by Caspar Lant

This past summer, I flew to NYU’s Shanghai campus for two weeks. This was the culmination of a nearly two-year long project to develop a prototype of a low-cost air quality monitoring network. Ironically, the project both culminated and originated at NYU Shanghai. A few years back, I did a study abroad there. I was in the Cafeteria and started chatting with a fellow student about some circuit diagrams I had seen over her shoulder. She told me they were for an independent study class she was taking with a visiting professor (Kevin Cromar, now my advisor on the Green Grant project). As she explained it, the diagram was an existing design for an air quality monitor, which over the course of the semester she would be building from the ground-up with the rest of the class. I rushed to the professor’s office to ask if I could take the course as well.  Luckily, even though it was a week after the enrollment deadline, he obliged! Read more