“At SPP, a lot is possible if students take initiative and make it real,” commented Assistant Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick. Tautvydas Juskauskas (MPA ’15) took this to heart when he decided to dedicate his summer to the SPP Drone Lab.
Born out of Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick’s interactive course on human rights advocacy this past spring, the SPP Drone Lab evolved from an academic article to a physical product. Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick mentored a group of four students (Luis Cano, MPA ’15; Justin De Los Santos, MPP ’14; Tautvydas Juskauskas, MPA ’15; and Boby Sabur, MPA ’15) who researched how drones could be used by civil society organizations for the public good. Motivated by an interest in the intersection of technological innovation and public policy, Tautvydas pursued this topic further as a research assistant in the SPP Drone Lab with Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick and fellow student Boby. “What attracted me to this course,” remarked Tautvydas, “was the combination of theoretical policy knowledge and the practical development of a drone for civil society use.”
Building on Tautvydas’ initiative, Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick bought a drone so the students could test the theoretical ideas they had explored in the class research paper. “I was amazed by how SPP professors think like entrepreneurs and are willing to take risks,” Tautvydas noted. “We didn’t know if the Drone Lab would work out, but we tried it – and it did. This is exactly the type of risk public policy schools should take.”
The student-professor team has been testing whether drones could be used to measure the size of protests in a simple and affordable way. This methodology for sizing crowds, which Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick, Tautvydas, and Boby will publish in an academic journal, has practical implications for NGOs worldwide.
“The size of protests and crowds is one of the ways that social movements demonstrate their legitimacy to government authorities, media and third parties” explained Tautvydas. Speaking on a collaboration between the SPP Drone Lab and some local investigative journalists, he added, “We have the broader goal of providing civil society with a tool they can use to keep governments and businesses transparent and accountable.”
Students enrolled in the SPP Drone Lab this year will continue to produce research and experiment with drones for civil society use. In addition to the article he co-authored with SPP students, Professor Choi-Fitzpatrick has written a second article on the conceptual framework of civil society use of drones that is currently under review. The team has already been featured in Fast Company for their innovative use of drones and are awaiting the results of their submission for the Drone Prize. Going forward, Tautvydas hopes to attract more students to this initiative. “I envision the SPP Drone Lab becoming the leading advocate of civil society drone usage in Europe,” he says.
Watch the SPP Drone Lab in action here.