Why iPave Team Succeed? About the iPave Students and Mentors.

On Saturday, September 14, 2024, Washington, D.C. North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Construction undergraduate students Marquise Dark Lige Reese Kaliah Moore and Tyree Thomas presented iPave – Intelligent Roadway Management System at the 2024 AAAS HBCU Marking and Innovation Showcase, organized by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF). iPave beat other SIXTEEN undergraduate and graduate mixed teams (and even are all Ph.D. students) and won 1st place in the pitch competition. Morgan State University team won 2nd place in the competition, with three Ph.D. students and one undergraduate student.

Phase I

Marquise and Tyree were part of the 2023 SciTech Innovation Challenge team “Stomp Solutions,” mentored by Dr. Yuhan Jiang (Assistant Professor in the Department of Built Environment at the College of Science and Technology).

Marquise was the President of the Student Organization Association of Builders and Contractors (ABC). Dr. Jiang is one of the Faculty Mentors for ABC. Dr. Jiang forwarded the 2023 SciTech Innovation Challenge flyer to Marquise, and he agreed to participate and recruited other team members, including Tyree.  

The Stomp Solutions innovation is about sidewalk management on the North Carolina A&T State University campus using mobile phone LiDAR sensor, Artificial Intelligence, and Geographic Information System (GIS). This project applied Dr. Jiang’s research development, “Automatic Concrete Sidewalk Deficiency Detection and Mapping with Deep Learning,” published by Expert Systems with Applications, DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2022.117980, and U.S. provisional and utility patent filled (No. 63/510,282, and No. 18/753,573, Systems and Methods for Automated Sidewalk Deficiency Detection).  

Marquise, Tyree, and other team members in Stomp Solutions won 1st Place in the 2023 SciTech Innovation Challenge on March 21, 2023.

Phase II

In the Fall of 2023, Kaliah and Tyree worked as Undergraduate Research Assistants on Dr. Jiang’s 2023 Provost’s Faculty Fellows Seed Grant Funding project titled “Digitalizing Stormwater Infrastructure Systems in Disadvantaged Communities Using Reality Capture, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Digital Twin.” Tyree and Kaliah presented the poster, titled “Digitalizing Stormwater Infrastructure Systems Using Reality Capture,” at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS) 2023 (Nov. 11, 2023) and the 2024 N.C. A&T Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium. (Apr. 16, 2024).

Lige is the last one in the iPave team to join Dr. Jiang’s research team. She was taking Dr. Jiang’s course CM 356 Introduction to Building Information Modeling (BIM, and former code CM 256) in Fall 2023. Dr. Jiang announced the 2024 SciTech Innovation Challenge in the classroom. While Lige was on her Active Duty Training School (ADTS) leave, and past the initial application deadline. After discus with Ms. Christian Felton (Assistant Dean of Student Success, CoST), Lige could be added to the iPave team with Marquise, Kaliah, and Tyree.

Phase III

The iPave innovation concerns roadway pavement management using Remote Sensing (LiDAR, Drone imagery, Satellite imagery), AI, and GIS. This project is derived from Dr. Jiang’s research development, “PCIer: Pavement Condition Evaluation Using Aerial Imagery and Deep Learning,” published by Geographies, DOI:10.3390/geographies3010008.

iPave team, Marquise, Kaliah Moore, Lige Reese, and Tyree, won 3rd Place on March 18, 2024. While as the pure undergraduate team. iPave faced the challenge of being unable to beat the team assembled with Ph.D. and Master students.

But the team did not give up; they presented the poster “iPave: Intelligent Roadway Management System” at the 2024 N.C. A&T Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (Apr. 16, 2024) to gain experience and as well as feedback.

Soon after, the iPave team revised the presentation slides to reflect the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and submitted the application to the 2024 AAAS HBCU Marking and Innovation Showcase with the help from Dr. Jiang and Ph.D. student Andrea Spool-White (served as student mentor). On April 17, 2024, iPave was confirmed and accepted to the 2024 AAAS HBCU Making and Innovation Showcase.

During the summer, the team members all have summer internships, but they all worked on the 2 minutes pitch video to gain feedback and attend the webinar training provided by the AAAS.

The future

Construction major student Ahmed Omer (mentored by Dr. Yuhan Jiang) has been selected to participate in the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University – STEMunity Scholars Program. Ahmed has been chosen from a talented and highly competitive pool of undergraduate students to join this unique cohort of research scholars. (Out of nearly 50 proposals submitted, 16 awards were made. According to Juanda Johnson-Taylor, NC-LSAMP SPRA Director). Ahmed will be guided to use reality capture, AI, and BIM to explore post-disaster rescue, response, and damage assessment of the North Carolina A&T State University Campus.

Graduate student Emmanuel Stephen is working on Dr. Jiang’s 2024 Provost’s Faculty Fellows Seed Grant Funding project, “Enhancing Low-Income, Manufactured Housing Community Quality in Guilford County, North Carolina, by Applying Artificial Intelligence-Based Built Environment Characterization.” As well as served as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Center of Excellence for Innovation in Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development with an initial of 2.5 million) directed by Dr. Yuhan Jiang.