The Guha Lab at the University of Chicago explores the deployment of sensor technology to measure water and soil pollution. It is led by Professor Supratik Guha (Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering; Faculty Director, University of Chicago Center in New Delhi).
Water-to-Cloud (W2C) is a research group housed within the University of Chicago Trust in New Delhi, focused on mapping the spread of pollution in surface water bodies across time and space. We've collected over 300,000 high-resolution time-stamped, geo-tagged data-points across 21 unique locations spanning 10 rivers in India between 2017-2020, 2023. These data points are processed and visualized on our website as WQ-MAPS.
Data Points
337,763
Total Data Points Collected
Experiments
295
Total Experiments Completed
Duration
200
Each Experiment Duration (mins)
Locations
18
Total Number of Locations
Projects
WQ-SANDBOX
An augmented reality sandbox modelling the relationship between topography, water flow, and anthropogenic pollution.
WQ-INFO
A prototype of a web-based fine-tuned large language model (LLM) developed in collaboration with IBM under their Sustainability Accelerator Programme. Its primary aim is to process mining PDFs by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and produce geojson files containing location and other essential information for visualization on GIS any application.
Soil Sensing
The Thoreau soil sensing team at the University of Chicago developed and deployed a large-scale, cloud-based Wireless Underground Sensor Network (WUSN) at an agricultural field near Fermi National Laboratory. We buried 25 sensor nodes each of which broadcasted high-precision information on soil temperature (T), electrical conductivity (EC), and a raw sensor value to an above-ground Sigfox base station. Our aim was to track and understand agricultural development in real time.
People
Advisory
Dr. Supratik Guha
Dr Guha is the Professor at the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME), The University of Chicago; Director of the Nanoscience and Technology Division and the Center for Nanoscale Materials at the Argonne National Laboratory. Earlier, at IBM Research, Dr. Guha pioneered the materials research that led to IBM’s high dielectric constant metal gate transistor, one of the most significant developments in silicon microelectronics technology and used in over 50% of smart phones in use today. He was also responsible for initiating and significantly expanding IBM’s research and development programs in cyber-physical systems and sensor networks. Dr. Guha is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, American Physical Society and the recipient of the 2015 Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics. He received his Ph.D. in materials science in 1991 from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Monisha Ghosh
Monisha Ghosh is currently a Research Professor at the Institute for Molecular Engineering (IME) at the University of Chicago, and an affiliate at Argonne National Laboratory. Prior to this she has worked extensively in industrial research and development at Interdigital (NY), Philips Research (Briarcliff Manor) and Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill) in the area of wireless communications and signal processing. Dr. Ghosh received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1991 from the University of Southern California and her B.Tech in Electronics and Electrical Communications Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1986. She joined Philips Research in 1991 as a Senior Member of Research Staff and was a member of the team that developed the first digital broadcast HDTV system. Dr. Ghosh has over 50 scientific papers and 40 patents. She received the Distinguished Engineer Award in Philips in 2008 and is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Dr. Roser Matamala
Dr. Matamala is a Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Fellow at the UChicago Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering and at the Northwestern-Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering. She is an ecologist and biogeochemist who studies the carbon, water, and energy cycles at the ecosystem level and the changes occurring due to human factors, such as land-use and global climate change. She is an investigator for many Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research projects, as well as for ARPA.E and NSF. She is developing new sensors for detecting changes in belowground factors such as roots and soil moisture at the local to landscape level. She has been measuring and mapping the stocks and fluxes of carbon and water in terrestrial and atmosphere domains and she is characterizing the composition of soil organic carbon in forests, grasslands, tundra and wetland biomes.
Current Team
Dr. Srinivas Balivada
Dr. Balivada specializes in developing novel, cost-effective sensing tools for precision agriculture, ecological monitoring, climate predictions, and water quality management. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Andhra University, India. His current research focuses on designing and developing cyber-physical systems for real-time soil and water quality monitoring, as well as applying artificial intelligence to soil and water quality evaluation.
Esha Gupta
Esha has a multi-disciplinary background with a B.A. in Economics from Jai Hind College, Mumbai, and a diploma in urban research (Urban Fellows Program) from the Indian Institute of Human Settlements. She has experience in urban policy research and communications, and is interested in exploring how AI/ML tools can be deployed for different use-cases in urban and social science research. She works as a Research Associate with Water-to-Cloud.
