CNIC:US-UAE Planning Visit: Development of Research Collaborations on Spatio-temporal Modeling and Analysis of Mobile Sensor Data in Evaluating Environmental Exposures

University Of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie WI

Investigators

Abstract

1338378 Bae This project will support a team headed by Dr. Wan Bae, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI for a two week visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the establishment of new international research collaborations between researchers in the two countries. This visit will enable the PI and Dr. Cheng Liu and two undergraduate students from the UWI-Stout, Dr. Petr Vojtchovsky from the University of Denver, and Dr. Shashi Shekhar from the University of Minnesota, to meet with Dr. Shayma Alkobaisi, Dr. Ahmed Al Faresi, Dr. Mohammad Masud, Dr. Fatma Maskari and their students from the United Arab Emirates University, and Dr. Ibrahim Kamel from the University of Sharjah to develop a research framework for modeling and analysis of individual exposure to various environmental conditions. The research will focus on developing data models and computing algorithms for effectively mapping individuals? environmental exposure to their health conditions, and implementing Map/Reduce methods for efficiently processing iterative computations of the proposed models and algorithms. As a result, the research team will submit a subsequent grant proposal targeted for the NSF Smart Health and Wellbeing (SHB) program. Intellectual Merit: Relations between negative health effects like asthma and lung cancer and elevated levels of the environmental factors, such as air pollution, tobacco smoke and humidity, have been detected in several large scale exposure studies. Evaluating environmental exposures often requires the ability to track, monitor, store, and analyze individual moving trajectories along with several environmental conditions the individual is exposed to in order to identify relationships among these data. Challenges arise due to spatio-temporal uncertainty, data size, and iterative computations of commonly used data modeling algorithms such as the Back propagation neural network algorithm. The main objectives of this research are: (1) to develop novel data models to map individuals environmental exposures to health levels, (2) to design a new technique for implementing the proposed models on the Map/Reduce paradigm of the Hadoop system, (3) to develop data analysis algorithms to characterize behaviors in learned models and interpret the data for estimating their effects on human health, (4) to build an evaluation system for Asthma patients as a case study. The research team, consisting of mathematicians, computer and information scientists, engineers and medical expertise, is capable of carrying out the planned tasks. Broader Impacts: The project will support two U.S. undergraduate students to be actively involved in scientific research. Their involvement is designed to integrate research and education through various activities. Gaining experience with inter-cultural collaboration is one of the mutual benefits to both the U.S. and UAE students. The also promotes diversity with the involvement by students from the U.S. who may be first-generation college students and UAE national students. The U.S. and UAE researchers will build new relationships that are the basis for future collaborations in research and education. Further, this project will broaden the understanding of the impact of the environment on public health and the importance of individual-based health care for patients, doctors, and healthcare providers.