Audubon project wins D2K Showcase Fall 2021

Team’s computer vision system tracks waterfowl, counts them from the air

Team Audubon - Winner of D2K Showcase Fall 2021

(Watch the D2K Showcase highlight video)

A computer vision system that can classify birds by species and count them from the air won the Rice University Data to Knowledge Lab (D2K) Showcase.

The team sponsored by Houston Audubon — appropriately named Team Audubon — won cash prizes for its project, which D2K Director Genevera Allen said has important implications not only for tracking endangered waterfowl from aerial drones but also for the environment and climate change.

The team members are Minxuan Luo, a professional master's student in statistics; Alexander Xiong, a senior statistics and computer science major; Krish Kabra, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering; and William Lu, a senior in statistics. Photo by Brandon Martin.

The annual event, held in person for the first time in two years at Duncan Hall, included “elevator pitch” presentations on video by D2K capstone students and a poster session. 

UTHealth Stroke Risk Team - D2K Capstone - D2K Showcase

The honorable mention winner, Team Stroke Risk, worked with the University of Texas Health Science Center to develop a deep-learning model to forecast the likelihood of recurrent strokes. 

Team members are Justin Cheung, Michael Sprintson, Josue Casco-Rodriguez, Nick Glaze, Artun Bayer, Samantha Fuentes and , all senior electrical and computer engineering majors. 

There were two audience choice winners. 

The first, in the D2K capstone category, was Base R Baddies, sponsored by BakerRipley, which modeled inequity in Harris County in an effort to help target and elevate communities that experience barriers to achieving equity. Team members are undergraduates Laura Jabr and Karen Yuan and professional master's student Yun Sun, all statistics majors. 

Base R Baddies - D2K Showcase

The audience choice introductory winner was Team AirbnBros, which analyzed the relationships between price, reviews and host status among Airbnb data from Austin’s current listings. Team members are Haiming Wang, a senior architecture major; Navid Ghodsi, a freshman cognitive sciences major; Jonas Terleckas, a freshman economics major; Daniel Zhao, a freshman business and managerial economics and organizational sciences major; and freshman Mylyjael Poteat. 

Team AirbnBros - D2K Introductory Team - D2K Showcase

From Rice News

By Mike Williams

Related Articles

Team’s computer vision system tracks waterfowl, counts them from the air

Rice D2K Lab students build a predictive maintenance model to improve operations with machine learning.