{"386781":{"#nid":"386781","#data":{"type":"news","title":"A Fruitful Collaboration","body":[{"value":"\u003Ch3\u003E\u003Cem\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EForaging activist and Tech alumnus Craig Durkin, MSE 06, MS MSE 07, has teamed up with Associate Professor Carl DiSalvo to make sure the bounty of Atlanta\u2019s neglected fruit trees doesn\u2019t wind up wasted.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/h3\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECraig Durkin wouldn\u2019t call himself a professional forager\u2014it\u2019s a vocation rather than an occupation. However, he has been an instrumental force in building a foraging movement in Atlanta. Through \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.concrete-jungle.org\/\u0022\u003EConcrete Jungle\u003C\/a\u003E, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2009, Durkin and hundreds of volunteers have picked and donated more than 21,000 pounds of unwanted apples, berries and other fruits to food banks and homeless shelters across the city.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHis interest in foraging started five years earlier, beginning shortly after he stepped onto the Georgia Tech campus in 2004. \u201cI couldn\u2019t help but notice there were tons of apple trees across Atlanta, and many of them on public land were going unpicked,\u201d Durkin says. \u201cSo a few of us [students] starting picking apples. We bought some chest freezers off Craigslist and stored them up and threw a big party at the end of the semester. We even made cider.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEvery year, the foraging haul got bigger. And Durkin got more and more swept up by the underlying importance of his effort. \u201cMy generation is keenly concerned about food waste, as well as the need to produce food locally,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we have a certain skepticism about processed, industrial food.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDurkin kept picking apples with his Tech friends even after completing his master\u2019s degree in materials science and engineering and embarking on a career in nanotechnology. \u201cIn 2008, a bumper crop of apples produced way more than we could store or needed,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s when I knew it was time to do something more\u2014to donate the apples to the hungry and homeless.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWith the help of fellow forager Aubrey Daniels, he founded Concrete Jungle the next year. \u201cOur scope immediately grew larger, and we started ranging farther into the city and picking other fruits, too,\u201d Durkin says. In addition to apples, the duo and an intrepid team of volunteers\u2014now numbering about 300 to 400 total\u2014found that pears, muscadines, figs, pomegranates, plums, service berries and other fruits were wasting on the branch and vine.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe found a lot of fruit not only being wasted on public land around Atlanta, but also in private yards and lots,\u201d he says. \u201cSo we started going up and asking permission to forage there, too. In 99 percent of the cases, people didn\u2019t want anything to do with this fruit. They were more than happy for us to come and haul it away.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESince Concrete Jungle was founded, the group has identified and mapped more than 1,600 fruit trees from which to forage. That\u2019s a lot of trees\u2014and a lot of work.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EUnfortunately, as with any kind of volunteer work, life often gets in the way. It became more challenging for Durkin and his core volunteers to keep track of all these trees, monitor when their fruit would ripen and organize outings to pick them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat\u2019s when Tech Associate Professor \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/faculty-and-staff\/faculty\/bio\/disalvo\u0022\u003ECarl DiSalvo\u003C\/a\u003E got involved. A student of his volunteered with Concrete Jungle and told him about the issues the group was facing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe core problem was logistics,\u201d says DiSalvo, who is an assistant professor of \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/dm.lmc.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003Edigital media\u003C\/a\u003E in the \u003Cstrong\u003ESchool of Literature, Media and Communication\u003C\/strong\u003E and has a particular interest in researching community-based food production. \u201cThe fruit trees were spread singularly or in small clusters over a wide area of the city\u2014not in a large orchard\u2014and it\u2019s almost impossible to monitor them.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDiSalvo soon connected with Durkin, and they discussed how Concrete Jungle\u2019s challenges could potentially be solved with technology\u2014and make a great research project. As director of Tech\u2019s \u003Cstrong\u003EIntel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing\u003C\/strong\u003E (\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.news.gatech.edu\/2012\/06\/26\/intel-funds-groundbreaking-social-computing-center-georgia-tech\u0022\u003EISTC\u003C\/a\u003E), DiSalvo is always on the lookout for interesting end-user problems to solve. \u201cIntel is particularly interested in understanding unique consumer user group needs,\u201d he says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe dedicated his time, students and lab resources to the cause. \u201cAnd since Craig was a Tech alumnus and familiar with research projects of this scope, it was a perfect fit,\u201d DiSalvo says. \u201cHe understood that we were eager to collaborate and help out, but also to research and learn.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt first, DiSalvo and his team\u2014Caroline Foster, CM 15; Tasmia Alam, CM 15; Karl Kim, CM 16; and Tom Jenkins, PhD DM 16; Catherine Meschia, ID 15;\u2014investigated if hobby-sized drones equipped with cameras could make monitoring easier and less time-intensive. But with the growing public concern about drones and the Federal Aviation Administration cracking down on their commercial use, they discontinued that path.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThey\u2019ve since shifted their attention to instrumenting the trees themselves, programming sensors to track the bend of the branches as they get heavier while the fruit ripens. \u201cWhen the sensor deems the fruit ready, it will send a text message to Concrete Jungle letting them know it\u2019s time to go pick that tree,\u201d DiSalvo says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDiSalvo and Durkin hope to conduct in-field testing of this approach this summer. \u201cAutomating the fruit-tree monitoring would save us a tremendous amount of time,\u201d Durkin says. \u201cAnd it would make our foraging far more efficient.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn the meantime, Concrete Jungle created an entirely new source of food by starting its own farm\u2014via donated use of land\u2014that can be planted with fruits and vegetables and harvested year round. Foraging from fruit trees is typically limited to a May-to-October window. \u201cWe hope we can continue to provide fresh food to our partners such as the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Crossroads, Hosea Feed the Hungry and more for many years to come,\u201d Durkin says.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ECarl F. DiSalvo is an Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. His work explores the intersection of design, art, technology, and politics. His recent design projects have focused on the development of participatory public programs and technology platforms that foster critical engagements with robotics, environmental sensing, and small-scale agriculture.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EArticle originally featured in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/gtalumnimag.com\/2015\/02\/a-fruitful-collaboration\/\u0022\u003EGeorgia Tech Alumni Magazine\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ECarl DiSalvo and foraging activist and Tech alumnus Craig Durkin are teaming up to make sure the bounty of Atlanta\u2019s neglected fruit trees doesn\u2019t wind up wasted.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Carl DiSalvo and foraging activist and Tech alumnus Craig Durkin are teaming up to make sure the bounty of Atlanta\u2019s neglected fruit trees doesn\u2019t wind up wasted"}],"uid":"27889","created_gmt":"2015-03-11 11:09:41","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:01:54","author":"Beth Godfrey","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-03-11T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-03-11T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"386761":{"id":"386761","type":"image","title":"Durkin and DiSalvo","body":null,"created":"1449246275","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:24:35","changed":"1475894349","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:09","alt":"Durkin and DiSalvo","file":{"fid":"75436","name":"disalvo.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/disalvo.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/disalvo.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":131069,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/disalvo.jpg?itok=GuDwg8vV"}}},"media_ids":["386761"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"121161","name":"concrete jungle"},{"id":"124","name":"Digital Media"},{"id":"121","name":"DiSalvo"},{"id":"121171","name":"Durkin"},{"id":"121151","name":"foraging"},{"id":"39781","name":"LMC"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ECarl DiSalvo\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-385-3400\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:carl.disalvo@lmc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003Ecarl.disalvo@lmc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}