Mina Sartipi, Reinhold Mann take on new roles

UTC’s Mina Sartipi has been named as director of the new Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP), a partnership between the university and Chattanooga-based companies such as EPB and TVA and prestigious national organizations like Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.

In a related appointment, Reinhold Mann has been named as deputy vice chancellor of research at UTC. From 2015-17, he was interim director of the SimCenter, which is on the forefront of computational science and engineering.

One of the major projects for the CUIP is the Smart City initiative in Chattanooga. Sartipi is a recognized leader in the concept, which is designed to bring more efficiency, cost-effectiveness and safety to the city’s public transportation, utility, energy, health care and safety systems. The Smart City concept is being studied in cities around the world.

Sartipi, a professor in computer science at UTC, recently organized the Chattanooga 2018 Deep Learning conference to discuss and examine such technologies as machine learning, better known as artificial intelligence. The conference also pointed out the wide variety of opportunities in which the Smart City initiative can beused to make processes more efficient, for example, in commercial companies and hospitals.

“Our final goal is: How we can improve people’s lives?” Sartipi said.

Mann, meanwhile, will reach out to others who may want to be part of the CUIP and other initiatives that involve UTC, both locally and nationally. One of his responsibilities is to attract new partners for the Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative, part of the Smart City initiative.