Summary of Research
My research bridges mobile computing, urban and environmental sensing, and applied machine learning. I focus on designing and deploying smart sensor networks to address environmental and community challenges. Through the DOE CSGF, my work integrates large-scale mobile data collection, high-performance computing, and real-world air quality sensing to support responsive, equitable, and data-driven urban environments. This research aims to develop systems that can continuously monitor and interpret rapidly changing city conditions, ultimately informing and empowering the communities they serve.
Publications
- Julia Gersey, Jiale Zhang, Pei Zhang. 2026. Everything Sensor: A Multimodal Sensing Platform for Environmental and Bioacoustic Monitoring. 2026 Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Conference. (forthcoming)
- Julia Gersey, Troy Zhong, Jiale Zhang, Jesse Codling, Jackelyn Hwang, Pei Zhang. 2025. Human vs. Machine: Comparing Urban Condition Classification Methods from Vehicular Vision. In Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation.
- Julia Gersey, Jatin Aggarwal, Jiale Zhang, Jesse Codling, Pei Zhang. Sniffing Out the City - Vehicular Multimodal Sensing for Environmental and Infrastructure Analysis. ACM SenSys 2025. (Best Poster Award)
- Julia Gersey, Brian Krupp, Jonathon Fagert. Pilot Study of Deploying IoT Micro Air Quality Sensors in an Urban Environment: Lessons Learned. 2023 ACM Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Midwestern Conference.
- Brian Krupp, Julia Gersey, Jonathon Fagert, Tony Mlady. Towards Fine-Grained Air Quality Sensing in Urban Environments. 2022 ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.
- Brian Krupp, Julia Gersey, Franklin Lebo. Campus Plate: Connecting Students on College Campuses to Reduce Food Waste and Food Insecurity. 2022 International Conference on Research in Adaptive and Convergent Systems.
Awards
People of ACM Profile (featured), December 2025
ACM XRDS Editor-in-Chief Elect, 2025-2028
ACM SenSys Best Poster Award, 2025
UM Excellence in ECE Honor Roll, 2025
NSF Center for Pandemic Insights Interdisciplinary Research Award, 2025
Computing Research Association (CRA-WP) Grad Cohort for Women, 2025
University of Michigan EECS Ph.D. Fellowship, Fall 2024
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program Honorable Mention, 2024
Charles & Elsie Little Graduate Award, 2024
NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Honorable Mention, 2024
NASA Ohio Space Grant Consortium Scholarship, 2022-2024
Upsilon Pi Epsilon and Kappa Mu Epsilon Honor Societies, 2023
CIO Tomorrow Student Scholarship, 2024
ACM SenSys Travel Grant, 2022