You won’t find computer science Ph.D. student Fangqi Liu anywhere near the UC Irvine campus on May 31, 2023. Liu, whose research focus includes cyber-physical systems (CPS), will instead be at the University of Virginia for the CPS Rising Stars 2023 Workshop. The highly competitive workshop aims to identify and mentor exceptional Ph.D. students and postdocs pursuing academic careers related to CPS. Liu is one of 32 students selected to attend as a 2023 Rising Star.

“I am excited about the opportunity to attend the workshop and meet the experts in the CPS field,” says Liu, who is being advised by Professor Nalini Venkatasubramanian of UCI’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS). “I believe that this workshop will provide me with valuable guidance and direction for my future research, and I am thrilled about the possibilities that this opportunity will bring.”

Lui’s research interests encompass vehicular ad hoc networks, mobile sensing, data collection in Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and CPS for monitoring emergency scenarios. For her Ph.D. studies, she has been exploring the use of mobile vehicles to improve urban IoT applications in the context of smart cities.

“I proposed building a backbone network for long-range sensing data transmission using public transit fleets and optimized the vehicle data-gathering process by balancing data uploading delay/loss and access-point installation cost,” she explains. “Additionally, I designed a mobile CPS for continuous monitoring in high-rise and wildland fires scenarios, utilizing drones equipped with sensors to collect and transmit sensing data through wireless techniques.” The CPS she designed:

• analyzes data to detect critical events;
• generates tasks to specify monitoring requirements for drones; and 
• plans multi-drone flights that guide the motion of drones while considering data coverage, quality, and potential network disconnectivity in wildland fire scenarios.

“I have also collaborated with partners in Taiwan and graduate students in ICS to implement testbeds for mockup building fires and burn sites to evaluate the system’s performance in real-world scenarios,” she says. You can learn more about her work in “DOME: Drone-assisted Monitoring of Emergent Events For Wildland Fire Resilience,” a recently published paper presented at the 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems. 

“My future goal is to work in either a research lab or academia, where I can advance knowledge in my field and contribute to meaningful research that can positively impact society,” says Lui. “Receiving the CSP Rising Star award is a great encouragement for my research. This award motivates me to continue working hard in my research and to make a meaningful contribution to the field.”

— Shani Murray