A project first developed by a faculty-led team of students in the Digital Transformation Research Corps has been awarded a WashU Global Incubator Seed Grant, enabling the team to expand its work on spatial inequities and urban health across five Brazilian cities.
Led by Rodrigo Reis, professor in the School of Public Health, with collaborators at Universidade Estadual de Londrina, the project uses advanced AI models to analyze Google Street View imagery and identify features of the built environment that shape health and day-to-day quality of life. These AI-generated assessments will be combined with insights from public health and urban planning partners to better understand how neighborhood conditions differ across communities with varying levels of vulnerability.
The new funding will help transform the Research Corps prototype into a scalable, low-cost toolkit for assessing urban environments—demonstrating how the rapid development of digital research tools can grow into globally impactful work.
Read more about the Global Incubator Seed Grant recipients. The Digital Transformation Research Corps is accepting applications for projects through Jan. 15 that could benefit from dedicated student support, software development expertise, or access to high performance computing resources.