VIP advisor, Prof. Yung-Hsiang Lu, and his team of student researchers use public camera footage of how people have responded so far to COVID-19 social distancing guidelines that could help inform new policies as the pandemic progresses. Purdue engineers built a website that pools together live footage and images from approximately 30,000 network cameras in more than 100 countries, making data easier to analyze.

Purdue Exponent features VIP team led by Prof. Luciano Castillo designed to excite students, 'save life' with disinfecting robots in response to COVID-19.

This summer, students in the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program will begin research with faculty members to aid in the investigation of the risks associated with COVID-19 spread using location-based services data. Professors Yung-Hsiang Lu, David Ebert, David Barbarash, and Wei Zakharov have recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant through the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. VIP students will continue working on the team throughout the academic year.

We are pleased to announce the creation of the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program Awards to recognize outstanding participants through individual and team awards along with monetary prizes starting Spring 2020. Student and team categories include Leadership, Outstanding First Year/Sophomore, and Share with the World. Additionally, graduate students and faculty are recognized for the efforts in mentoring successful teams. Nominations were sought from students, faculty, and staff. The following individuals and teams are recognized for their contributions for Spring 2020.

The Forest Inventory Analysis team received a 3 year, $150,000 grant from the Van Eck Fund of the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue. Students in Engineering, mentored by faculty in Engineering and Agriculture, will design a system for using video images to extract information about the size and architecture of forest trees.

A description of the prototype of the system has already been accepted for publication in the (refereed) internationally recognized Journal of Forestry. The current group of undergraduate researchers will improve the system by developing software tools to quantify the shape and size of trees and their branches in real time. The goal of the project is to develop a tool that non-expert users can deploy to inventory forests so that their ecological and economic value can be estimated without the need for costly, slow, and labor-intensive hand measurements.

The VIP Consortium is a global alliance of universities advancing Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) programs. Through VIP, undergraduate and graduate students participate in ambitious, long-term projects led by faculty; faculty benefit from their VIP teams’ contributions to ongoing scholarship and exploration efforts; and universities gain a scalable model for high-impact, project-based learning.