Look in the Lab — Spring 2021
How have y’all been doing since January? We at the Reese Innovation Lab have been hard at work, while also navigating new campus COVID-19 testing, the return of in-person courses, the graduation of five of our fellows, and the Lab’s blooming summer opportunities. We officially kicked off the summer term last Friday, making it a great time to recap everything we accomplished this spring!
The Latest
With much of our attention turned toward mitigating the risk of COVID-19 exposure within the Carolina community through the HallPass system and Health Greeter Kiosks, the Lab also successfully launched two new VR experiences, continued to iterate our app designs, and celebrated the next steps of coworkers and fellows!
HallPass Helped Contain COVID-19 at UNC
You may have heard about the Lab’s major undertaking from last fall: HallPass, the online system that schedules and coordinates COVID-19 tests for UNC community members. Our very own CIO, Steven King, led the system’s fast and furious creation (in 82 days!) and the program has paid great dividends.
HallPass has helped UNC find real success. As of June 2021, our campus has achieved a 0.3% positivity rate. Part of that success, Professor King explained, was due to “the students doing what UNC asked” in using the HallPass system to monitor their COVID-19 status. Per a University email on May 28th, the system will remain in use in Fall 2021 for non-vaccinated individuals and those who choose not to disclose their vaccination status.
The team that made these projects possible — Daniel Sanchez, Max Hudnell, Nautica Harvin, Natalie Huggins, Halynna Snyder, and Steven King — deserves our collective gratitude and recognition. They worked tirelessly, making iterative changes to bolster interface usability for students. Professor King even spent free time at the COVID-19 testing sites on campus to understand how participants experienced and interacted with the system.
Improvement and efficiency — two focal points of our work here at the Lab are evident in HallPass and the Health Greeter Kiosks. “This was probably the most highly-trafficked app that we’ve ever built,” Professor King says “and so it was great to see our architecture team come together and build something that had no significant issues and supported the students well.”
Technologies Bundled to Form Greet Health
HallPass, along with the Health Greeter Kiosks, has become an option for hosting COVID-safe opportunities beyond our campus. The technologies were adapted and paired to form Greet Health, a hardware-software solution designed to help large, in-person trade shows gather safely. The Kiosks now feature “concierge mode,” where passersby are encouraged to wear masks and maintain social distancing from a real-time projection on the screen. Learn more about the Greet Health system in the short, animated video below!
Daniel Sanchez Received Well-Earned Recognition
Daniel, our resident VR developer and Lab staff member, won the inaugural Reese Innovation Lab Service Award for going above and beyond to bring HallPass to fruition. The success of the project is largely credited to Daniel’s efforts and persistence. Daniel was given this award because, as Professor King explains, “Daniel has spent countless hours working through, problem-solving for, and supporting this app all the way from its inception through its development and launch.” King hopes that the award acknowledges that HallPass could not have launched without Daniel’s work, and adds that “this is a great culmination of all that Daniel has done here.”
VR Experiences Launched New Worlds for Users
The Morehead Planetarium and Tarquin virtual-reality immersions launched with little fanfare but plenty of skill. The first — the “Hidden No More” experience at the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center brings the cosmos to visitors via headsets, so they can learn from influential scientists. “This is a fully, spatially-aware project to engage students in the museum installation,” Professor King explains. “They get to experience it in 3D space.” After launching May 6th, “Hidden No More” is on its way to other museums in the near future.
The second VR experience, Tarqwin VR: Day in the Life of a Young South African, brings viewers back down to Earth — specifically, to a township in Cape Town, South Africa. Through this project, created with Kenan Flagler Business School, students can live a day in the life of a 20-year-old woman, Tarqwin, as she trades for food, finds work, and secures resources for her tomorrow. This VR experience acts as a substitute for students who lost the opportunity to study abroad due to COVID-19. “We were able to take them to South Africa and let them experience what it’s like there,” Professor King says. “It may not be a full replacement of the full experience, but we could give them that international experience during a COVID world.”
Alexis Barnes Accepted a New Role at the Washington Post
That’s right, our stalwart project manager, Alexis, has taken a golden position with one of America’s papers of record. On May 3rd, Alexis began in her role as a Software Engineer with the Post’s news engineering team, where she now builds internal technologies that help the newsroom tell innovative stories. She joins Lab alum, Peter Andriga at the Post.
As Alexis enjoys this new role, she also feels grateful for how the Lab prepared her to undertake it. “My role at Reese has really allowed me to expand and explore different types of projects,” she says. “When I graduated, I was pretty much a free bird. I had no idea what I liked doing, and I just didn’t have a focus. My job here has allowed me to do different things, but also helped me find what I really like doing.” Alexis believes that her role at the Lab will make a great foundation for her work at the Post.
Though, of course, Alexis looks back fondly on her time here. “I’m going to miss this community and working with students,” she says. But her experience in North Carolina (remember, she grew up in Chapel Hill and attended UNC before joining the Lab) ended hopefully: “I feel very comfortable here,” she says, “but I guess that means that it’s time to explore and try something new.”
While we could never truly be ready to work without Alexis, she has more than earned this glittering new opportunity. We are so proud of you, Alexis, and wish you nothing but the best!
As ever, the end of the spring semester also means the end of several Lab fellows’ time at UNC. Our look back at this semester would be incomplete without mentioning the students who are moving on. So here’s a thank you for all you have done and best wishes for your next steps!
Professor King commended the work that these fellows have done for COVID-19 safety, the practice of education, the profession of journalism, and underserved communities whose stories reached the public through the Lab’s efforts and technologies. “there has been a lot accomplished by this group,” he said. “I’m really sad to see them leave, but very proud of the work that they’ve done.”
A Peak at the Lab’s Summer Plans
Our upcoming slate of projects includes Story Mosaic, a platform that brings voices from underserved communities to the forefront of journalism, a new VR and 3D immersion for Lenovo, and a project with Kenan Flagler that supports Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training. Professor King highlights the import of this last undertaking: “It will simulate really difficult conversations that deal with diversity and inclusion,” he says. The VR project will launch at both Kenan Flager, as well as Ernst & Young — a multinational professional services network — in the hopes of honing the training for widespread implementation.
