School of Information Studies assistant professor Yun Huang has received a continuing grant to research reasons why people share public safety information on social media platforms.

The National Science Foundation awarded the grant to Huang in February for $100,255 for the first year. Financial support will continue for the second year.

Huang said the funds will be used to run user studies and hire students for software development of an app her research team is developing. Corey White, a psychology professor at SU who is working with Huang on the research, said the main uses of the funds will be for hiring personnel and the distribution of the app.

Huang started building the app, called “SU DPS,” in 2013. Her research team collaborated with the Department of Public Safety, who was supportive in their research activities. Huang said the app they developed together displays maps of locales, incident location reports and timely incident notifications. It’s also been developed as a conduit for the ORANGE alerts.

“Public safety is always important,” Huang said in an email. “Receiving safety-related information more accurately, timely and completely will help improve community safety.”

This app has been available on Google Play for Android systems and as of Wednesday, the iPhone version is available on the Apple Store, Huang said.

Huichuan Xia, a second-year Ph.D. student in the iSchool, has been working with Huang on the app since last summer. He has been working on the user starting, testing how the users might view the app, such as their opinions and attitudes toward public safety issues.

“We’re also collaborating with other professors and students from diversified backgrounds and disciplines and we can learn from each other,” Xia said. “I think that’s the key, we collaborate and incorporate with each other very well.”

Huang said she’s excited to have this opportunity and grateful to everyone who has worked with her.

“It is an acknowledgement to our hard work,” Huang said.

White attributed the work and success thus far completely to Huang. While he has worked with her on the cognitive side of things, he maintains that he’s a consultant while the whole thing was her idea and that she approached him for the psychology aspect of it.

iSchool Interim Dean Jeffrey Stanton agreed that it has been all Huang and that she’s done excellent work.

“We here at the iSchool are very proud of Yun and her achievement,” Stanton said in an email.

Her work has been recognized even further as the research paper titled “Designing a Mobile Crowdsourcing System for Campus Safety” she wrote with others has been selected as a finalist of the iConference 2015, according to Xia who also helped write the paper.

Despite being in the beginning stages of the work and the grant, the team is optimistic, White said. They’re hoping that this app gives people a sense of empowerment if they use the app to report a crime or incident. He likened it to a digital form of a neighborhood watch program.

“That’s probably what happens when people join a neighborhood watch,” White said. “That they feel more committed to the community now that they have a personal stake in it, in ensuring the safety . . . maybe people will feel a little more connected to the community through this role.”

Published on March 5, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Kayli: kathomps@syr.edu