First researchers appointed for New York venture

Two post-doctoral researchers have joined Warwick as part of the New York-based Centre for Urban Science and Progress.

Dr Maria Liakata and Dr Weisi Guo will study the challenges facing modern cities and will become assistant professors of the CUSP.

The CUSP is being described as a ‘living laboratory’ because the Metropolitan Transport Authority and similar organisations have agreed to provide real-life data from New York City to feed into the CUSP’s academic research. This data will also be used by Dr Liakata and Dr Guo at Warwick.

Dr Liakata will join the Department of Computer Science and will be working on data mining. She is primarily interested in city health and well-being in cities and will use her expertise in text mining and social media to collect data to support and evaluate initiatives in this area.

Dr Guo will join the Department of Engineering to work on telecommunications. He will focus on networking infrastructure and will be able to make recommendations for structural changes in cities such as the positioning of antennas and receivers to improve wireless communications.

Professor Stephen Jarvis, who has been leading Warwick’s involvement with the CUSP, argues that these appointments will help Warwick “set the research agenda in the field of urban sciences”.

Professor Jarvis, also deputy head of Computer Science, added that Warwick was “well-positioned to apply its expertise across a number of disciplines into making the cities of the future more resilient and efficient.”

Their roles are funded by the University of Warwick’s own earned income.