2017 Summer Internship Opportunity at Makeability Lab, HCIL
Makeability Lab in the HCIL is investigating new methods and tools for urban accessibility data collection and analysis under Project Sidewalk. They are looking for talented, creative, and self-motivated undergrad research assistants with strong programming skills, technical background and an interest in urban accessibility to work on novel tools and applications for people with mobility impairments.
They're specifically looking for students with one or more of the following qualities and with a keen interest in expanding abilities in these areas:
- Experience designing front-end and back-end web components (e.g., Javascript, Java/Scala, D3, HTML, CSS, PostgreSQL)
- Experience in working with geographical data and developing map based tools (e.g., Mapbox, Leaflet)
- Experience prototyping iOS/Android applications (e.g., writing and deploying apps)
- *Bonus* Experience in developing tools using crowdsourcing such as with Amazon Mechanical Turk
- *Bonus* Interest in image processing with OpenCV and/or similar tools
- *Helpful* Interest in Data Science and comfort in using Python or other scripting languages
For more details on potential projects, visit http://cs.umd.edu/~manas
You will be working in the HCIL Hackerspace, will attend weekly research group meetings, and will join a team of other talented undergraduate and graduate students. By the end of the summer, Makeability Lab hopes that you will create some exciting tools, help them submit a publication to CHI2018, and have an enriching learning experience!
For best consideration, please send your CV and unofficial transcripts to manaswi@cs.umd.edu and CC jonf@cs.umd.edu. Use the subject line: "Summer 2017 Intern: << Your Name >>". Qualified candidates will be contacted to setup interviews and request other materials.
About Project Sidewalk
Roughly 30.6 million individuals in the US have physical disabilities that affect their ambulatory activities; nearly half of those individuals report using an assistive aid such as a wheelchair, cane, crutches, or walker. Despite comprehensive civil rights legislation for Americans with disabilities, many city streets, sidewalks, and businesses remain inaccessible. The problem is not just that street-level accessibility affects where and how people travel in cities but also that there are few, if any, mechanisms to determine accessible areas of a city a priori.
Project Sidewalk has a two-pronged vision: (i) To develop scalable data collection methods for acquiring sidewalk accessibility information using a combination of crowdsourcing, computer vision, and online map imagery, and (ii) To use this new data to design, develop, and evaluate a novel set of navigation and map tools for accessibility. Our overarching goal is to transform the ways in which accessibility information is collected and visualized for every sidewalk, street, and building façade in America.
