Dr. Kapil Dandekar, Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, will serve as primary investigator on one of only three Drexel DARE Awards granted at the close of the 2018-19 academic year. The focus of Dr. Dandekar's DARE project (which stands for "Drexel Areas of Research Excellence") is on "Internet of Things for Future Smart Campus and City."
"The vision for this DARE is to align Smart Campus/City technology research and development with real-world problems through a demand-driven participatory stakeholder engagement process," said Dr. Dandekar.
According to Provost M. Brian Blake and Senior Vice Provost for Research Aleister Saunders, "the goal of the DARE initiative is to identify unique and distinctive areas of inter-disciplinary scholarship." This round of the DARE competition resulted in 22 applications from 177 team members from across the university. Only three DARE awards were granted in this competition. The inter-disciplinary project led by Dr. Dandekar has co-principal investigators from across the College of Engineering as well as other colleges on campus. COE faculty include Dr. Franco Montalto, Dr. Youngmoo Kim, Dr. Steven Weber, Dr. Antonios Kontsos, Dr. Anup Das, and Dr. Adam Fontecchio. Investigators from other disciplines include Dr. Ali Shokoufandeh (College of Computing and Informatics), Dr. Jason Orne (College of Arts and Sciences), Dr. Endla Anday (College of Medicine), Dr. Owen Montgomery (COM), Dr. William Mongan (CCI), Dr. Rajneesh Suri (LeBow College of Business), Dr. Vineet Bhandari (COM), and Dr. Mimi Sheller (COAS).
This project "highlights the College of Engineering as a campus leader in this vitally important area," said Dr. Steven Weber, co-principal investigator and Department Head for ECE. "Professor Dandekar has been a leader in Smart Cities both inside and outside of Drexel," continued Dr. Weber, highlighting the various sponsored research grants Dr. Dandekar has been awarded in this area, as well as "the campus-wide effort he is helping to lead to make Drexel's campus a testbed for Internet of Things." Dr. Weber also emphasized the importance of Dr. Dandekar's "collaborations with both the City of Philadelphia's Office of Information Technology and various industry groups" in the field of Internet of Things and Smart Cities.