TYPES OF DATA
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Public-use data, with or without usage restrictions, that has only non-personal information.
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De-identified data with usage restrictions. These data do not contain any direct identifiers but contain sensitive or restricted information.
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Data that include any kind of direct personal identifier, such as names, addresses, or SSN.
QUICK REFERENCE
CUSP Data Catalog
Urban Profiler
CUSP Resources
Researcher Profiles
Gregory Dobler
Associate Director for Physical Sciences/Research Assistant Professor"Greg is a Research Scientist at CUSP and a Research Assistant Professor of Physics at NYU. His expertise is in image analysis, computer vision, time series, statistical analysis, and mathematical modeling of large data sets. Prior to joining CUSP, Greg was an astrophysicist specializing in multi-wavelength, full sky data sets from radio to gamma-ray energies, and led the discovery of one of the largest structures in the Milky Way. As the Chief Scientist of CUSP’s “Urban Observatory” (UO), Greg applies data analysis techniques from astronomy, computer vision, and machine learning to images of New York City’s skyline to study air quality, energy consumption, lighting technology, public health, and sustainability. For centuries, astronomers have used observations of the night sky to understand how the universe works through analysis of observational data. In analogy, CUSP’s UO goal is to derive actionable information and science about how the city of New York works through persistent, remote observations of its skyline. Greg also leads data analysis projects related to equitable distribution of greenspaces, mapping long timescale economic trends across the city, surrogate measures for traffic safety, and geo-location of social media content. To learn more about Greg’s work, please visit http://serv.cusp.nyu.edu/~gdobler/home/"
website
Masoud Ghandehari
Head of the Urban ObservatoryMasoud Ghandehari is Faculty at the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at the Polytechnic School of Engineering and Head of the Urban Observatory at NYU’s CUSP. Prior to joining NYU, he worked as a research fellow at The National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Cement Based Materials, and The Center for Quality Engineering and Failure Prevention at Northwestern University. Masoud began his career at Columbia University, and then worked with a consulting practice in New York City; where he worked on various large infrastructure renewal projects. Masoud did his graduate work at McGill University and Northwestern University with his doctoral thesis in Full Field Optical Metrology for Imaging Damage Localization. Masoud’s academic research has focused on the understanding of the performance, aging and health of civil infrastructure, and the application of optical methods for materials diagnostics and environmental sensing. Through the application of sensing, observations and system assessment, he is developing methodologies that generate multi-scale urban data on the physical, environmental and human systems in cities. This work is aimed at developing novel approaches for understanding the condition and wellbeing of cities and its inhabitants. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Transportation, industry, and various international agencies, Masoud’s research in optical spectroscopy, sensing and imaging has been supported for the development of applications and technologies suitable for diverse environments and in multiple scales; ranging from the molecular to the urban landscape. Masoud is the founding investigator of the New York State Resiliency Institute for Storm Events (NYRISE), and founder of Chromosense LLC, which is supported by The National Institute of Health, for innovation in environmental sensing.
Tom Kirchner
CUSP Associated Faculty; Clinical Associate Professor, College of Global Public Health"Thomas R. Kirchner is an Associate Professor at CUSP, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU’s College of Global Public Health. He is also the founding director of a new mobile health research initiative at NYU called mHealth. Dr. Kirchner is a clinical-health psychologist and methodologist interested in the analysis and graphical representation of “intensive” longitudinal and geographic data, including novel methodologies that link individual behavior to the real-time context in which it occurs. At CUSP, Dr. Kirchner actively engages students, mentors projects and contributes to the intellectual community, enriching the study of urban science from a global health perspective. Dr. Kirchner’s approach targets momentary influences on the maintenance of health-related behavior utilizing both field-based (ecological momentary assessment) and laboratory-based paradigms. This includes development of novel analytical methods for the application of geographic information science (GIS) to public health and policy. Ongoing NIH funded work includes one of the first R01 grants issued by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on the public health ramifications of marijuana legalization, decriminalization, medicalization, as well as the emerging “vape” device landscape. Other ongoing work funded by NIDA, the National Cancer Institute, and NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research, focuses on the way tobacco-use behaviors are influenced in real-time by socio-contextual factors in real-world settings. Dr. Kirchner earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical and Biological/Health Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh."
Constantine Kontokosta
Deputy Director for Academics"Dr. Constantine E. Kontokosta, PE, AICP, LEED AP, FRICS, is the Deputy Director for Academics at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Urban Informatics at NYU CUSP and the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Department of Civil and Urban Engineering. He is also the Principal Investigator and Head of the CUSP Quantified Community research facility, a groundbreaking project in partnership with the Related Companies – Hudson Yards, which will create a fully instrumented urban neighborhood in New York City. As a member of the CUSP leadership team, Dr. Kontokosta plays a major role in the definition and implementation of CUSP’s strategic priorities, and serves as the academic director for its graduate programs, which currently comprise the M.S. in Applied Urban Science and Informatics, an Advanced Certificate program, Executive Education, and a Ph.D. program under development. Dr. Kontokosta‘s research lies at the intersection or urban planning, data science, and systems engineering, and he has worked with numerous city agencies on issues of urban sustainability and resilience, most recently leading the data analysis for the Local Law 84 Building Energy Benchmarking Reports and data-driven policy initiatives for the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability. He leads the CUSP Building Informatics and Computational Urban Policy research area, focusing on urban energetics and data-driven climate change mitigation strategies for cities. His research has been published in leading academic journals in fields including science, economics, urban policy and planning, and engineering, and has two forthcoming books, one on civic analytics and the other on the subject of big data and urban sustainability. Dr. Kontokosta’s work has been featured in CNN, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg News, Financial Times, and ASCE’s Civil Engineering Magazine, among other national and international media outlets. Dr. Kontokosta holds a Ph.D., M.Phil, and M.S. in Urban Planning, specializing in urban economics and econometrics, from Columbia University, a M.S. in Real Estate Finance from New York University, and a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering Systems from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a licensed Professional Engineer, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a USGBC LEED Accredited Professional, and has been elected a Fellow of the RICS. He is a recipient of the IBM Faculty Award, the C. Lowell Harriss Fellowship, the HUD Doctoral Dissertation Award, the Charles Abrams Award, and Teaching Excellence and Outstanding Service Awards at NYU, and has been named a Fulbright Senior Specialist. In addition, he is an accomplished real estate entrepreneur, and has served as Vice Chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission and on the Boards of the UNEP SBCI and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors."
Julia Lane
Chief Data Officer"Dr. Julia Lane is Professor of Practice at CUSP, and also serves as a Professor of Public Service at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Provostial Fellow for Innovation Analytics and Senior Fellow at NYU’s GovLab. As part of the CUSP team, Dr. Lane will work with the research team to build the CUSP Data User Facility. Dr. Lane is an economist who is the co-founder of the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamic (LEHD) partnership with the Census Bureau. LEHD data has been used to analyze commuting patterns for transportation planning, and the study of workforce turnover, pensions, and low-wage work. Dr. Lane has authored over 65 refereed articles and edited or authored seven books. She has been working with a number of national governments to document the results of their science investments. Her work has been featured in several publications including Science and Nature. Work Dr. Lane started at the National Science Foundation (as Senior Program Director of the Science of Science and Innovation Policy Program) to quantify the results of federal stimulus spending is the basis of the new Institute for Research on Innovation and Science at the University of Michigan. The data will be used to describe the structure of the research workforce, the nature and evolution of research collaborations, and the diffusion of sponsored research results. Dr. Lane has had leadership positions in a number of policy and data science initiatives at her other previous appointments, which include Senior Managing Economist at the American Institutes for Research; Senior Vice President and Director, Economics Department at NORC/University of Chicago; various consultancy roles at The World Bank; and Assistant, Associate and Full Professor at American University. Please click here for additional information on her professional achievements. Dr. Lane received her PhD in Economics and Master’s in Statistics from the University of Missouri."
websiteKaan Ozbay
Professor CUSP/NYU Poly"Kaan M.A. Özbay joined NYU’s CUSP and the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering in August 2013. Professor Ozbay was a tenured full Professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering until July 2013. He joined Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor in July 1996. In 2008, he was a visiting scholar at the Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE) Department at,Princeton University. Dr. Ozbay’s research interests in transportation cover a wide range of topics including the development of simulation models of large scale complex transportation systems, advanced technology and sensing applications for Intelligent Transportation Systems, modeling and evaluation of traffic incident and emergency management systems, feedback based on-line real-time traffic control techniques, traffic safety, application of operations research techniques in network optimization and humanitarian inventory control, and transportation economics. Dr. Ozbay is the recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. He is the co-editor of a new book titled “Dynamic Traffic Control & Guidance” published by Springer Verlag’s “Complex Social, Economic and Engineered Networks” series in 2013. In addition to this book, Dr. Ozbay is the co-author of three other books titled “Feedback Based Ramp Metering for Intelligent Transportation Systems” published by Kluwer Academics in 2004, ”Feedback Control Theory for Dynamic Traffic Assignment,“ Springer-Verlag and “Incident Management for Intelligent Transportation Systems” published by Artech House publishers, both in 1999. Dr. Ozbay published approximately 300 refereed papers in scholarly journals and conference proceedings. He serves as the “Associate Editor” of Networks and Spatial Economic journal and Transportmetrica B: Transportation Dynamics journal. He is a member of the editorial board of the ITS journal. Dr. Ozbay served as the elected member of Board of Directors of the Intelligent Transportation Society of New Jersey in 2013. He is also a current member of the Board of Directors of the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) at the City University of New York – USDOT’s Region 2 University Transportation Center. Since 1994, Dr. Ozbay, has been the Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator of 80 projects funded at a level of more than $11,00,000 by National Science Foundation, NJDOT, NYMTC, NY State DOT, New Jersey Highway Authority, USDOT, FHWA, VDOT, CUNY University Transportation Research Center (UTRC), Department of Homeland Security, USDOT ITS Research Center of Excellence. He was the founding director of the Rutgers Intelligent Transportation Systems (RITS) laboratory that led ITS research and education activities at Rutgers University until 2013."
Stanislav Sobolevsky
Associate Professor of Practice"Stanislav Sobolevsky is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University and a Research Affiliate at the MIT Senseable City Lab. He holds a Ph.D (1999) from Grodno State University and a Doctor of Science (2009) in Mathematics from the National Science Academy of Belarus. Dr. Sobolevsky teaches various data science courses and applies his fundamental quantitative background to studying human behavior in urban context through its digital traces: spatio-temporal big data created by various aspects of human activity. His research interests cover network science, big data analytics, modeling of complex systems and the theory of differential equations. He is the author of one monograph, two textbooks and over 50 peer-reviewed papers in mathematics, network science and mathematical modeling. His former professional experience includes research at MIT as well as research, teaching and administrative positions at Belarusian State University and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Dr. Sobolevsky received a Silver Medal winner in the 1993 and 1994 International Math Olympiads, the best research amongst young scientist award in 2000 (Belarus), President’s Foundation Fellowship awards for both Ph.D (2001) and Doctor of Science (2010) researchers, and the 2015 award for the LinkedIn Economic Graph Challenge. He also received the Best Paper award at the Academy of Science & Engineering International Conference of Data Science in 2015."
Arun Sundararajan
Professor, SternArun Sundararajan’s research program studies digital economics and how information technologies transform business and society. Some of his current and recent research focuses on the emergence of digital institutions to facilitate economic and political development, contagion in networks and social media, online privacy, pricing in digital markets and managing digital piracy. Arun’s work is published in various journals including Decision Support Systems, Economics Letters, Information Systems Research, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Management Information Systems, Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Statistical Science and Social Networks, and he has given more than 200 conference and invited presentations internationally. His research has won three Best Paper awards and has been recently profiled by trade publications that include Fast Company, the Financial Times, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.
Huy Vo
Assistant Professor CUSP/CUNYHuy is a Research Scientist at CUSP with a focus in large-scale visualization, big data systems, and scalable displays. He is also a Research Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU’s Polytechnic School of Engineering since 2011. He is one of the co-creators of VisTrails, an open-source scientific workflow and provenance management system, where he led the design of the VisTrails Provenance SDK. He received his B.S. in Computer Science (2005) and PhD in Computing (2011) from the University of Utah.
websiteLogan Werschky
Assistant Professor of Practice"Logan Werschky is an Assistant Professor of Practice at CUSP. She is also the Manager of Capstone Projects, where she leads the experiential learning component of the master’s program, partnering students with government and industry partners. Logan holds a MSc in Regional and Urban Planning from the London School of Economics and a BA in Economics from Smith College. Logan joins CUSP after several years in New York City government, where she developed and implemented civic analytics strategies that addressed key issues in public service delivery and improved operational outcomes. Most recently, she served as the Director of Strategy + Operations at New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics (MODA). Logan has extensive experience leading data-driven projects in affordable housing, emergency response, and disaster recovery. She served on the transition team for the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery Operations (HRO), which was established after Hurricane Sandy. As HRO’s Director of Research, Reporting + Analysis, she led the development of the City’s model for estimating storm-related housing damage, quantifying repair need, and ultimately guiding the initial allocation of $700 million in federal disaster funds for housing. Prior to the Mayor’s Office, Logan held positions at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development and Richard Meier & Partners Architects."
Federica Bianco
Assistant Research Scientist"Federica is a Research Scientist at CUSP and in the NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, where she previously was a James Arthur Postdoctoral Fellow. She is an astrophysicist specializing in time series analysis, image processing, parameter inference, and machine learning. Within the CUSP Urban Observatory she is leading observations of high frequency variability of urban light sources. As an astrophysicist, her work focuses on the progenitor systems of exploding stars (supernovae), indirect evidence for past stellar explosions within the Milky Way, the detection of solar system objects beyond Pluto, and astronomical software development. Federica received her undergraduate degree in Astronomy from the University of Bologna (Italy) and completed her thesis at the University of Pennsylvania as an Overseas fellow. She continued at the University of Pennsylvania to obtain a Ph.D in Physics, conducting research at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where she was a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow."
websiteBartosz Bonczak
Assistant Research ScientistDaniel Castellani
Research Scientist"Daniel Castellani is a Research Scientist at CUSP with focus on big data, data analysis and the data warehouse. He received his B.S. in Computer Science (2008) and M.S. in Software Engineering (2012) at the UFF Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) in his home country of Brazil. Daniel has more than 6 years of experience in software development, working mainly with software quality, web development and project & process management. Besides working with software development, he founded and managed the Project and Process Management Office of STI-UFF, managing a group of 100 collaborators in more than 16 projects. He is also a consultant in Software Quality, Configuration Management and Agile Methodologies. Prior to CUSP, Daniel was a developer focused on Software Quality and R&D at Schibsted Classified Media (BomNegocio.com) and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UFF."
Santonu Goswami
Research Scientist"Santonu Goswami is a Research Scientist with the Quantified Community and Urban Informatics group at CUSP. He holds a Ph.D in Environmental Science and Engineering (2011) and an MS in Physics (2005) from University of Texas at El Paso. Prior to joining CUSP, Santonu spent three years in the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory working in a model-data fusion project to better understand impacts of changing climate on the Arctic ecosystems. His Ph.D work involved developing and maintaining a large-scale ground-based hyperspectral remote sensing infrastructure in the Arctic for five years. Santonu’s experiences and interests cover Data Analytics, Data Synthesis, GIS and Remote Sensing, Sensor Networks, Climate and Education & Training. Within the last ten years he has worked in diverse interdisciplinary projects in environmental monitoring using advanced sensing technologies, remote sensing, spatial analysis and statistical methods. He has also worked with colleagues from engineering and computer science disciplines to develop software and instrumentation for application in environmental science research."
Martin Jankowiak
Research ScientistMartin is a Research Scientist at CUSP. He received his Ph.D. in Physics (2012) from Stanford University. Prior to joining CUSP, Martin was a Post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, with a focus on new physics searches using jet substructure at the Large Hadron Collider. His research interests at CUSP includes crisis informatics as well as various problems in machine learning and statistics.
Charlie Mydlarz
Post Doc AssociateCharlie Mydlarz is a postdoctoral researcher at NYU’s CUSP and the Music and Audio Research Laboratory. He works on the development and implementation of cyberphysical systems for large scale, high resolution soundscape data capture from urban environments with a focus on acoustic sensor development using digital MEMS microphone solutions. He received his BSc in Audio Technology from The University of Salford in 2007 and went on to earn his doctorate in 2013 investigating human relationships to sound environments using mobile and internet technologies. The data collected during his doctoral work was gathered using a large-scale crowd sourced citizen science project utilizing consumer mobile devices and web technologies, which can be explored at soundaroundyou.com. Past research projects also include the influences of sound environments on the attainment of 11-16 year old school children in England. Charlie’s expertise lies in: acoustics, mobile application development, acoustic ecology, digital signal processing, web development and quantitative data analysis.
Rebecca Rosen
Assoc Director for Data Resources & Data StrategyDr. Rosen is the Associate Director for Data Resources and Data Strategy at CUSP. She is also a product manager with the new Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS), a university consortium using new data approaches to document and improve the value of university research. Previously she co-founded the Center for the Science of Science & Innovation Policy at the American Institutes for Research, working with US and international science funders to build data platforms for research management. She has been a policy analyst at both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She was also a member of the White House interagency working group that developed the national STAR METRICS project to document, at a microdata level, the outcomes of federal science investments. Dr. Rosen earned a PhD in neuroscience from Emory University and a BS in psychobiology from Yale University.
Justin Salamon
Post Doc AssociateJustin Salamon is a post-doctoral researcher at NYU’s CUSP and the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL). He obtained a B.A. (Hons.) in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 2007, and an M.Sc. (2008) and Ph.D. (2013) in Computer Science from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), Barcelona, Spain, specializing in sound and music computing. He was a visiting researcher at the Sound Analysis-Synthesis research team of the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), Paris, France. His research interests include digital signal processing, machine learning and data mining, with applications to computer audition, music information retrieval and urban soundscape analysis. He is the author of melodia, an algorithm for melody extraction from polyphonic music signals that is widely used by researchers, teachers and artists. At CUSP, Justin’s research is focused on algorithms for the automatic extraction of high-level semantic information from urban acoustic environments, with the goal of facilitating large_-scale, big_-data driven analyses of urban sound and noise.
websiteMohit Sharma
Assistant Research ScientistRavi Shroff
Research Scientist"Ravi is a research scientist at CUSP. His interests include the application of machine learning techniques to social data, in particular policing and educational data, and the application of mathematical techniques to urban science. Previous projects include an examination of NYPD’s “Stop, Question, Frisk” program and a study of the allocation of pre-Kindergarten students in New York City. Ravi completed a B.S. in Mathematics and Economics from the University of Washington, a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mathematics from UC San Diego, and a M.S. in Urban Informatics from CUSP. His doctoral work was in several complex variables and differential geometry. Prior to working at CUSP he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra, and an intern at Microsoft Research in New York City."
Milad Aghamohamadnia
PhD StudentFiona Feng
PhD StudentNicholas Johnson
PhD StudentAbdullah Kurkcu
PhD StudentChenge Li
PhD StudentAwais Malik
PhD StudentJaviera Selman
PhD StudentKun Xie
PhD StudentNeil Kleiman
Assistant Professor, Wagner"Neil Kleiman has spent nearly 20 years building a career at the intersection of many sectors—policy, media, philanthropy, government and academia. He has established new organizations and divisions within organizations focused on developing innovative and practical policy solutions. Dr. Kleiman has written and edited over thirty policy reports and his work has been featured in many media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week and National Public Radio. In February 2011, Dr. Kleiman joined New York University to create new vehicles focused on urban innovation nationally and globally. He has established the first set of initiatives including projects with Bloomberg Philanthropies, federal agencies in the Obama administration and the New Cities Foundation. Dr. Kleiman was previously the Director of Policy and Research at Living Cities, a collaborative of the nation’s largest foundations and corporate philanthropies, where he was responsible for developing and advancing the organization’s policy agenda. In this capacity he produced reports on environmental sustainability, home foreclosure and public/private partnerships. In 2008, in partnership with the Kennedy School at Harvard University, he helped to create the Project on Municipal Innovation, which is currently the only forum in the country where mayoral advisors meet to learn about and begin implementing innovative policy reforms. Dr. Kleiman began his career as the founding director of the Center for an Urban Future, a New York City-based think tank whose work is consistently cited in local media outlets. The group has been the source of transition ideas for numerous mayoral and gubernatorial candidates and administrations, and is widely credited with providing the framework for new approaches to local governance including: a more comprehensive cultural strategy; the merger of workforce and economic development functions; and an enhanced tech-focused approach to job growth. Dr. Kleiman holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has taught urban politics at Barnard College and John Jay College-CUNY and been a visiting fellow at Williams College."
Tim Savage
Visiting Scholar"Timothy H. Savage is a visiting scholar at NYU CUSP. Dr. Savage has nearly 15 years of experience in consulting focused on complex quantitative analysis. His experience ranges from large antitrust and commercial damage engagements to civil and criminal engagements in the financial services sector. Most recently, Dr. Savage has conducted detailed analyses of international benchmarks for interest rates. In the area of antitrust, Dr. Savage has extensive experience in the econometric estimation of price and demand relationships to infer market definition. He has evaluated the unilateral and coordinated effects of vertical and horizontal mergers and has analyzed the competitive effects of bundling. He has also conducted analyses of commonality, typicality, and predominance associated with class certification. In the areas of energy and the environment, Dr. Savage has developed a sophisticated econometric model to forecast land use in California, as well as “rare-event” models to examine alleged violations of federal air quality standards. Dr. Savage’s published research uses complex econometric methods to examine hypotheses ranging from labor mobility to consumer demand. He has also developed survey instruments and conducted subsequent data analysis to examine consumers’ willingness to pay for improvements in air quality."