“We didn’t just build a system but an entire infrastructure, enabling participants to comprehend and respond to unfolding events in real-time.”
Harikrishnan Raghukumar
Harikrishnan (Hari) Raghukumar is an M.S. in Data Science (MSDS) student, graduate research assistant, and the lead developer on a project for the AI for IoT Information (AI3) Prize Competition. AI3 was a year-long competition to help public safety leaders and first responders manage the flood of data from the expansion of smart, connected systems. The competition’s theme was “Smart Communities, Smart Responders” and asked teams to develop a system that improves situational awareness during emergencies by integrating multiple sensor data sources to solve complex problems.
This complex data science scenario was a challenge Hari was excited to meet. Working with Dr. Jian Tao; Assistant Professor in the School of Performance, Visualization & Fine Arts and Director of TAMIDS’s Digital Twin Lab; Hari handled all significant technical aspects, including programming to build the entire backend infrastructure. Hari said, “We didn’t just build a system but an entire infrastructure, enabling participants to comprehend and respond to unfolding events in real-time.”
Before joining the Fall 2022 cohort in the MSDS program, Hari spent two years at American Express, leading data science product development for the customer 360 team. Before that, he received a Master of Technology in Automotive Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, India.
While Hari is undoubtedly skilled, he said the AI3 Competition presented several unique challenges. Many of the tools and techniques needed for the project were unfamiliar to him, but he was excited to learn. “The intense nights of coding, testing, and collaboration were exhaustive but profoundly meaningful,” Hari exclaimed; “I had to devote time to familiarize myself with the relatively new networking aspects, including protocols, firewalls, etc.”
The AI3 Competition was hosted by US Ignite, Texas A&M University, and Texas Engineering Extension Services (TEEX) and sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research Division (PSCR). The competitors got to visit TEEX’s Disaster City®, test their systems in real-world scenarios, and battle to win the $90,000 grand prize. The winning projects were from the CNA-riis and Engineering Dynamics teams.