NSF-Sponsored ALERT Project Wins Best Paper Award at the Virginia Academy of Science Annual Meeting

Syed R. Rizvi won the the Best Student Paper Award for the NSF-sponsored research project ALERT in the Computer Science track of 90th Annual Meeting of Virginia Academy of Science (VAS) held at Norfolk State University (NSU) on May 24, 2012. Selection of awardees at Annual Meeting of VAS is based on the originality and scientific merit of the research, the quality of the oral presentation and submitted abstract, and responses to questions. Syed's presentation was titled "ALERT: An Architecture for the Emergency Retasking of Wireless Sensor Networks."

The Virginia Academy of Science is the fifth largest state, region, or city academy of science in the U.S. It was founded in 1923 to promote the civic, academic, agricultural, industrial, and commercial welfare of the people of Virginia. The 90th Annual Meeting of VAS held at NSU provided a unique opportunity for students, faculty, and professionals to learn about and gain experience in the important fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Founded in 1935, NSU is a public, urban, comprehensive University offering programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. ALERT is an NSF-funded research project under the supervision of Michele C. Weigle and Stephan Olariu. For more information, please visit: Intelligent Networking and Systems (iNetS) Research Group in the Department of Computer Science at Old Dominion University. Below is the abstract of Syed's VAS 2012 presentation on the NSF-sponsored ALERT:

"When an emergency or disaster strikes, first responders work as part of a complex emergency management network that calls upon many functions, resources, and capabilities. The objective of our research is to design a real-time information system to improve emergency-response functions by bringing together information to respond to a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other small or large-scale emergency. We call this system ALERT: An Architecture for the Emergency Retasking of Wireless Sensor Networks. The novel contribution of this research to the emergency response strategies is the seamless integration of various wireless sensor networks by retasking them with explicit missions involving a dynamically changing situation. Preliminary results have shown that retasking sensor networks for emergency response is a promising new paradigm that can not only promote a wider adoption of sensor network systems in support of guarding our national infrastructure and public safety, but can also provide invaluable help with disaster management and search-and-rescue operations."