Using data to engineer smarter urban spaces: Sensors that automatically transmit air, soil, and water conditions to smartphone apps; busy intersections connected to a local, cloud-enabled, deep learning system for coordinating pedestrian and autonomous vehicle traffic; a new formula for producing cement that significantly cuts greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, our crowded urban areas will require blue-sky visions like these to render them more livable, sustainable, and climate-resilient. Or, in other words, smart. Read the full story in our magazine site: magazine.engineering.columbia.edu

Columbia Engineering researchers have made a major advance in robotics by creating a robot that learns what it is, from scratch, with zero prior knowledge of physics, geometry, or motor dynamics. Once their robot creates a self-simulation, it can then use that self-model to adapt to different situations, to handle new tasks as well as detect and repair damage in its own body.