Currently, the Foxconn team is finalizing all category qualifications, and criteria, and more detail related to this will be posted on this website in the coming weeks.  The team will also be going through a broad and deep promotional exercise across the higher education system through October.  We welcome your support and input in terms of promoting the competition on your campus.  Please us our “conact us” page for aditional information.

• Improved competition structure with greater emphasis on broad inclusivity and creating investment-ready concepts and plans.
• Expansion of Core Partner Team
  • The organization SCORE will be available to provide Executive level mentorship for Round One winners to aid with advancing their business plans in subsequent rounds
• Optimizing the time required by judges and partners.
• An Engaging College Road Show to visit universities and promote the competition (We welcome your invitation to universities, schools or programs.)

This merely scratches the surface of the exciting variations in Year Two, and we look forward to sharing more detailed information in the weeks to come.

For now, please feel free to check the website for updates and information regarding timing, criteria, and structure changes.  We’ve only just begun to tap the higher education talent that exists in the state, and with partnership and support from you all we look forward to recognizing the fine institutions of Wisconsin at a greater level this year.

Shawn McComb
Director of Business Development & Academic Partnering
Shawn.McComb@fewidev.com

Jack Nickeas
Promotions and Sales Strategist
Jack.Nickeas@fewidev.com

Diane Koepke
Senior Manager of Innovation
Diane.Koepke@fewidev.com

Lorraine Hastings
Senior Manager, Ventures and Investments
Lorraine.Hastings@fewidev.com

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected and technology-dependent, a new wave of smart applications is changing how we approach everyday activities. Utility appliances such as intelligent fridges (yes, you read that right), personal assistants like Amazon’s Alexa or smart home security applications create opportunities for more efficient living. While the ideas of “Smart Cities” has been proposed as the future of urbanism, the question remains: how do we connecy this new technology for the ultimately “efficient” society?

Cities Of The Future

Smart cities bring together infrastructure and technology to improve the quality of life of citizens and enhance their interactions with the urban environment. But how can data from areas such as public transport, air quality meters and energy production be integrated and effectively used?

By rendering more technology capable of communicating across platforms, IoT generates more data that can help improve various aspects of daily life. Cities can identify both opportunities and challenges in real-time, reducing costs by pinpointing issues prior to their emergence and allocating resources more accurately to maximize impact.

Efficiency And Flexibility

Read the full story here.

The smart city market is projected to grow from $81 billion globally in 2018 to over $158 billion in 2022, according to IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide. In a smart city, internet of things (IoT) networks can be deployed to create applications that will change the manner in which residents coexist with technology. Soon, parking structures will tell drivers which spots are open, smart outdoor lamps will automatically adjust for weather and climate conditions and green buildings will be able to monitor air quality and optimize energy consumption. The IoT will enable us to constantly sense and process information from the outside world in an effort to bring efficiency to everyday life in a city.

However, these advancements aren’t possible without the adequate wireless connectivity that evolves with these technologies to meet escalating bandwidth demands.

Smart Cities Are Already On Their Way

A 2016 survey by the United States Conference of Mayors demonstrated that smart city IoT projects in cities of every size are well underway in key areas, including transportation, energy efficiency, government services and health care. For an example, look no further than Los Angeles. The city is installing new LEDs in 4,500 miles of streetlights. This will increase visibility in those areas, leading to safer roads and areas surrounding them. These bulbs will also tap into an interconnected system that reports any malfunctions that may arise, speeding up the replacement process. Overseas, Nanjing, China, installed sensors in 10,000 taxis, 7,000 buses and 1 million private cars to help track and monitor traffic patterns.

Click here to read the full article.

Dr. Hanwan Jiang

Two UW-Platteville students, Jonas Wagner and Jacob Sina – both engineering physics majors – also participated in the competition and were among those who were selected as round-two winners of the contest.

“It is just so exciting to see our faculty and students competing, and winning, in this competition to develop innovative ways for enhancing our cities of the future,” said Dr. Molly Gribb, dean of UW-Platteville’s College of Engineering, Mathematics and Science. “The College of EMS at UW-Platteville is committed to providing experiential learning opportunities for our students, and this is just one example of the exceptional work our faculty do to engage their students in cutting-edge research.”

Jiang’s proposal addresses structural deficiencies in bridges – a situation that is getting worse, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Infrastructure Report Card. More than half of the bridges in the United States are approaching or have exceeded their design lives, and just over 9% of bridges nationwide are deemed structurally deficient. Recent fatalities have brought this issue to national attention, including the collapse of the Florida International University pedestrian bridge in 2018.

Jiang proposes the development of a monitoring system – similar to a medical ultrasound – that generates images of cracking, damage and subtle stress changes inside and on the surface of the structure. She bases her research on Coda Wave Interferometry, a theory that focuses on how the depth, position and frequency of cracks affect the structure. Jiang hopes that this new method is more effective than the traditional way of testing, which doesn’t locate all the cracks, some of which can be thinner than a strand of hair.

Dr. Fang Yang

Yang and her team have developed a novel microgrid energy management system. A microgrid is a small-scale power system that oftentimes consists of renewable energy sources, such as solar power or wind. Microgrids serve a specific area, which could range in size from a single building to a university campus or industrial complex, or even a small island.

Microgrids are becoming increasingly popular, as is the demand for environmental sustainability and the use of more renewable energy sources in microgrid applications. While existing microgrid energy management techniques include renewable resources in the supply of power, according to Yang, they do not use those resources to their full power generation capacity. Yang’s microgrid energy management system seeks to improve upon this by achieving coordinated and optimal control of various energy resources.

“Electricity touches every life and almost every activity in any city,” said Yang. “Microgrids make cities smarter by empowering local control to achieve economic, environmental and energy resiliency goals for their citizens. The developed technology enhances microgrid function to fill the energy needs of residential, commercial and industrial activities in an efficient and sustainable manner, and has the capacity to serve the community by helping the microgrid to work smarter.”

The final round winners received a $5,000 prize, bringing the total award amount they received throughout the duration of the competition to $7,000. For more information on the Smart Cities–Smart Futures competition, visit wismartcities-smartfutures.com/.

Read the full article here.

Milwaukee, May 2, 2019 – Last week, the Medical College of Wisconsin learned that three MCW teams were recognized among 12 winners in a statewide innovation competition, Smart Cities – Smart Futures, sponsored by Foxconn Technology Group. Foxconn’s goal for this grant competition is to invest in a broad spectrum of new ideas generated by college and university teams throughout the state to improve the health and quality of life of Wisconsin communities.

Foxconn announced Smart Cities – Smart Futures in August, stating it would award up to $1 million over the next three years. The competition focuses on various themes, such as smart mobility, smart buildings, smart homes, smart energy and smart health, as well as efficiency, productivity and the management of resources. More than 300 teams entered the contest, including several dozen from MCW. On April 25, at an event at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Smart Cities – Smart Futures representatives announced that 12 teams had been selected to receive $5,000 each to support their ideas.

Teams from MCW comprised exactly one-fourth of the winners and are led by faculty, staff and students.

“It was a privilege for me to attend the announcement of the contest winners and celebrate alongside three of our outstanding teams,” says Joseph E. Kerschner, MD, Dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Provost and Executive Vice President of the Medical College of Wisconsin. “They represent MCW’s ‘can do’ attitude which makes us such a wonderful asset to our communities and a vital part of tomorrow’s smart cities.”

MCW’s Smart Cities – Smart Futures winning teams are:

Michelle Botts, Devashish Joshi and Adhitya Ramamurthi, students, School of Medicine

Project Summary: Project aims to bring virtual reality modules to medical students and residents to assist in learning and medical exposure. Additionally, the project would target medical employees to train for emergency protocols and patients to ease anxiety about certain procedures.

Zak Sharif-Sidi, student, School of Medicine

Project Summary: Project focuses on the development of web-based technology that attempts to the close the gap between doctors and the organizations in our community. The solution solves this problem by integrating into the clinical workflow to algorithmically run community-level data against clinical data in order to identify and refer patients to specific resources in the community. The result is early risk identification with actionable next steps, identifying resources in the community and facilitating logical connections for patients to stay healthy.

Other Team Members: Bradley Crotty, MD; Mike Anderes, PT, MBA

Brandon Tefft, PhD, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Project Summary: Project focuses on the development of a modern, computerized stethoscope that can produce 4-dimensional (4D) sound maps from a patient over space and time, which can be used to diagnose diseases of the heart, lungs, respiratory tract, gastrointestinal tract and joints. Furthermore, the system can be deployed into the community by using a smartphone app to capture the sound data and transmit the results to a physician, allowing for more frequent screening and earlier diagnosis and treatment.

Other Team Members: Shayan Shafiee

MCW’s Smart Cities – Smart Futures honorable mention teams are:

Jennifer Lindner, Project Manager, Information Services

Project Summary: Product is a Technology Integrated Home System that connects people with advanced technologies like augmented reality, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, internet of things, and smart devices to improve the quality of life, productivity, efficiency and convenience to all people without compromising efforts and achievements of future generations.

Anna Palatnik, MD, Assistant Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology (Maternal Fetal Medicine)

Project Summary: Project focuses on the use of artificial intelligence technology and machine learning to reduce the risks of sudden infant death syndrome.

Shayan Shafiee, student, Graduate School, Biomedical Engineering

Project Summary: Project involves the development of a non-invasive means of detecting biomarkers in circulating blood or other bodily fluids that would enable earlier detection of diseases such as cancer and better management of diseases such as diabetes.

Other Team Members: Brandon Tefft, PhD

Read the full article here.

• Smart Cities for All — a collaboration between the advocacy groups G3ict and World Enabled — partnered with AT&T to launch the Inclusive Innovation Playbook, which lays out the steps cities and their partners can take to ensure innovation prioritizes accessibility and a commitment to people with disabilities.
• The playbook outlines five “plays” and related actions that cities can take to bring inclusion and accessibility to innovation. It suggests focusing on people, economic assets, infrastructure, networking and enabling public policies.
• The playbook follows on the heels of a survey by Smart Cities For All that found 60% of global experts said smart cities are failing people with disabilities. In that same survey, a third of respondents were unsure if people with disabilities could use the products and solutions they are developing, while only 43% of respondents said they had a strong understanding of accessibility and inclusion in their products.

Click to read full article here.

Posted by InfiniMed for #SmartCitiesWI Round 3.

Thank you to the contestants who submitted their innovation for consideration.

Watch on mobile device for 360º experience!

The winners are:

– Hanwan Jiang & Team, UW-Platteville
– Bahareh Behzadnezhad & Team, UW-Madison
– Michelle Botts  & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Michael Schlicting & Team, UW-Madison
– Brandon Tefft & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Jiatong Li & Team, UW-Madison
– Prof. Jeffrey Blessing, Ph.D., Milwaukee School of Engineering
– Fang Yang  & Team, UW-Platteville
– Zak Sharif-Sidi & Team, Medical College of Wisconsin
– Jingjie Li & Team, UW-Madison
– Kate Field, Gateway Technical College
– Zihao Jin & Team, UW-Milwaukee

In May 2018, Foxconn pledged up to $1 million in cash and in-kind technical support over a three-year period to support innovative ideas that enhance quality of life, improve working environments, expand transportation networks, inspire creative city planning, and promote sustainable energy solutions. Submissions were evaluated by a group of fifty judges based on clarity, impact, marketability, and other criteria.

Final round competitors were required to write a 1,500-word essay and create a five-minute video explaining how their submission contributes to the vitality of smart communities. Ideas submitted for the competition covered the following categories: energy and the environment, mobility and transportation, education, e-health, software, the internet of things, smart homes, robotics and manufacturing, and big data analytics.

Twelve submissions were selected as third and final round winners from an initial pool of 325 first round applicants. Today’s winners received a $5,000 cash prize for a total of $7,000 in awards over the duration of the entire competition. Beginning last year at a ceremony at Carthage College, first round winners received $500, advancing to the second round where winners received $1,500.

“When we first announced the ‘Smart Cities-Smart Futures Competition, we were amazed at the amount of interest and the quality and creativity of the submissions. I want to congratulate our final round winners on their work, as well as all of the candidates who participated,” said Dr. Yeung. “The goal of this competition was to encourage innovation and critical thinking to help the people of Wisconsin, and I think we are achieving that. The work that resulted from the competition will pave way for developing technologies that will revolutionize how people live, work, and play.”

Foxconn has partnered with the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Wisconsin Technical College System on the “Smart Cities—Smart Futures” competition. In addition to the academic partners, the competition is also supported by several groups, including the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, the Wisconsin Technology Council, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the WiSys Technology Foundation, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the UW-Milwaukee Research Foundation.

For more information about the competition, please visit: https://wismartcities-smartfutures.com/

Twitter: @SmartCitiesWI 
Facebook: facebook.com/SmartCitiesWI
Instagram: Instagram.com/smartcitieswi
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/smartcitiesWI

Read the full article online here.