Computer Science faculty and students place second in national GENI competition

A team of students and faculty from the Department of Computer Science at Wayne State University's College of Engineering took home the second place prize at the 20th GENI Engineering Conference (GEC 20) Demo Competition held at University of California, Davis in June. Led by associate professors Jing Hua and Hongwei Zhang, and students Yuehua Wang, Hai Jin, Chuan Li and Yu Chen, the team was one of 32 selected to demonstrate application of the GENI (Global Environment for Network Innovations) technology in research and development projects. Competing teams came from major research universities across the United States and as far as Russia and Japan.

The Wayne State project, titled Vehicular Sensing and Control, currently funded through the National Science Foundation (NSF), uses GENI resources to explore vehicular sensing and communication to enhance automotive safety and fuel economy. The Wayne State team outfitted two vehicles with cameras, sensors and GENI technology to conduct their preliminary research. Continued funding from NSF is expected and the team will begin using WSU Police Department vehicles for their next phase.

GENI, which provides a virtual laboratory for networking and distributed systems research and education, is funded by NSF and developed by leading academic and industrial teams. As part of a prior NSF GENI project led by Hongwei Zhang, a GENI WiMAX base station was installed at the top of 5057 Woodward Avenue, home to the computer science department. Wayne State is now one of only a handful of existing GENI WiMAX resource sites in the United States.