Congratulations to SE/CISE students at the Toyota Next Generation Mobility Challenge at BU
Toyota sponsored a “Next Generation Mobility Challenge” on February 4, 2017 at Boston University. There were 15 area competitions, nationwide similar to the one held at BU.
On the Boston University campus, graduate student contestants competed to solve the challenge: “How might we leverage mobility solutions to better provide equity and access to socially vulnerable groups?” Ten teams, comprised of four to seven members with diverse expertise from several New England universities, competed for a paid internship with Toyota’s innovation partners. More importantly, this was an opportunity to turn an actual mobility solution into a foundation project. Working in interdisciplinary groups, another objective was to reinforce the idea of a “societal engineer” whose work will positively impact society by making a collective difference.
Boston University’s Jing Zhang, a PhD candidate of the Division of Systems Engineering, Mayank Jaiswal, an MBA candidate of the Questrom School of Business, and Monique Yaptenco, a Masters candidate in City Planning and Urban Affairs of Metropolitan College joined by Kayla Weststeyn, an undergraduate student majoring in Public Policy and Anthropology at Brown University, placed second in the competition. Their project was to develop solutions for ways Toyota could provide assistance to a single low-income mother with three young kids. The concept was to create a community-based vehicle service that provides inclusiveness and equity to low income mothers, connect community resources and find business partners under the sponsorship of Toyota. The team now has a chance at a wildcard spot in the semifinal round.
Xinmiao Sun, Systems Engineering PhD student, with team members, Ruiqi Li, a BU Visiting Student in Systems Theory, Stephen Valdesuso, a Philosophy student at BU, and Savannah Wu an Architecture student at BU, placed third for their project. “Our group aimed to efficiently solve last-mile problems, from home to public transitions, for low-income individuals. The proposed product is an App named “Lasmile”, meaning that reducing time in the last mile makes people smile.” said Sun.
Rui Chen and Yue Joyce Zhang, Systems Engineering PhD students and teammates proposed a self-driving car sharing framework with parent monitoring systems, which is capable of taking kids to school safely without parents.
This Toyota mobility challenge empowers and provides value to the future of engineering where engineers have the opportunity to research innovative ideas and apply them to a reality while proliferating the social and environmental good.