Scientists and Applications

Below is the list of scientists and their potential applications.

Erich Petushek – Assistant Professor of Human Medicine

Contact Information

Email:erich.petushek at gmail.com
Office Phone: (906) 227-1780
Cell Phone: 262-470-7551
http://www.acl-iq.org/
Michigan State University
229 Physical Education Instructional Facility,
1401 Presque Isle Avenue, Marquette, MI 49855

App Idea: ACL Prevention Tutor

Preventing traumatic knee injuries is a priority in sport. However, individuals are not likely to engage in effective evidence-based prevention activities. This application will enable athletes, parents, coaches and sports medicine personnel to assess the likelihood that their current activities will prevent injuries and then provide feedback and information (based on responses) to improve their practices. This assessment and feedback tool should not only improve the likelihood that individuals will engage in effective preventative activities but will allow the scientist to gather large-scale information on uptake/use of evidence based practices.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Thursday, 1-25-2018, at 5 pm
Second Team-Scientist Meeting,  Wednesday, 1-31-2018, at  5 pm
by phone 262-470-7551

Jean Lemmon – Director of Education and Reporting

Contact Information

Email: Jean.Lemmon at conservation.ok.gov
Cell Phone:  918-625-1159
http://www.bluethumbok.com/
2800 North Lincoln Boulevard, Suite 200,
Oklahoma City, OK, 73105

App Idea: Oklahoma Blue Thumb Volunteer Monitoring App

Volunteers are the backbone of Oklahoma’s Blue Thumb program, the eyes and ears of creeks and streams across the state. One of the many things they do for Blue Thumb is monthly creek monitoring, including physical habitat assessment and chemical testing of a sample of the creek’s water. A portion of their monthly monitoring is done at the creek, including collecting data on a number of environmental/physical factors affecting the creek and collecting a sample of water for chemical testing later. The chemical tests are done indoors, wherever the volunteer is comfortable, and include tests for dissolved oxygen, ammonia, nitrate, nitrite,  pH, chloride and phosphorus. During the summer months they also test for bacteria.  In the past, all of this data has been sent to Blue Thumb via email, an online pdf form, fax, or old fashioned snail mail. The goal of this app is to give volunteers a new option, the ability to submit data through their smartphone. The app will streamline the data submission process, allowing volunteers to enter everything from their data sheet into their phone and email it to our Quality Assurance Officer at the touch of a button. This will make the process of sending in their data much easier and more efficient, possibly allowing them to get their data to Blue Thumb in a more timely and consistent manner. There may be the additional benefit of motivating some volunteers to continue monitoring, or begin monitoring in the first place, once they are aware of the app and the much easier method for submitting monitoring data.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Thursday, 1-25-2018, 4 pm CST (5 pm EST)
Second Team-Scientist Meeting, Tuesday, 1-30-2018, 4 pm CST (5 pm EST)
Prefer to use Zoom for meetings.

Lisa McCauley – Spatial Analyst

Contact Information

Email: lisa.mccauley at tnc.org
Office Phone: 520-545-0188
http://azconservation.org/
The Nature Conservancy
1510 E Fort Lowell Rd
Tucson, AZ 85719

App Idea: Wet/Dry Mapping

Every year on the third Saturday in June, people walk or ride horses along the San Pedro River, a desert stream in southeastern Arizona, to map where the streams have surface flow and where they are dry. With more than a decade’s worth of data, this work is helping scientists and managers better understand and manage our riparian and aquatic habitats in this arid region. The data have been consistently collected at the end of the dry summer months, right before the monsoon rains typically begin. Wet/dry mapping uses citizen scientists to map the extent of surface flow in a river where certain reaches dry up during the summer. The objective of this app is to digitize the paper data sheets currently being used by citizen scientists and to mark the coordinates of the beginning and end of each wet segment. Along many reaches, cellular signals may be weak or absent so the data collected in the app will need to be stored until a cellular signal is available and the data uploaded. Citizen scientists also carry GPS units to record location information as a duplicate record so the app should allow for both automatic recording of the location and a place to enter the coordinates from the GPS unit.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Friday, 1-26-2018, 3 pm MST (5 pm EST)
Second Team-Scientist Meeting, Tuesday, 1-30-2018, 3 pm MST (5 pm EST)
prefer to meet by Zoom

Natalie Rosser – Marine Biologist

Contact Information

Email: narosser at uow.edu.au
Phone: +61 438671661
School of Biological Science
Faculty of Science
Medicine and Health
University of Wollongong
NSW 2522 Australia

App Idea: Monitoring mass coral spawning events on Australia’s coral reefs

One of the most spectacular events on Australia’s coral reefs is the annual mass spawning of corals, whereby hundreds of corals reproduce simultaneously over a few nights of the year. These mass spawning events are critical for the regeneration and long term persistence of coral reefs, and occur at specific times of the year when environmental conditions are ripe for successful fertilisation and larval survival. However, climate change may be shifting the timing of these mass coral spawning events to potentially sub-optimal times, and impacting upon their success. The aim of this project is to develop an app to monitor and record mass spawning events on Australia’s coral reefs. Using this app, citizen scientists will upload their observations and photos to a database, allowing scientists to track the timing of mass coral spawning over time, and potentially identify long-term changes in the patterns of mass coral spawning. In some remote reef locations cellular signal may be limited, so ideally the app would be able to store the collected information until the collector is within signal range to send the data to the database.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Saturday at 1-27-2018 at 9 am AEDT ( Friday, 1-26-2018, 5 pm EST).
Second Team-Scientist Meeting, Wednesday, 1-31-2018 at 9 am  AEDT (Tuesday, 1-30-2018, at 5 pm EST).
By Zoom

Kuilin Zhang – Assistant Professor of Transportation

Contact Information

Email: klzhang at mtu.edu
Phone/Text: 906-487-1828
https://sites.google.com/site/zhangmichigantech/
Office: Dillman 301i
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Michigan Technological University

App Idea: An Intersection Turning Movement Volume Counting System

The objective of this project is to develop an app to count turning movement volumes at intersections for multiple vehicle classes at a given counting time interval for a given counting time period. Intersections are critical transportation facilities in a transportation system. Traffic problems at intersections such as safety and mobility impact our day-to-day life. To reduce congestion and improve safety at intersections such as optimizing traffic control signal timing plan, traffic engineers needs to collect traffic data. Although there are many sensors have been deployed at intersections. However, it is cost intensive to install sensors to every intersection in a transportation network. Manual traffic data collections are still a common data collection method used by traffic engineers for real world applications. Among these traffic data, intersection turning movement volume counts are important data source. This app will develop an intersection turning movement volume counting system that can efficiently count vehicles driving through each turning movement by different vehicle classes (i.e. passenger car, truck, and buses etc) at a given counting time interval (i.e. 5 or 15 minutes) for a given time period (i.e. 1, 2, 3, and 4 hours) by a signal person. The resulted app will be used in an undergraduate class in Civil Engineering – CEE4402 Traffic Engineering. Each student will use this app to count turning movement volume at an assigned intersection. Students will conduct statistical analysis on the resulted counting data and evaluate intersection improvement plan through traffic simulation. An example of such app is available online: TurnCount – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/turncount/id378720650?mt=8.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Thursday, 1-25-2018, or Friday, 1-26-2018, 5 pm
Second Team-Scientist Meeting, Tuesday, 1-30-2018, or Wednesday, 1-31-2018, 5 pm
in Dillman Hall, Room 301-J.

Don LaFreniere – Assistant Professor of Historical Geography and GIS & Sarah Scarlett – Assistant Professor of History

Contact Information

Email: djlafren at mtu.edu & sfscarle at mtu.edu
Office Phone: 906-487-2189
http://www.keweenawhistory.com/
Office: AOB 200A, GLRC 208
Lab: GLRC 316
Social Science Department
Michigan Technological University

App Idea: Spatio-Temporal Video Submissions on the Keweenaw Time Traveler Explore App

The Keweenaw Time Traveler is a historic spatial data infrastructure (HSDI) that is recreating the built and social environments of the Copper Country from 1850 to 1950.  Every ten years, corresponding with the decennial census, we are mapping and modelling all of the houses, businesses, schools, and copper mining sites.  Individual level socio-demographic information is mapped to each structure, allowing us to know where every individual lived, worked, and went to school in the Keweenaw for a hundred year period.  The core application that allows the public to access, query, and display the geographic datasets and georeferenced maps is the known as the “Explore App”.  Currently, within the Explore App is a ‘story submission’ interface which allows users to contribute a short narrative/story/memory of some place and time in the Keweenaw and upload photos or documents which are appended to the contribution.  The contribution is immediately written to a geodatabase and is visible to all users both on the map and via a query in the apps search tools.  Next step is to add the capability for users to submit video or audio along with their story’s.  Users should be able to submit video or audio either as an upload of a file already on their computer/device or have the option to record from within the application.

Initial Meetings

First Team-Scientist Meeting, Thursday, 1-25-2018, 5 pm at GLRC 316
Second Team-Scientist Meeting, Tuesday, 1-30-2018,  5 pm at GLRC 316