A tragedy at UNC Chapel Hill, a blue light pole, a love of coding, and a late-night walk back from the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons led to the birth of a great idea.  After hearing about an active shooter on the UNC campus who killed a faculty member in August 2023, students Kaustubh Bhal, Mrinal Jain, Ashwath Karunakaram, and Sahil Patel noticed that the blue light emergency phone poles on Georgia Tech’s campus are actually security cameras.  Wondering how that could lead to faster identification of a threat on campus, they got to work on an idea that they called STAMP-AI (Shooter Tracking and Active Mapping Program).  Despite being relatively new to coding and AI, they entered STAMP-AI into the Georgia Tech hackathon called HackGT.  Even being up against much more experienced competition, the team—including three members of the Georgia Tech Honors Program (Ashwath, Kaustubh, and Mrinal)—won the Innovate category at HackGT. 

After a conversation with Rahul Saxena, the director of Create-X, the team members decided to apply to the I2P (Ideas to Prototype) program, which aided in the development of their product.  They expanded their concept from just the blue light pole cameras to all cameras on campus, forming a company called Synopta to develop them. Through collaboration with the Georgia Tech Police Department and with some assistance from Dr. D’Unger in the Honors Program, the group has spent summer 2024 testing their technology on cameras in locations around campus.  Kaustubh reflected on their partnership with GTPD:

GTPD has been [open] with its resources and…willingness to help us develop the technology of the future. They’ve been with us every step of the way so far and it has been an amazing experience. 

All of the student leaders of Synopta have a passion for coding to solve societal problems, but that’s not all that they enjoy! They are active on campus, including involvement in HyTech racing and Robojackets and enjoy other pursuits like skiing and playing guitar (Kaustubh), hiking and woodworking (Sahil), tennis and playing music (Mrinal), and swimming and India drumming (Ashwath).  Kaustubh also shared:

As HP students we have all had great experiences with Honors Program classes and really appreciate the special learning experience they give. Having a community of like-minded individuals within these classes gave us the confidence to jump on our ideas in the first place. 

The Honors Program is proud of what the students in Synopta have accomplished and look forward to seeing what the future of campus security holds in store.