Contestants participating in the recent Mobile Solutions for Smarter Cities competition organized by the Seidenberg Mobile Lab had five weeks to build an application relating to public services like transportation, education, health care, energy and human services and submit a video demo. A team of five judges declared Palak Shah, MS/CS ’12 the 1st place winner for her Smarter City Ranking application. Second and 3rd place winners were David Gethers, MS/IT ‘12 and Eric Greene, MS/CS ‘13, respectively.
The Seidenberg Mobile Lab established by Professor Christelle Scharff held a Mobile Solutions for Smarter Cities contest supported by funding through a University Thinkfinity Grant.
The contest, which was open to all Pace students, ran for slightly more than five weeks. During that time, students were to identify a problem or need relating to various city services such as transportation or energy, among others, and devise a mobile solution. In addition, they were required to submit a video demo. Students could work individually or in teams and could choose any mobile technology they preferred.
After the April 29, 11:59 pm deadline, five faculty judges including Professors Cathy Dwyer, Richard Kline, Jonathan Hill, Lixin Tao and Christelle Scharff, reviewed the submission and selected three finalists. They, in turn, presented their solutions and videos on May 5th. The following winners were announced after the presentations:
| 1st place | Palak Shah | Smarter City Ranking – an application that ranks and present cities on a map based on environmental considerations (air, energy, water…) |
| 2nd place | David Gethers | Student Dashboard – An application for high school students to access grades, scanned tests, and tutors |
| 3rd place | Eric Green | PolyEats – a mobile Web site (http://polyeats.com) that provides personalized restaurant recommendations |
The winners each received a gift card in the amount of $250, $100 and $50, respectively.