Graduate Student Wins Funding from Innovation Challenge

CAEM graduate student Jong-Hyun Jeong is one of the five winners of Tech Launch Arizona's Student Innovation Challenge, which provides funding to students to develop inventions and work to bring them to the public.

Jeong, who is developing a real-time road health app, recognized that an intersection between a unique problem and an existing technology presented a new opportunity.

Roads that need maintenance are bumpy. But how do you map the problem points that need the most attention? Maybe there was a way use the devices already in almost every driver’s vehicle as one big detection network.

“Recent smartphones are equipped a variety of sensors and high-performance CPU/GPU that enable their use as road health monitoring sensors,” Jeong said. “But there is no method available to directly use a general driver's smartphone due to vehicle calibration requirements.”

Jeong proposes using smartphones and their integrated accelerometers to calculate the International Roughness Index, providing real-time road health conditions.

“It is one of our goals to weave entrepreneurship into many aspects of the student experience,” said Doug Hockstad, assistant vice president of TLA. “Through philanthropic support, we were able to launch this new program, and provide experience in pitching ideas, building products and chasing dreams.”