There are some things you don’t forget. As a child, growing up in a predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood of Hammond, Louisiana, Dr. Will Lewis has a vivid memory related to, of all things, infrastructure.
“There was a streetlight across the street from us that was out for long stretches of time,” said Lewis, an assistant professor of information systems in the School of Information Technology. “I often wondered to myself at dusk if that streetlight would be better attended to if we lived on a different street.”
Appears InLewis has embarked on a research project seeking an answer to his decades-old question. Lewis’ research team was one of nine recipients last year of Illinois State’s Office of Research and Graduate Studies’ inaugural Advancing Research and Creative Scholarship (ARCS) awards. The $5,000 in funding is supporting his Use of Satellite Remote Sensor Data to Evaluate Residential Inequality project.
Lewis noted in his research proposal how historical discrimination and segregation and economic opportunities, or lack there of in the lattercase, contribute to the unequal distribution of wealth among neighborhoods. Now his team will “attempt to quantify the economic impact of public good investments on neighborhood wealth gaps.”
“I remember that (streetlight) from my childhood, and now we have the ability to see from a bird’s-eye view,” Lewis said. “It played some part in my interest in this research project. It’s now possible to find proof.”
Lewis and his research team plan to develop a prototype system that will combine artificial intelligence (AI) and satellite imagery to take snapshot images of neighborhoods and track inequalities in infrastructure maintenance.
“The proposal our team put together was to design open-source AI tools that will train the system to analyze high-resolution satellite images as indicators of community infrastructure health,” Lewis said. “We’ll teach an AI system to look for indications of repair inequalities in neighborhoods. That means potholes, cracks, and what have you. We’re looking to see if one neighborhood receives a faster response from their local government.”
“Any inequalities could have a negative effect on a neighborhood’s ability to attain wealth.”
Dr. Will Lewis
Lewis’ team includes Dr. Rebekkah Darner—director of Illinois State’s Center for Mathematics, Science, and Technology and associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences—who is helping with grant and project management; Drs. Alec Foster and Daniel Kpienbaareh, both geography professors whose focus is on satellite imagery; and Dr. Dimitrios Nikolaou, chair of the Department of Economics, who will measure the impact of public maintenance on neighborhood wealth. Lewis will lead the team and handle project management and the artificial intelligence side of the research.
The researchers initially plan to use publicly available satellite imagery to identify and assess pothole damage to roads in different neighborhoods in Bloomington-Normal over a roughly six-month period. The condition of local infrastructure can help or hinder travel in and out of a neighborhood and can impact a community’s wealth and health, Lewis said.
By combining satellite photos and artificial intelligence, Lewis’ system will have the ability to rate the extent of pothole damage, for example, in two different areas of town. If a satellite image taken a few months later shows a difference in repair time for potholes rated similar in size, the system will detect those inconsistencies.
“Businesses are attracted to neighborhoods where infrastructure is sound,” he said. “Any inequalities could have a negative effect on a neighborhood’s ability to attain wealth.”
CubeSats: ‘A little bigger than a Rubik’s Cube’
On a parallel track, Lewis is conducting research related to cube satellites—or CubeSats for short—that extends beyond his ARCS-funded project. Some satellites are as big as a school bus, but CubeSats are tiny, square-shaped cubes, as their name suggests.
“CubeSats are a class of research spacecraft called nanosatellites. They are roughly 4 by 4 by 4 inches, a little bigger than a Rubik’s Cube,” Lewis said. “They’re a lot cheaper than a traditional satellite, which costs millions of dollars, is very large, and very expensive to get into outer space because of its size and weight.”
According to NASA, CubeSats were developed in 1999 by California Polytechnic State and Stanford University as a cost-effective tool for education and space exploration.
“CubeSats facilitate global communication for smaller companies and research institutions, and they level the playing field,” Lewis said.
Businesses and academic institutions have increasingly sent CubeSats into orbit. New data shows that some cell phone networks are connecting to a CubeSat in orbit rather than connecting to a cell tower.
“They’re not replacing their terrestrial cell towers but supplementing with CubeSats,” Lewis said. “This is a technology where you are never out of orbit with signals that can cover the entire surface of the globe. They’re already being used to track transport ships out on the ocean.”
He’s leading a team of Illinois State researchers seeking funding for a CubeSats ground station, consisting of communications equipment, including an antenna for transmitting and receiving satellite signals.
“The University of Illinois has a CubeSats program, and they want to collaborate with us on a mission they will be launching with Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) next year. The U of I is building the research cube satellite, and we will provide the communications equipment to download data from that CubeSat.”
One of the challenges for future projects is the increasing number of CubeSats that will be in orbit in the coming years, Lewis said.
“The expectation is there will be radio signal interference in communicating with CubeSats, so we will be conducting research on how that interference can be mitigated,” he said. “We put together a proposal describing the equipment and the research project we will be pursuing. We’re currently narrowing down the funding institutions we will approach.”
CubeSats program at ISU?
Daniel Freburg ’20, M.S. ’23, Lewis’ former graduate assistant, said his mentor can “accomplish big things,” like creating a full CubeSats program at Illinois State. Freburg, who’s been studying with Lewis since he first started researching CubeSats in 2018, has begun taking steps to help Lewis make that happen.
Freburg conducted a feasibility study to determine whether Illinois State could create such a program. The indications were that it was probable, but it would be a better program if the University had its own engineering program. He also worked with Lewis to survey a dozen universities with established CubeSats programs about program implementation.
“We asked about curriculum, how their programs were funded, how they were implemented, and what kind of background they looked for in their faculty,” Freburg said.
In addition, for his master’s project, Freburg built a functioning CubeSat ground station now mounted on top of Old Union that’s equipped for UHF/VHF frequency bands. The new ground station that Lewis is currently seeking funding for would use S-Band radio signals for higher bandwidth and faster transmission speed.
Lewis is hoping that all this preparation and the advent of the new College of Engineering will help him establish a laboratory at Illinois State where researchers build cube satellites and the corresponding infrastructure.
“There’s an enthusiastic group of us here—faculty and students—who have a desire to launch a cube satellite program,” he said. “Perhaps the College of Engineering could someday have a laboratory that builds and assembles CubeSats, and we could get funding for the ground station and provide mission communications for those CubeSats. That would the first step toward getting ISU CubeSats into orbit.”
Redbirds in space
Dr. Will Lewis advises two student organizations that share his passion for space. He works with the registered student organization (RSO) Redbirds in Space, whose members also form Illinois State’s rocket team, which competes in Vertical Rocket Landing tournaments against other universities.
In 2022, Daniel Freburg started and became the first president of the RSO. Lo Norsworthy, a senior cybersecurity major, is the RSO’s current president.
Norsworthy has long had an interest in space and became involved with the rocket team while he was a student in Lewis’ cyberforensics and systems development classes. One of his favorite activities with Redbirds in Space is monitoring CubeSats via the ground station atop Old Union.
“We can hear astronauts talking aboard the International Space Station,” Norsworthy said. “When we hear their voices communicating back to Earth, it’s crazy to think these are people who are weightless up in space. It feels surreal.”
Norsworthy’s favorite events are the rocket landing competitions held each semester. Last fall, Illinois State hosted one of the competitions for the first time.
A drone releases the rocket 25 feet in the air, and participants use an avionics stack of tiny computers to help stabilize the rocket as it lands. Despite competing against more experienced teams, usually composed of engineering students, Illinois State’s team has excelled at these meets.
“I’m very proud of my team,” Norsworthy said. “They’re very skilled.”
For more information about Redbirds in Space and the Illinois State rocket team, contact spacebirds@IllinoisState.edu.
