Executive Summary
2011 Annual Progress Report
1. Participatory Sensing!...............................................................................................................................................1
2. Terrestrial Ecology Observing Systems!..................................................................................................................3
3. Contaminant Transport Assessment and Management!........................................................................................5
4. Aquatic Observing Systems!.....................................................................................................................................6
5. Seismic Applications!.................................................................................................................................................8
6. Research Testbeds and Data Practices!.................................................................................................................10
7. Education and Diversity!.........................................................................................................................................11
8. Knowledge Transfer and External Partnerships!...................................................................................................13
9. Management and Outputs!......................................................................................................................................14
In this ninth year of operation, CENS has continued to advance our mission od developing and using innovative
technology to reveal interesting and surprising patterns and processing in nature and human systems, to work acros
the educational pipeline to inspire and train a diverse collection of students in science and technology, and to develop
a network of partners that share mutually in the discovery and education process. This year also saw changes in
emphasis and organization of our research efforts. Participatory Sensing is increasingly emphasized both as a
collection of various applications, from civic engagement to personal health, and as a source of technology research
directions. Also, as research projects and interests have progressed over the years, weʼve seen a much tighter
linkage between technology research and specific science application project suites. Thus, this year we have fully
integrated technology research projects with their target application areas and organized the report to align with our
primary application areas: Participatory Sensing, Terrestrial Ecology Observing Systems; Contaminant Transport and
Management, Aquatic Microbial Observing Systems, and Seismic Systems.
1. Participatory Sensing
The vision of Participatory Sensing is of distributed data collection and analysis spanning the personal, urban, and
global scale, often using “everyday” technologies like cell phones, in which participants make key decisions about
what, where and when to sense. Previously called Urban Sensing, the area was renamed to emphasize its wide
applicability and strong conceptual grounding in user participation.
The area targets technologies and applications that transform our capacity to help individuals, families, and
communities monitor and improve their own health behaviors, adopt sustainable practices in resource consumption,
and participate in civic processes. Each of these three touchstone topics—health (Figure 1), sustainability and civic
engagement—is being explored in real-world deployments, such as AndWellness (Google and NIH-funded); the
Personal Environmental Impact Report and Whatʼs Invasive; and Mobilize in the Los Angeles Unified School District,
Boyle Heights Neighborhood Collaborative and Remapping LA, respectively. In addition to these application-driven
experimental deployments, the area has conducted technology-focused research around topics necessary for
complete, robust participatory sensing systems, including: participant recruitment and reputation, task planning, and
sensing campaign management; configurable triggers for experience sampling; human activity classification based on
mobile phone sensors; integration with environmental monitoring assets; and data visualization. Privacy challenges
are being addressed within a holistic ethics framework that emphasizes principles of participant primacy, data
legibility, longitudinal engagement, and parsimony.
Since the introduction of the term by CENS in 2006, the area of participatory sensing (along with urban sensing) has
generated a body of multidisciplinary work spanning many universities, including UCLA, Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT,
CMU. It has also inspired work outside computer science in design, urban planning, and the arts, while becoming a
driver application for other research topics, including a recent NSF Future Internet Architecture award to UCLA. The
more technical aspects of our PS innovations are included in the research section of this report.
Application Drivers & Pilot Deployments
Ongoing collaborations target the three focus areas, including joint projects with the Semel Instituteʼs Global Center
for Children and Families at the UCLA School of Medicine, the National Park Service, the Los Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD), UCLA REMAP, and others. The group continue to increase the scale of public use of these
technologies. In Spring 2010, Google seeded a partnership with LAUSD to incorporate participatory sensing on
Android phones into computer science and mathematics classrooms. That program, Mobilize, will now expand across
the district through a new five-year NSF award (http://mobilizingcs.org). It builds on experience from community data
collection, for example, a collaboration that began last year with the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Collaborative in
Downtown Los Angeles mapped, recorded, and accumulated data on community member circulation and related
condition. This was a unique, active and participatory approach that supported the Boyle Heights Planning for Place
project in developing its plan for a healthy community. Now, Nokia and CENS are supporting the exploration of new
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Figure 1. Diagram depicting general mHealth system use cases.
approaches to community case-making and storytelling using this data as a case study, which will in turn impact
architecture research. Work continues on an ARRA-funded NIH Challenge Grant to develop an innovative real-time
assessment of behavioral exposures for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in young overweight mothers. Other health
science projects include exploratory work around supporting cancer survivorship research, HIV behavior survey with
the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services, and a collaboration with UCSF on “mHealth”
architecture.
Applications continue to take on a wider variety of diverse populations. While in the longer term scalability of any
individual deployment/experiment will raise additional challenges, our experience to date has shown that the more
important dimension for us to focus on is supporting a diverse mix of dynamic PS efforts, rather than any individual
effort at very large scale. For the most part the latter more traditional notion of scaling is likely to be well addressed by
mechanisms used in other areas of distributed systems and web applications (cloud solutions, schema-less data
stores, etc.) Whereas a focus on an increase in the range of applications and projects is generating highly valuable
feedback on system feature set, robustness requirements and optimization targets; participant pool coordination,
planning and management needs; and the importance of careful user experience and interface design for successful
deployment, and other issues that are more unique to this particular domain.
Platforms used by the group are becoming more mature and general. CENS is generalizing the codebase from
AndWellness to also support the LAUSD Mobilize Program, as well as adding visual analytics capabilities using the
popular statistics package R. AndWellness includes four system mechanisms to facilitate rapid prototyping of
personal data collection. Specific systems contributions include survey authoring; a composable and extensible
trigger framework that makes it easy to launch survey data collection based on time, place, or a userʼs activity; a
phone top `button' that allows a participant to capture a quick emotion (such as a `stress button' to document stress
events)—and the time and location surrounding that event—without having to go through the burden of answering an
entire survey; low-power data collection services (e.g. location, acceleration, mobility) to facilitate contextual and
automated data collection without draining the battery and without interrupting the user; and a toolkit of generic
visualizations that provide a quick snapshot of each userʼs data.
Rapid campaign authoring, deployment and management tools, are enabling new data collection campaigns to be
quickly created and deployed through the assembly and customization of a pre-existing web services and user
interface components. Additionally, through collaboration with other institutions, CENS will integrate other emerging
platforms and standards for data collection, such as Open Data Kit (ODK).
In addition to smartphone software, CENS is also developing SMS (text message) based systems on top of the
UNICEF RapidSMS framework, to enable participation by the still large numbers of people who do not own
smartphone or do not have a supported smartphone platform.
On the mobile devices themselves, research continues to better understand handset usage models as they inform
resource management mechanisms; especially with respect to power consumption, where improved knowledge will
support the goal of being able to continually run participatory sensing applications on everyday handsets. Additionally,
we continue to explore embedding local processing to tighten the feedback loop with users. In general, as our
deployments expand, we dedicate more effort to user interface improvements and usability study.
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Privacy, Ethics, Law and Policy
Based on campaign deployment experience and ongoing consideration of privacy concerns, a major focus of
research and implementation that emerged in 2009-2010 was the Personal Data Vault (PDV): a logically isolated
secure repository for participatory sensing data that is controlled by the handset owner. Conceptual and technical
work on this continues, including a version based on standard web protocols and another more experimental
distributed version. In both cases, the PDV receives participatory sensing data as it is collected and selectively
distributes it to third party applications according to a set of sharing rules created by the user. The groups
collaboration with Prof. Jerry Kang of the UCLA School of Law has yielded a law review paper and initial legal
approach that could provide additional protection for the data contained in the PDV. The implementation will be
integrated into CENS applications in 2011.
The PDV is one of several examples of CENS participatory sensing research that is influenced through interaction
with ethics education and research that aims to promote the participatory principles and user empowerment
fundamental to this area. This work is in its third and final year of funding from the NSF Ethics Education in Science
and Engineering, and is centered a participant-observer study of CENS research that aims to develop educational
materials promoting ethics considerations in the development of participatory sensing systems, as well as original
work in Information Studies on participatory practices in data collection. In addition to academic publications, reports,
and popular articles in this area, a new interdisciplinary undergraduate course is being offered this spring that will
explore the topics in depth. The project generated a second grant by the same team that will generate multimedia
curriculum materials on a several different ethics topics.
Future Work
During the coming year we will continue to focus on expanded real-world deployments with a larger variety and
number of users, higher stakes uses in real communities, and more robust, shared systems (such as the PDV and
AndWellness core platform) to support data collection campaigns. These deployments will provide the systems
scaffolding and practical opportunities to incorporate technology research in campaign deployment, management,
recruitment, incentive, data processing and the other areas listed above. They will also provide opportunity for formal
user studies and more concrete understanding of how to achieve maximum impact in the real world.
After an assessment of progress at a Summer 2010 “mini-retreat” the group has also started to focus on methodology
for case-making and storytelling based on participatory sensing data. Acknowledging that data (and visualizations of
that data) are often understood by stakeholders in participatory sensing through the articulation, sharing, and
correction of narratives told using the data, the group is researching how to better support this in the collection anad
analysis process. Assistance in case-making and storytelling will help to motivate ongoing collection in communities
and makes it easier for them to leverage the data that they have collecting towards desired change. This work
includes collaboration with visual and media arts students and faculty, and will culminate in automated data summary
approaches that complement the work already being done in data visualization and analysis.
2. Terrestrial Ecology Observing Systems
Our goals for the 2010–2011 TEOS activities were to expand our testbed network to extend and integrate our
observing systems at the James Reserve, testing ecological theory, expand our network to additional testbeds with
different environmental conditions, and to scale from the microscopic-level observations and measurements to
continental-scale analysis of phenology which can be used in understanding dynamics of global change (Figure 2).
These goals emphasize our focus on research and technology application, education, and outreach.
The first goal was to expand our testbed. The sensors have been widely accepted and used. However, coupling
those measurements with direct observations of soil processes using systems similar to our Automated MiniRhizotron
(AMR), has not previously occurred. We made several design changes from our previous prototype unit, adding
stability, networking capacity, and accessibility by outside researchers. These have been incorporated and most of
the images acquired and currently being taken are available to anyone interested in downloading (http://ccb.ucr.edu/
amarss.html). We expanded the network across the James Reserve and at additional locations. At the James
Reserve, the prototype is still operating in the meadow adjacent to the weather station. At the AMARSS transect, 4
AMR units and soil sensor nodes are actively running focusing on observing and measuring soils at the same
locations as the Networked InfoMechanical System (NIMS) cable and instrumentation (with complete energy-balance
measurements), the phenology camera, sapflow flux sensors, standard above-ground sensors (PAR, T, RH, PPT)
and a newly installed within-canopy eddy co-variance measurement system. All measurements correspond to
previous measurements of leaf area (canopy camera), CO2 assimilation measurements, with T, and PAR through the
seasons, and within the footprint of a canopy-scale eddy covariance measurement system (Michael Goulden, UCI).
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We added an additional set of AMR and soil sensor nodes at the La Selva Biological Station. This deployment was
stimulated by the PASI course (described below), but remains running.
Finally, we provided an AMR unit to NEON as a test deployment with their soil sensor network, which is identical to
that we deployed at the James Reserve.
With the expansion of automated data and image retrival, our James Reserve network capacity was no longer
adequate to handle the traffic volumn and computational needs. We moved the servers to the UCR campus. Although
modifications of software to the AMR units and data management, all data and observations are available.
From the prototype unit, we have been able to document diel in situ arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) hyphal growth
dynamics. In 2009, growth preferentially occurred during mid-afternoon, corresponding to the time of maximal
photosynthesis (based on PAR and sapflow
measurements). In 2010, no diel pattern was found,
but the site was cooler and wetter. No diel pattern of
mortality was observed, although seasonal dynamics
strongly correspond to decreasing soil moisture (θ). As
an obligate plant symbiont, arbuscular mycorrhizal
fungi utilize new photosynthetic C, not older
decomposed C, which should reflect the allocation
timing and processing of C (Figure 2).
Soil respiration (Rs) measures show strong diel
dynamics. In the meadows, dominated by AM grasses,
diel hyphal production was also observed. Little diel or
seasonal hysteresis occurred in Rs suggesting minimal
lag in C fluxes. Alternatively, in the forest, we see little
evidence of diel hyphal growth dynamics, and the
ecto-mycorrhizal (EM) associations with the woody
plants appear to be very long-lived (years), and even
rhizomorphs have nearly a year life-span. Rs shows
strong daily and seasonal hysteresis, suggesting long
lags in C allocation from leaves to roots to fungi in
these architecturally-complex systems. Importantly,
with snow cover, soil CO2 production (Rp) continues
even though the soil CO2 does not diffuse through the
snow layer. This results in a very high concentration of
soil CO2, and a degassing as patches of snowmelt
appear. We are currently working on a suite of different
ecosystem models both to find some optimal ways of
integrating our diverse datasets, and as a means ot
testing C flux estimates generated by the models
(Figure 2).
Figure 2. 2010 integrated sensor studies of soil fungi and the
processes they catalyze, at the James Reserve. Show is the daily
averages (5min intervals) for T (upper left), soil CO2 (upper right),
θ (middle left), and Rs (middle right). Shown are images of an
ectomycorrhiza, with the mantle and radiating hyphae (lower left)
and an automated tracing (using @RootFly) outlining an
arbuscular mycorrhizal network. Individual hyphae can be traced
through time (lower panel) and dynamics of C production and
turnover in fungal biomass directly measured to integrate into
ecosystem models. These data extend the initial measurements
started in the 2010 report to minute-hour-scale data for describing
short- (events, diel dynamics) and long- (season, environmental
change) scale processes.
Integrating camera and sensor systems has become a
critical tool for undertaking ecological research in the
field. Our observing systems range from the in situ
microscopes (AMR units) that are coupled with soil
sensors, to field cameras for studying phenology
dynamics that are coupled with measurements of soil
respiration and activity as well as sap-flow sensor
measurements, to events such as snowfall and
snowmelt that are coupled to Rs as well as Rp dynamics. From our initial deployment at the James Reserve, new
deployments in Chile (with the Chilean LTER group) and with the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica shows
promise for further development. As a new activity, we are focusing on utilizing color variation to generate a more
detailed assessment of finer phenological resolution in collaboration with UC Berkeley. By using these images and
color detection approaches, we are comparing local camera measurements to satellite imagery (especially MODIS
products) to scale from individual plant phenology to site-scale dynamics.
These camera observing systems can even be scaled to provide warning systems. For example, currently fires must
be visually distinguished before warnings can be sent. However, smoke has very different atmospheric properties
from clouds, or cloudless days. Both pattern recognition and wavelength differentiation might become feasible from a
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deployment of camera systems to provide early warning systems for wildfire detection. Given that detection is the first
line of defense for control, this approach would make fire protection a more viable option for the future.
Finally, we developed a course in sensor networks and cyberinfrastructure at the La Selva Biological Station in Costa
Rica for students and postdocs both from the US and across Latin America through the Pan-American Advanced
Studies Institute (PASI). The expected outcomes were: (1) Tropical ecologists enrolled would be able to expand their
ecological questions by using embedded sensors; (2) Tropical ecologists would become familiar with the design, set
up and management requirements of embedded sensor networks that are appropriate for the temporal and spatial
scale of their hypotheses; (3) Groups of tropical ecologists with common interests would be facilitated to encourage
partnerships, research alliances and the establishment of their own collaborative networks; and, (4) Critical questions
in tropical ecology would be identified where novel applications of sensor networks could have transformative effects
Thirty-one graduate students, post docs and young faculty were selected to enroll in the PASI course, drawn from a
pool of 80 applicants. These students were roughly split between Latin American and American students, with the
groups including the representation of 14 countries. The instrumentation deployed at the La Selva station remains in
place for students and researchers to continue to use.
Together, we believe that we have been able to develop, then demonstrate the viability of sensor networks, including
observing systems as components of sensor networks, in ecological research and training. We will continue our
integrated studies both technically, and into new systems.
3. Contaminant Transport Assessment and Management
The Contam research area focuses on developing technology to observe and manage mass and energy distributions
and fluxes across a range of temporal and synoptic scales. In 2010–2011, the contaminant transport group continued
its emphasis on integrated sensing and model-driven analysis. Projects continued to focus on high resolution river
observation and modeling with respect to whole stream metabolism, groundwater-surface water exchanges, and
hydrodynamic mixing. In addition, new emphases have emerged in the areas of (1) managed aquifer recharge aimed
at increasing the sustainability of groundwater supplies and (2) integrating remote (aerial) sensing products with
CENS embedded sensing strategies in order to extend our approaches to larger spatial scales (i.e., watershed).
The major accomplishment in the Contam application area
for 2010–2011 was the installation of a major new
observational network at a managed aquifer recharge site
in Fresno, CA. After more almost 2 years of uninterrupted data
from the Palmdale water reclamation and irrigation site, and the
dairy wastewater irrigations sites near Merced, CA, we shifted
sensing resources to the managed aquifer recharge site in
Fresno, CA. This newest Contam site is called MARnet
(managed aquifer recharge network). One of the observational
nodes is shown Figure 3 during the initial flooding of the
infiltration pond. At this site, we aim to successfully
demonstrate integrated modeling and observational techniques
which will enable managed aquifer recharge with reclaimed
water to be used more readily in arid and semi-arid
climates, thereby increasing the sustainability of water
resources.
Overall the Contam group focused on three projects over the
past year, including (1) the new managed aquifer recharge site,
(2) continued development of high temporal resolution
dissolved oxygen data collection and net daily metabolism
estimation at high spatial resolution, (3) developing new
approaches to integrating CENSʼ embedded sensing
approaches with larger scale remote sensing data.
Figure 3. The new CENS-CITRIS managed aquifer
recharge network (MARnet) prototype presently installed
at the Fresno city wastewater treatment facilities.
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After transitioning sensor to the MARnet site, we also focused
effort on the interpretation of long-term data at the Palmdale
and Merced dairy sites. Findings from these sites are
summarized in one doctoral dissertation and two M.S. theses.
These focus on the development and testing of long-term
simulation models and data assimilation methods for
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forecasting the effects of irrigating with reclaimed water on groundwater quantity and quality in terms of nitrate and
salinity levels, and on the long-term problem of soil salinization. Our results indicate that by hardening the
demonstrated approaches we can build robust embedded sensing systems reporting higher level
information than simply moisture changes over time, reporting instead on the sustainability of current
practices and proposing modifications to improve upon the current approach. Furthermore, to enable scale up of the
MARnet approach we have developed parsing algorithms that sort hydrologic and geospatial properties and
socioeconomic features over large areas, such as counties, to identify the most promising areas for developing MAR
operations. In the coming year this aspect of Contam research will continue to operate and assess the MARnet
prototype while working with local water agencies to identify additional test sites. In particular, we are interested in
identifying a floodwater diversion site to contrast with the existing wastewater reclamation site.
In the second project area, we have extended our aquatic sensing capabilities on the Lower Merced Rivers, having
installed a long-term water quality monitoring station in September 2010. This station is enabling us to continuously
examine water quality parameters at high temporal resolution in a critical agricultural reach of the river. In addition, we
have continued our synoptic monitoring efforts over this river reach on a roughly quarterly basis, including both water
quality and imagery to capture human influences in the form of inputs (canals, drain pipes) and outputs (pumps and
diversions). By combining the temporal and synoptic data we are learning to separate the influences of
human disturbances from natural background processes. At this time we are focusing mainly on temperature,
dissolved oxygen (DO), and nitrate changes in the river, and using the ecosystem metrics associated with net daily
metabolism (primary production, community respiration) as a method for quantifying the riverʼs response to natural
and anthropogenic disturbances. Most recently we have been able to autonomously detect changes in metabolism
over a wide range of flow releases from upstream reservoirs.
The third Contam project area over the past year focused on the integration of embedded and remote sensing
approaches in both terrestrial and aquatic systems For terrestrial systems, we continued pursue the objective of
classifying ecosystem change over relatively short time periods. Our most successful approach to date involve
modifying an existing algorithm (multivariate alteration detection or MAD) to include an object-based approach. The
latter allows us to better filter false change detections. We tested the algorithm using high resolution aerial imagery of
a managed wetland area in Central California. Our new approach enabled us to filter out false changes better than
the MAD algorithm alone. The object-based aspect of our algorithm allows us, for example, to notice that certain
vegetation objects (small trees or bushes) cannot spread or move over short time periods, and therefore identifies
potential changes in such objects a spurious. Overall, the modified object-based MAD (OB-MAD) algorithm
successfully classified relatively subtle changes in wetland plant community structure over a period of only one year.
By enabling ecosystem managers to identify the onset of change over shorter time periods, we can empower
them to enact operational changes which have a better chance of preserving desirable ecosystem functions
before the movement toward change become irreversible.
4. Aquatic Observing Systems
The overarching theme of the Centerʼs Aquatic application area continues to be the creation and application of a new
genre of wireless sensing systems that will provide real-time monitoring capabilities of chemical, physical and
biological parameters in freshwater and coastal ecosystems. Temporal and spatial measurements at high-resolution
are essential for understanding the highly dynamic nature of aquatic ecosystems and the rapid response of microbial
communities to environmental driving forces. Our unique approach to aquatic sensing and sampling, Networked
Aquatic Microbial Observing Systems (NAMOS), employs coordinated measurements between stationary sensing
nodes and robotic vehicles (surface robotic boats and autonomous underwater vehicles) to provide in-situ, real-time
presence for observing plankton dynamics (e.g. chlorophyll concentration, dissolved oxygen), and linking them to
pertinent environmental variables (e.g. temperature, light, nutrients, etc.). Sensing and sampling capabilities of the
autonomous vehicles are carried out through the development of adaptive protocols, directed through the network.
These systems enable the generation and testing of novel hypotheses regarding the processes that control the
distribution, growth and demise of aquatic microbial populations.
The primary research foci (Figure 4) within the Aquatic Application during the past year have been: (1) participation in
two major collaborative field expeditions to characterize and study harmful algal blooms within the southern California
Bight region (Bight ʻ08 Study; with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project) and Monterey Bay off the
central California coast (CANON: Controlled, Agile, and Novel Observing Network, with Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute); (2) characterization and analysis of fine- to micro-scale temporal and spatial distributions of
chemical and physical parameters in protected embayments of southern California for the purpose of defining the
factors controlling the appearance and distribution of algal blooms; (3) establishment of a collaborative regional-scale
program for monitoring the occurrence of harmful algal species in coastal waters off southern California; (4) the
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C
A
B
E
D
Figure 4: A. Time series of depth-resolved chemical parameters along the coast. Wavelet power spectrum analysis of a tidal record
(lower panels) reveals a strong daily and semi-daily periodicity (red bands; bottom panel). B. CINAPS (right panel) is the web portal
for the observing systems used for the Aquatic Microbial Observing Systems application. C. Illustration of a Lagrangian drifter being
tracked on shore and at sea. D. Glider dive adaptation in risky and non-risky areas. E. The prototype portable algae μflow
cytometer.
development of a portable algae μflow cytometer to expedite research in algal studies using microfluid-based and
state-of-the-art detection technology, and (5) a risk analysis-based approach to the design of safe paths for
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs).
Research to examine the fine- to micro-scale forcing factors affecting microalgal bloom development in protected
embayments have focused on the deployment of sensor networks in marinas within the cities of Redondo Beach and
Marina Del Rey. These coastal municipalities struggle to maintain high levels of coastal water quality in the face of an
increasing chemical and biological contaminants originating from the activities within their own communities, or via
the transport of contaminants from inland sources. Responsible environmental stewardship by these municipalities
requires an understanding of the factors affecting local water quality data. Our research efforts in these harbors have
involved the deployment of sensing capabilities to support observational and experimental studies of the harmful algal
blooms in the harbors, and to examine the complex interactions between physical forcing (e.g. tidal movement, light
availability) and microalgal physiology, ecology, and behavior (e.g. photoadaptation, vertical migratory behavior)
within these harbors.
Our sensor network research in the open coastal ocean represents a larger-scale implementation of a distributed
sensing system to study the environmental factors leading to toxic algal blooms caused by phytoplankton species that
produce the powerful neurotoxin domoic acid. This component of the Aquatic Application is being conducted in
conjunction with a NOAA-funded Monitoring and Event Response for Harmful Algal Blooms (MERHAB) program
entitled Rapid Analysis of Pseudo-nitzschia & Domoic Acid, Locating Events in near-Real Time (RAPDALERT), and
involves regional waters districts, ocean observatories, animal rescue and care centers, and other partnerships (see
below). Our research applies CENS hardware, software, and overall approaches in the southern California Bight
(coastal waters from Santa Barbara to San Diego CA) to characterize these toxic algal events, investigate their
causes and establish a causal relationship between toxin outbreaks and mass stranding of marine mammals and sea
birds in the region. This project entails a network of coastal sensor buoys and autonomous underwater vehicles.
Advancements in vehicle control accomplished through CENS constitute major advancements in our ability to
characterize rapidly evolving biological events in the coastal ocean. The work includes the development of algorithms
and approaches for transmitting sensed information to shore-based facilities, assimilating the information into
predictive models of coastal ocean physics, and using the resulting predictions of feature dynamics to retask the
underwater vehicles to optimize their activities (setting new tasks, way points, etc.).
Our web portal (CINAPS: Center for Integrated Networked Aquatic PlatformS) provides an overview of research
projects, study site locations, instruments and platforms, partnerships and outreach that encompass our CENS
research activities and collaborative programs. Datasets generated by CENS and other research programs are also
publicly available for viewing and download.
Knowledge transfer and outreach activities of the Aquatic Application research group have been accomplished
through partnerships with local municipalities (Cities of Redondo Beach, Los Angeles and San Diego), regional water
districts (West Basin Municipal Water District, Orange County Sanitation District, Los Angeles County Sanitation
District), and universities and joint powers agencies concerned with water quality in the southern California Bight.
Collaboration with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project and Southern California Coastal Ocean
Observing System (a regional component of the national Ocean Observing System) are being conducted in Spring
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2010 as part of an extensive investigation of water quality within the southern California Bight. Our partnership with
local municipalities provides these cities with vital information to aid decision making for preventing harmful alga
blooms or ameliorating their impact. Finally, we have worked closely with marine animal rescue and care centers
(Fort McArthur Marine Mammal Care Center, San Pedro CA; Pacific Marine Mammal Center, Laguna Beach, CA;
International Bird Rescue Research Center, San Pedro, CA; Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, Huntington Beach,
CA; Whale Rescue Team, South Bay, CA) to examine linkages between harmful algal blooms in coastal waters and
mass stranding events of local marine animal populations. In this role we have provided numerous interviews to
newspapers, radio and television, as well as scientific lectures, on the causes and impacts of harmful algal blooms in
the southern California region.
We are working on the development of a to portable μflow cytometer that is suitable for in-field monitoring of algal
population and reduce test time. Many of todayʼs ocean-observing systems provide only rough proxies for algal
biomass (e.g. chlorophyll fluorescence, absorption, or backscattering) and cannot distinguish different species. To
solve this problem we build a portable algae μflow cytometer system to provide a precise evaluation of the algal
population. The μflow cytometer measures individual algal cells for their size, chlorophyll fluorescence and other
biological properties, which is important to distinguish different species, especially to resolve the harmful ones among
algal communities. Also, the portable system can be used for constant vigilance in the pre-bloom stage to tie down
processes contributing to the increased growth of algae.
The Southern California Bight (SCB) region is home to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which collectively
handle approximately 40% of all US container traffic. This large shipping traffic along with a significant presence of
smaller crafts in the ocean necessitates careful path-planning to avoid risking collisions with ships while the vehicle is
at the surface. All container ships as well as commercial passenger craft are mandated to transmit their locations to
VTS terminals nearby to indicate their location, speed and other parameters using the Automatic Information System
(AIS). We have analyzed AIS information from 2009 and 2010 for the SCB and use this processed data along with
path-planning algorithms to plan missions for the gliders which reduce risk while traveling between way-points chosen
for the scientific mission. Finally, we have been working on AUV-based observation in a Lagrangian frame of
reference moving with a feature of interest. Often, the only way to understand an ocean process is to acquire
measurements at sufficient spatial and temporal resolution
within a specific feature while it is evolving. Examples of coastal
ocean features whose study requires such techniques include
concentrated patches of toxic algal blooms or anoxic patches of
low-oxygen that may cause marine life mortality. To study and
track such phenomenon, drifters are often used as proxies
which are in turn tracked by robotic vehicles such as
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). In collaboration with
MBARIʼs CANON initiative we have performed a series of
Lagrangian survey experiments carried out with drifter relative
AUV surveys.
5. Seismic Applications
The Seismic research area continued analysis of data captured
by the Middle America Seismic Experiment (MASE), analysis of
the ongoing Peru Subduction Zone Experiment (PeruSZE), and
successful testing of GeoNet, the Reftek ENSBox platform for
both structural and seismic applications.
MASE and PeruSE
In 2008 our wireless network that was developed and installed
across Mexico (MASE Middle America Seismic Experiment)
was shipped to Peru (PeruSE Peru Seismic Experiment) and
installed along a line (Line 1) across the Andes between the
cities of Mollendo and Puno, where the Nazca plate is
subducting beneath the west coast generating devastating
earthquakes and tsunamis (Figure 5). Graduate and
undergraduate students were involved in the installation of the
49 station network. Most stations at the end of the summer
were recording on-site. Subsequently Richard Guy and Igor
Stubailo installed the networking that links the stations across
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Figure 5. Chile 8.8 earthquake in 2010 February 27
recorded by the Peru network. This unique on-scale
recording of a huge earthquake by an array of
broadband seismometers provided seismologists with
an unprecedented view of the development of a megarupture.
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the Andes. In the summer of 2009, along with colleagues from Caltech, 50 stand-alone Caltech stations were
installed along the Puno-Cusco line (Line 2) along the Altiplano in the Andes. In late 2010, 25 stations from the
Mollendo-Cusco line were moved to a new line (Line 3) Pisco-Cusco that parallels the first and completes a U shaped
network of 100 stations linking the Altiplano to the coast. Data is available from line 1: 2008-present, Line 2: late
2009-present, Line 3: late 2010-present. It is anticipated the full network will run for at least another year.
The Peru experiment (field work funded by the Caltech Moore Foundation grant) provided an opportunity to redesign
our networking protocols based on our networking experience in Mexico. Our Delay Tolerant Shell (DTS) was
improved. A new website for hourly system status was designed and implemented. The data was input to LabView.
The various synergies of CENS have combined to make a significant remote area networking product. The data is
radioed across Peru to Internet drops. It is then transmitted to UCLA over the Internet. The Atacama desert, where
the network is located, is one of the more remote parts of the world. The facility that has been developed to install a
remote wireless network over 250 km, and have the data transmit back to the laboratory, as well as duplex control on
the instrumentation in the field, has application worldwide where remote network sensing is required.
Exciting science has been discovered in the MASE data by Mexican graduate students, Luis Antonio Dominguez and
Igor Stubailo, and in the Peru data by Emily Foote. All three presented papers at the Fall meeting of the American
Geophysical Union.
CENS Development of the Reftek EnsBox
with application to GeoNet-SHMnet-ShakeNet-FlexiRAMP
CENS has provided the infrastructure and technology to link UCLA departments in a single development with and
industrial partner (Reftek Refraction Technology of Texas). It is the culmination of our experience in wireless
networking to design a node that satisfies the digitizing and wireless networking requirements of the following groups
to improve their science:
Figure 6. March 2011 test of Geonet boxes Salton Sea, California. Data between boxes was transmitted by WiFi. Events
(lower left) were automatically detected and transmitted via cell phone modems.
• GeoNet (geophysical monitoring) Paul Davis, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, UCLA, earthquake and
tectonic networks.
• SHMnet (Structural Health monitoring) John Wallace, Civil Engineering, UCLA
• ShakeNet (Monitoring civil structures for shaking after earthquakes) Monica Kohler, CENS and Caltech, Ramesh
Govindan, USC, Department of Computer science
• FlexiRAMP, A flexible network for Rapid Array Mobilization Procedures, IRIS (Incorporated Research Institutions
for Seismology) Richard Allen Berkeley, Marcos Alvarez, IRIS, and Paul Davis, UCLA. in association with
Deborah Estrin, CENS
Through CENS, in a multidisciplinary project involving four UCLA Departments (Computer Science, Electrical
Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Earth and Space Sciences), the PIs have designed a novel seismic node and
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have had two built by the leading manufacturer of seismic recorders (Refraction Technology of Texas). The GeoNet
nodes incorporate a new generation digital acquisition system (DAS) based on the CENS-developed LEAP (lowpower energy aware processing) system and a newly developed low-power A/D converter from Texas Instruments
(TI). They will have application over a wide range of field applications involving wide area networks and low power
processing and delivery of event data. They will run on small batteries with a laptop sized solar panel. Preliminary
tests in the Mojave desert have been carried out in which the boxes recorded explosions from a seismic refraction
experiment, detected them as events (Figure 6), aggregated the data using WiFi and used cell phone modems to
email the data and plots. As was seen in recent damaging earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, rapid knowledge
of seismic activity is of critical importance to emergency planners.
6. Research Testbeds and Data Practices
These projects are both testbeds and empirical research; the common theme is collaboration, both local and
distributed. We are exploring multiple aspects of cyberinfrastructure requirements for embedded sensor networks and
other types of multi-disciplinary science and technology research. Funding sources include NSF, Microsoft, CENS,
and the University of California.
Monitoring, Modeling, and Memory is a distributed collaboration with partners at the University of Michigan, University
of Pittsburgh, and Georgetown University. We are comparing data practices across multiple distributed sci-tech
collaborations, including CENS, Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER), and the Earth System Modeling
Framework. This is largely a social science collaboration of investigators studying science. We are in year three of
three.
The Data Conservancy, which is a very large distributed collaboration based at Johns Hopkins University, addresses
the curation of scientific observations. It is a partnership of scientists, social scientists, and technologists to build
systems and to study data curation in multiple fields. Our focus is on astronomy, which is outside the realm of CENS
per se, but draws upon the theory and methods applied to other studies of CENS data practices. We are in year two
of five.
Object Reuse and Exchange is a technology project that builds upon our earlier work in CENS data practices,
extending it to deploy new technical standards to represent and to link research objects. We partnered with leads in
ORE development at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This project is in year 4 of 4. Funding for this research
came primarily from Microsoft Research.
The CENS Deployment Center captures knowledge of CENS research activities and makes those records reusable
for future deployments by the same and other CENS teams. The eScholarship project captures CENS publications.
The Data Discovery Library and the CENS Annual Report System both were outcomes of these projects, which
began with a seed grant from CENS funding. While CENS DC per se is ending, the follow-on projects continue, and a
grant proposal is in progress to transfer stewardship of the CENS data and publications to the UCLA library.
The mobile computing project, also funded by Microsoft, developed a scientific data collection module for the
Microsoft phone platform. While technology development ended when Microsoft made a major platform shift that was
not forward compatible, we gathered useful empirical data on microblogging for scientific applications.
The multiple CENS testbeds are exemplars of the collaborative cyberinfrastructure built by CENS teams. These
testbeds yield empirical data and are available to other teams to extend their work.
Theses and Dissertations
MMM, Deployment Center, and eScholarship: These three projects together are the basis for the dissertations of
Matthew Mayernik, who will complete his degree in June, 2011, and Jillian Wallis, who defended her proposal in
March, 2011, and plans to finish in June, 2012.
Object Reuse and Exchange: Alberto Pepe, who completed his dissertation in June, 2010, extended the ORE project
with additional study of social networks in CENS.
Mobile scientific data collection: Research done jointly by Mayernik and Pepe contributed to both of their
dissertations.
Data Conservancy: David Fearonʼs masterʼs degree project is based on his work with astronomy data from this
project.
Awards and Prizes
In this reporting year, our team has received multiple awards:
• Matthew Mayernik: Best Dissertation Proposal Award, UCLA Department of Information Studies
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• Alberto Pepe: Best Dissertation Award, American Society for Information Science and Technology
• Jillian Wallis: Team lead, Winner of Student Design Competition, American Society for Information Science and
Technology
• Laura Wynholds: Inaugural Best Student Paper Award, International Digital Curation Conference
7. Education and Diversity
CENS integrates education, diversity, and research throughout its programs. Through the collaboration of CENS
faculty, staff, and students, we have developed infrastructure and programs that support the Centerʼs education
goals: (1) to increase the number and diversity of students pursuing advanced degrees in ENS-related fields and (2)
to promote interest and knowledge of ENS technology at all stages of the educational pipeline. CENS education
activities support graduate, undergraduate, and pre-college education.
In the past year, CENS has come into its own in terms of its education accomplishments in the areas of graduate,
undergraduate, and pre-college education. CENS has established highly effective programs to support students,
which are now running seamlessly and at their peak in terms of realizing both program goals and the goals of
participating students. These efforts have capitalized on the emerging technologies within the Center to create even
stronger connections between CENS research and education activities, benefiting the educational community and the
Center itself. In the undergraduate research programs, 18 students have made contributions to research in sensing
and sustainability, seismic sensing, and water quality monitoring. CENS also hosted 6 undergraduates from other
REUs in CENS activities and workshops during the summer. In its third year, CENS High School Scholars summer
internship program engaged 20 high school students and 5 undergraduate students in authentic research
experiences focused on developing participatory sensing campaigns. Four of the high school participants came to the
program from Puerto Rico, as part of a partnership with the Caribbean Computing Center for Excellence (CCCE), a
BPC Alliance. Building on our work as part of the UCLA LAUSD BPC Alliance, MOBILIZE, a NSF Math & Science
Partnership, is being developed as a spin-off of our high school curriculum development focused on participatory
sensing. Our diversity efforts also focused on engaging with partners in the science and engineering community in
collaborations designed not only to increase the pool of underrepresented students and women interested in pursuing
opportunities within CENS but also supporting diversity efforts within the broader community. CENS Education staff
also serve as consultants for other programs focused on increasing participation and preparation of students in the
STEM pipeline and are disseminating the lessons learned from the experience at CENS to the broader STEM
community, including publications in ACM Transactions on Computing Machinery, CSTA Voice, and Imagine
magazine. Actively building on the successes of our previous yearsʼ work, CENSʼ education has made notable
accomplishments in all areas of work.
Graduate Student Education
Graduate students are highly involved in CENS through CENS-created curricula, courses, and collaborative research
opportunities. Overall, 89 graduate students have participated in CENS research over the past year, including 70 from
UCLA, 11 from USC, 5 from UCM, 2 from Caltech, and 1 from UCR. Accomplishments in this area continue to be
highlighted by a strong sense of community and multidisciplinary collaboration among graduate students and notable
contributions that graduate students have made to the research itself. This collaboration is facilitated by ongoing
support activities such as weekly Technical Seminars and Tuesday Teatime networking events, and the annual
Research Review and Retreat. Approximately 339 graduate students enrolled in 11 graduate courses focused on
CENS-related curricula during the 2010-2011 academic year. Graduate students continue to be integral contributors
to CENSʼ multidisciplinary, inter-institutional research teams. Last year alone, CENS supported conference
attendance of dozens of graduate students who presented at national and international conferences. CENS is also
actively engaged in recruitment activities designed to promote CENSʼ graduate programs, particularly for women and
underrepresented students. These activities include participation in local and national events and reflect strong
partnerships with campus organizations (e.g., SWE, SPUR, and CEED), local community colleges (e.g., East Los
Angeles College) and minority-serving institutions (e.g., CSU Los Angeles, UC Riverside, Loyola Marymount
University, and Norfolk State University), and the other NSF Science & Technology Centers.
Undergraduate Education
As our education programs become established, undergraduates continue to be an important part of the Center
through research opportunities and courses. CENS has established a vital summer internship program that features a
several components designed as scaffolding to ensure studentsʼ success in the program. The Tech Camp orientation
at the James Reserve is an example of scaffolding that both introduces students to the technology and promotes
community-building among students and faculty and graduate student mentors. Last summer, 18 undergraduates
participated in the CENS summer REU program, of which all were US citizens (or permanent residents), 9 were
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female, and 7 were underrepresented minorities. Building of the success of our summer program, the CENS SRC
URO Scholars Program, an academic year research program sponsored by the Semiconductor Research
Corporation supported 10 undergraduate students in 2010-2011 with a composition of 100% US citizens and 50%
female or underrepresented students. The 2009-2010 CENS SRC program supported 10 students (70% women or
underrepresented). This year 118 undergraduates have enrolled in 3 courses on CENS related topics, developed and
taught by CENS faculty. We continue to benefit from the link between our undergraduate programs and graduate
school, now with 20 undergraduate alumni attending CENS-related graduate programs. Our undergraduate research
programs are complemented by our diversity efforts, especially the Women@CENS project, which focused on how
undergraduate research opportunities promote womenʼs long-term interest in science and engineering. We continue
disseminating the results of our research, which includes a national study with a sample of over 342 undergraduate
research programs and the findings from our annual summer internship program evaluations.
Pre-College Activities
CENS pre-college education activities focused on
three areas: (1) directly engaging high school
students in summer research opportunities, (2)
providing training to computer science teachers
through the Google CS4ALL Program, and (3)
involved in partnerships with the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD) to help improve
curriculum and science and technology education
in the district. CENS is actively involved in the
UCLA LAUSD “Into the Loop” BPC Alliance
focused on developing and implementing
computer science curriculum in LASUD high
schools and hosting high school students in
summer research experiences focused on
participatory sensing, increasing our ability to
build the pipeline of students pursuing ENSrelated degrees at multiple levels (Figure 7). The
CENS High School Scholars Program supported
20 high school students and 5 undergraduates Figure 7. “Bird Watch” High School Research Team
during the summer. During 2009-2010, CENS
also mentored 20 continuation high school students in a research experience connected to their local environment
and a hands-on introduction to computer science using LegoMindstorms. CENS also held a two-day Google
Teachersʼ Workshop during the summer, part of the CS4ALL program that is funded by a grant from Google.
Diversity
Diversity initiatives have been integrated into all CENS education activities, from graduate, to undergraduate, to precollege and planned professional training activities. To increase the diversity of our graduate and undergraduate
student populations, we continue to participate in collaborative activities that support our comprehensive recruitment
for graduate and undergraduate students. These activities include CENS sponsored events, participation in three
national and two regional conferences; visitation at three local institutions; a national e-mail/advertising campaign to
over 1,700 individual faculty, student organization leaders, and department staff; and collaboration with partner
organizations, including UCLA CEED, other campus centers, and STCs. CENS also continued to coordinate
recruitment activities with other STCs, which includes development of infrastructure and implementation of
recruitment activities to draw from a diverse population of students from institutions nationally. In 2010, we received
80 applications from 51 institutions nationally for our undergraduate research program. All of the applicants were US
citizen or permanent residents, 38% were women, and 28% were minority students. We also collaborated with the
SRC Education Alliance national URO program managers, published research findings in the ACM Transactions on
Computing Education, and organized Future Tech Now! jointly with other STCs at the national SACNAS conference.
Future Directions
Our education and diversity programs are an integral part of CENS. As a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary STC,
CENS will continue to draw on its strengths (e.g., a collaborative research agenda, a community of diverse
perspectives, and compelling social implications of the research) to continue our programs that attract and retain
high-quality students, particularly US citizens, women, and underrepresented minorities, and increase visibility of
CENS technology to broader communities. In the upcoming year, we will focus our efforts strengthening the reach of
participatory sensing into both pre-college and informal science education and sharing lessons learned with the
STEM community.
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8. Knowledge Transfer and External Partnerships
The scope of our knowledge transfer activities has evolved with the center. Our early focus on scholarly
dissemination of research on hardware and software approaches and the development of useable systems in our
application test beds expanded to include a focus on other audiences as our systems and approaches matured.
Because Participatory Sensing technologies and applications are so personal, our work in this area has involved a
great deal of outreach to the public, including students, and prospective professional users. In the past year, in
particular, we have fortified partnerships with colleagues in private industry and in exposing a variety of audiences,
such as student in the Los Angeles public school system, to the potential of today's and tomorrow's sensing systems.
Publications and conference presentations remain key elements of our knowledge transfer strategy with respect to
the technology research community. In addition to traditional publication venues, we are looking at new ways of
ensuring that data about CENS publications remains available beyond the center itself. We also provide leaderships
in the community by organizing and holding special events, such as our annual research symposium, which this year
drew approximately 150 attendees, featured some 50 posters, demonstration and presentations, and included
keynote presentations by Mark Frauenfelder, Editor-in-Chief of Make magazine and founder of the popular website
BoingBoing, and Michael Zimbalist, head of R&D for The New York Times. We collaborate with colleagues and
companies that are using our approaches and technologies, such as What's Invasive and LEAP, in their own research
programs and products.
This year again we worked closely with industry partners to exchange knowledge on a variety of topics. Examples
include our work with (1) Google, to develop urban and personal sensing application on the Android platform and to
convene professional development workshops for middle and high school computer science teachers; (2) the
Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), to run a year-long undergraduate research program, known as the
CENS SRC Scholars Program; (3) Refraction Technologies, to develop a rapidly deployable seismic sensing node;
and (4) Microsoft Research, to explore mobile scientific data collection and data modeling.
In the realm of Participatory Sensing, we have initiated new partnerships and knowledge transfer relationships, while
continuing with ongoing efforts. For instance, along with NYUʼs ITP, we began an effort to develop a universityindustry collaborative focused on Participatory Sensing research and pilot projects; twenty companies have
expressed interest and a plan to hold a series of discussions is now being drawn up. Also new this year is the
development of the open mHealth collaboration with colleagues in the UCLA and UCSF medical communities. Our
openmhealth.org website launched this year. The site calls for an the development of open mHealth systems to
ensure broad access and interoperation across different platforms and diseases. The first working meeting will take
place in the coming weeks and includes participations from stakeholders in government, foundations, academia, and
the technologies and healthcare industries.
We received a 5-year NSF Math Science Partnership award to work collaboratively with colleagues in UCLA
education and at LAUSD to develop a novel high-school computer science curriculum based on our Participatory
Sensing platform that will be designed to provide access to mobile data collection technologies and data exploration
and to teach the skills needed to design and develop novel applications and investigations of their design. The
program will be launched in classrooms in the 2011-2012 academic year.
A set of related projects involving citizen science applications has been driven by the development of the What's
Invasive platform, a mobile-to-web system for documenting the occurrence of invasive plant species. Originally
developed in collaboration with the National Park Service in the State Monica Mountains, the application can now
support any geographic area or "park," which has a local contact that can upload a plant list and basic information.
We have expanded this work to include features to allow user to document any plant in any setting and, in
partnership with Project BudBurst, a nation-wide citizen science effort to collect data on plant phenology and the
effects of climate change, we have developed mobile applications for smartphones and feature phones that let people
contribute phenological observations to the project database.
In the area of community health, we are supporting the California Endowment and a community group in East Los
Angeles on the Planning for Place project, a innovative approach to community engagement in which members of the
Boyle Heights community use smartphones to map and trace their everyday movement through their neighborhoods
and then to reflect, map, record, and synthesize the data they collect on where they work and study, where they
gathers, how they get there, and the conditional that surround them.
During the past year we have continued to engage in scientific collaboration, research training, and knowledge
transfer activities with domain science partners. The CENS Aquatic research team collaborates with the NOAAfunded Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS) to investigate the causes and
consequences of coastal algal blooms. The CONTAM group has continued to be involved in training activities via the
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Pan-American Sensors for Environmental Observatories (PASEO) effort led by Tom Harmon. Two PASEO activities
took place: (1) traveling to Brazil to discuss an international effort for improved environmental sensor fabrication (e.g.,
an international research center), and (2) delivering some of the most successful PASEO course content at the CENS
led PASI short course in La Selva in August 2010. The TEOS group continues to work closely with colleagues at the
La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica on the creation a Rainforest Ecological Portal, a multiuser network of
towers, canopy walkways, and distributed sensing nodes in the research areas around the station and with
colleagues at the Chilean Millennium Science Initiative, which is setting up sensing system at field sites in Chile. In
Peru, our seismic team, in collaboration with researchers at CalTech and Instituto Geofisico Peru, is continuing
installation and monitoring of a network of 50 wireless and 50 wired seismometer stations in a transect running
across the country.
Environmental stewardship applications continue to be an important focus for us in the area of knowledge transfer.
Our partnerships with two coastal municipalities, City of Redondo Beach and Marina Del Rey, paid huge dividends
recently when our aquatic sensing systems installed in King Harbors recorded events leading to and during a
massive fish kill in the marina. Early results indicate that harmful algae off shore but not in the marina may be to
blame. Similarly, our aquatic sensing technologies are the basis of newer relationships with entities, such as the
Arrowhead Lake Association and regional water districts, charged with managing drinking water. We are also
continuing a partnership with the LA County Sanitation District to develop a system for assessing the sustainability of
irrigation using reclaimed wastewater. And a new partnership with Fresno Municipal Wastewater Treatment is focused
on monitoring groundwater recharge supplementation.
9. Management and Outputs
The Center remained extremely active through this ninth year of funding. Over the past 12 months, Center faculty,
staff, and graduate student contributed to about 60 publications, bringing the total publication count for CENS to
almost 900. As the result of evolving research priorities, CENS faculty have continued to seek funding outside the
STC CORE funds to expand their research. In 2010-2011, CENS administered over $7M in research funds brought
into the Center from all sources (exclusive of funds administered by UCLA faculty in their academic departments, or
awards made to researchers at partner institutions).
CENS management structure remains strong and stable. Last year, we took steps to formalize and document our
thinking and planning a transition to the time after Center funding concludes. We developed a document, the CENS
Transition Plan, which expresses our vision of how CENS will pursue new directions in the coming years, while also
stimulating the evolution and spread of scientific discovery enabled by the first generation of CENS technologies and
approaches. We see a great opportunity to turn our early explorations in Participatory Sensing into a larger initiative,
to nurture ongoing efforts, and to spin off initiatives based on the success of our original application domains.
Media attention continues to raise the profile of CENS within both the University and the academic communities. In
the past year, we drew media attention to our research deployments in King Harbor in the City of Redondo Beach
following a massive fish kill that took place in the harbor and to our Participatory Sensing technology and approaches
in general.
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