SCU's Ethical, Pragmatic, and Intelligent Computing (EPIC) Research Laboratory is one of the leaders in supporting Humanitarian Technology research at Santa Clara University. The faculty and students involved in the lab span across many departments as most projects in the lab are multidisciplinary in nature and execution. SCU's EPIC lab is in partnership with SCU's Frugal Innovation Hub on several student driven as well as industry sponsored projects. 

Current Projects (Alphabetical Order per Area):

Agricultural IoT:

DOxy

Low cost Dissolved Oxygen monitoring system for aquatic life applications

Internal Articles: Driven to Succeed

Publications: DOxy: Dissolved Oxygen Monitoring | Long-Range Data Transmission for Online Water Quality Monitoring of the Tembling River in Rural Areas of Pahang, Malaysia | Sustainable Surface Water Dissolved Oxygen Monitoring at Lake 7/1F, Shah Alam, Selangor | DOxy: A Dissolved Oxygen Monitoring System

Videos: Data Transmission for Online Water Quality Monitoring in Sg Tembeling Pahang

GrapeSense

A Grape Aging Classifier Using Residual Transfer Learning on Drone Images

Publication: GrapeSense: A Grape Aging Classifier Using Residual Transfer Learning On Drone Images | GrapeSense: A Comparative Study of Residual Transfer Learning Models for Grape Aging Classification Using Drone Images

HA (Hydration Automation) - learn more

Energy efficient system for automation of water systems including livestock watering, crop irrigation, etc.

Articles about the project: Hydration Automation (HA) – US | A Santa Clara University engineering lab creates moisture sensors for a San Jose community farm

Awards: Most Interdisciplinary Award at Ciocca Center's 2020 Business Pitch Competition

Expo presentation: EPICS in IEEE 2019 | EPICS in IEEE 2020

Poster Competitions: Technical Award: $500

Publications: A Low-power Wireless Sensing Unit for Hydro-System Automation | A Sustainable 3D-printed casing for Hydro-System Automation Sensing Units | ÂB: An Energy Aware Communications Protocol (EACP) for the Internet of Things (IoT) | SU 2.0: A Marketable Low-Power Wireless Sensing Unit for Hydration Automation | HA: Smart Tank

HiveSpy  - learn more

Automation of beekeeping with a specific focus on labour shortage and the prevention of hive swarming

Awards: 2018 Forbes AGTECH Thrive X Challenge | Most Social Impact Award at Ciocca Center's 2020 Business Pitch Competition

Blog Posts: HiveSpy: Bringing Automation to Beekeeping

Expo presentation: EPICS in IEEE

Internal Articles: An EPIC Effort to Help Beekeepers in the Spring 2020 issue of Engineering News

Publications: HiveSpy | Identifying Beehive Frames Ready For Harvesting

Blockchain and Smart Contracts:

InspiredEarth

Creating an online store for a local business which donates part of its proceeds to environmental causes using smart contracts for donation accountability.

Data Science:

Paper Prisons - Learn more at paperprisons.org

Expungement Tool

Web application for assisting in the identification of qualification for expungement of criminal records as well as assisting individuals with the application process.

Award:Hack-4-Humanity 2020

Publication: A Tool for Narrowing the Second Chance Gap

First Step ID / Reentry ID

Web application for helping newly released rehabilitated citizens obtain/renew their various IDs such as Drivers Licenses.

Award: Hack-4-Humanity 2021

Publication: First Step ID: Helping Rehabilitated Citizens Regain Their Government Issued Identification

Second Chance Gap Initiative

A statistical study of the gap size in individual criminal history expungement of decriminalized offenses for all 50 states.

Articles about the project: To the State Legislature: Fulfill the Promise You Made, Pass the Clean Slate Act Today

Presentations: AI and Hiring: Automating Second Chances

Publication: America's Paper Prisons: The Second Chance Gap | The Estimated Size and Lost Earnings of New York's Second Chance Sealing Gap | The Missouri Second Chance Expungement Gap | The Illinois Second Chance Expungement/Sealing Gap | The Oregon Second Chance Set-Aside Gap

Disaster Mitigation and Recovery:

FloMoSys (Flood Monitoring System)

Low cost and energy-efficient Flood Monitoring System

Expo presentation: EPICS in IEEE

IncidentAid

First Responder (Firefighters, EMTs, etc.) mobile app and future specialized handheld device(s) for saving lives

Publications: Developing High-Value Technologies for First Responders | Implementing Communications and Information Dissemination Technologies for First Responders

Education:

ClassRoute

Humanitarian project aiming at the creation, translation, and delivery of highschool level STEM curriculum in 15 different languages to underprivileged students in various provinces of India and neighboring countries.

Publications: ClassRoute: An English to Punjabi Educational Video Translation Pipeline for Supporting Punjabi Mother-Tongue Education | ClassRoute: Bridging the Digital Academic-Content Divide | An English to Urdu Educational Video Translation Pipeline to Reinforce Mother-Tongue Based Learning | Automated Generation of Mandarin Educational Multimedia Content from Existing English Cntent

SwingBeats: Haptics -

A haptic feedback system for teaching/learning how to dance to music.

Awards: INTETAIN2020 Best Paper Involving IoT and Haptics | 1st Place Award at Ciocca Center's 2021 Business Pitch Competition

Internal Articles: Student presents dance app at Malaysian conference | Tap Dance Revolution

Publications: Requirements Analysis and Preliminary Development of SwingBeats: A Real-Time Haptic Beat Tracking System for Dance Education | An IoT Haptic Feedback Ankle Bracelet (HFAB) for Dance Education

TailorEd - learn more

Custom Image recognition applied to classroom environments in a study of the effects of technology and classroom strategies in learning

Publications: Classroom Configuration Identifier (CCID) | TailorEd: Classroom Configuration and Activity Identifiers (CCID & CAID) | Lecture, Discussion, Group Work, Repeat: Using Aerial Photography and Machine Learning to Study the Use of Writing-Related Pedagogies in STEM Courses and Their Impact on Different Student Subgroups

Video: Course Hero Education Summit 2020

Energy:

AB

An Energy Aware Communication Protocols (EACP) for use in IoT and other networks which is currently under testing in EPIC Lab's DOxy, HA, and HiveSpy IoT projects.

Publication: ÂB: An Energy Aware Communications Protocol (EACP) for the Internet of Things (IoT)

Extended Reality (XR: AR/MR/VR):

SwingBeats: XR - learn more

An XR Music visualization addition to the SwingBeats haptic feedback system for dance education.

Financial Technology:

DoBid

A platform for the democratization of political bargaining and fundraising

Health Care Technology:

eVision

A machine learning approach for forecasting seasonal influenza outbreaks

Publications: Influenza Forecasting | eVision: Influenza Forecasting Using CDC, WHO, and Google Trends Data | Expanding eVision's Scope of Influenza Forecasting | Expanding eVision's Granularity of Influenza Forecasting | eVision: Epidemic Forecasting on COVID-19 | eVision: Epidemic Forecasting on COVID-19 | eVision: Interplay of Influenza A/B Sub-Types and COVID-19 | Attempts at Enhancing eVision's Influenza Forecasting Using Social Media | eVision: Forecasting the spread of Tuberculosis in India with Deep Learning | Data Gap/Outlier Correction and Treatment | eVision: Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Seasonal Trend Forecasting | Exploring Enhancements to the Stacked LSTM Outlier Detection and Correction Method

GluMo (Glucose Monitoring)

Small factor noninvasive blood Glucose Monitoring medial instrumentation

Internal Articles: A Bloodless Coup

Publication: Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitoring (GluMo) | GluMo: A Noninvasive Blood Glucose Monitor

Optimization:

DivOp

Divisibility Operator for Large Integers Using Divisibility Rules which can save CPU time and energy consumption

Social Media:

Mitigation of Misinformation (MoM)

A new approach to solving the problem of fake news propagation in social media networks.

Publications: Detecting Fake News Spreaders on Twitter Through Follower Networks

Technology Ethics:

Ethics of Data Indices

A study of the ethical concerns and dangers of metadata ownership.

Publication: ToDI: A Taxonomy of Derived Indices

GoodBuys

Mobile and web application for making ethical decisions when purchasing products.

Publication: GoodBuys

Transportation:

Public Transit Hub (PTHub)

Mobile and web application for assisting SCU students with public transportation

Publications: Public Transit Hub (PTHub)

Panterix

A mobile navigation application that takes the safety of the roads into account when suggesting routes.

Publications: Safe Routes

Videos: Safe Routs

Past Projects (Alphabetical Order per Area):

Blockchain:

Research Paper Blockchain (RPB)

A consortium level blockchain for tackling plagiarism and double submission of research papers to conferences and journals

Publication: Research Paper Blockchain

Data Science:

Aromyx

Research into the quantification and visualization of olfactory data

Internal Articles: The Sweet Smell of Career Experience

Education:

STEM

A collection of continuing research on educating students in a STEM environment.

Publications: Student Training in Data Analytics Approaches for Bioprocessing Through Co-Curricular Activities | High School Student Training in Biomedical Engineering Innovation through Co- and extracurricular Activities

Energy:

DeLorean Energy

A software for estimating number of EVs needed in a community for the EVs to be able to play a role in 1) Peak Energy Demand Curve Shaving and 2) Energy Curve Smoothening

Publication: DeLorean Energy: The potential of Asynchronous V2G Fleets as Peak Shaving Units

Extended Reality (XR: AR/MR/VR):

KeyLight

Leveraging Alexa voice control, Unity Engine visualization, and virtual reality (VR) technologies to train designers to create lighting looks using standard industry terminology and commands.

Publication: KeyLight: VR System for Stage Lighting

Health Care Technology:

BOxy

A cost-effective blood oxygen and heart rate monitor using off the shelf components and custom software

Publications: BOxy: A Cost-Effective Blood Oximeter

SmartPsych

Platform for matching patients with mental health professionals

Optimization:

Cuckoo Prefix

A new data structure for the purpose of blocking IPs leveraging IP subnets that achieves similar throughput rates as cuckoo++ with 8 times less memory usage.

Publication: Cuckoo Prefix: A Hash Set for Compressed IP Blocklists

Stacked LSTM

An innovative technique for correcting for data gaps/outliers in time series forecasting

Publications: Data Gap/Outlier Correction and Treatment | Exploring Enhancements to the Stacked LSTM Outlier Detection and Correction Method

Social Media:

Locals

New social media platform centered around travel experiences and recommendations from locals.

Website: localsinsite.com

Twitter isn't real life

An analysis of whether the sentiment surrounding a Twitter handle (of politicians or celebrities) is at all an indicator of the sentiment  surrounding the owner of that Twitter handle

Publications: Twitter Sentiment Analysis and Political Approval Ratings for Situational Awareness | Detecting Fake News Spreaders on Twitter Through Follower Networks

Technology Ethics:

Ethics of Facial Recognition AI

A study of the ethical concerns and dangers of facial recognition AI systems.

Transportation:

Drive Health

System for identifying potholes and other road hazards

Publication: Drive Health: Road Condition Detection