an image taken by a cell phone, for instance, a video analytic system may be able to advise a consumer on which product to use to treat a condition. Horticulturists may identify plant disease to find effective treatments. Automated analysis of ongoing IoT data and imagery enables effective long-term monitoring and anomaly detection that indicates the need for proactive intervention before the process goes awry.

3. Improve Service Through Real-Time Awareness: Often the right data for the application may be easy to see, but hard to affordably gather.  For example: How many parking spaces are available in a garage and where are they located? How many people are currently in the drive-thru lane? How long are the check-out lines in the store? In these situations an image can tell the story and we teach computers how to assess these situations just as humans do. Video analytic systems can monitor the flow of people in a retail enterprise, or a public facility, to enable real time adjustments of staffing and inventory.  Managers can be made aware of items that need replacement or customers requiring service. Systems can provide real-time information on developing traffic patterns for city planners and on the movement of pedestrians so that lights on cross walks can be adjusted for current optimum efficiency and safety.

4.  Increase the Reach and Efficiency of Inspections for safety and quality control: Video analytic systems can serve as an efficient and effective way to detect defects in products or produce on manufacturing lines; or identify safety issues on rail lines, subways, mines, and construction sites.  Used alone or combined with other IoT and systems data, our work extends human vision by detecting objects or anomalies that are invisible to the human eye, capturing footage in hard to reach places, and enabling 24/7 monitoring. Then by teaching computers how to interpret large streams of this data we can build predictive models that anticipate service and prevent equipment downtime.

 5. Design a Better Customer Experience & Optimize Business Processes: Retailers and experienced sales people can tell you all about a business based on their expert observations and can use that to  improve merchandizing effectiveness: How do customers flow through a retail establishment?  Where do they linger and which products  catch their attention most? Do they find the items they are looking for? What is their experience and how can it be improved?  Are there sufficient sales staff? By enabling automated capture and interpretation of the guest experience, new levels of retail analytics can be put to use, complementing point of sale data.

6. Workflow and process efficiency: Time and motion studies can be a critical element of a workflow optimization effort. Are employees conducting the steps in a process the correct way? Could the workflow process be improved to enhance the customer experience, eliminate waste, or bolster sales? Data such as this can be gathered manually, once in a while.  However with video analytics we can observe, measure and then optimize workflows, labor, equipment mix and operating policies continually and put that data to work to reduce cycle time, eliminate defects and increase capacity through greater productivity.

7. Make Use of Mobile Devices to Enhance Customer Experience and Operations Efficiency: How can I leverage the camera on the cell phone to improve the customer’s experience? Can I simplify how customers interact with my business? How they share information? For instance, by creating an app that turns the cell phone into a scanner, can I streamline the process by which customers supply information? Can employees use cell phones to enhance business processes?