2026 Sounds of Safety
About: In response to police withdrawal and the harms of punitive policing, U.S. cities are experimenting with civilian-led safety initiatives. However, rigorous causal evidence of their effectiveness remains scarce. One of the most prominent programs is Urban Alchemy (UA) in San Francisco, which deploys unarmed “civilianized safety practitioners” at high-crime intersections to provide presence, de-escalation, and service referrals. UAs workforce are credible messengers whose lived experience with incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and extreme poverty allows them to build trust and intervene in ways police cannot. Significant reductions in total crime and behavioral health-related crimes at intersections with UA practitioners has been observed offering rare empirical support for non-police safety models rooted in trust and human connection. Yet not every intersection sees declines, raising our central research question: why do some UA sites succeed while others do not? Our project addresses this question by developing an AI-driven field system that integrates sound and computer vision to identify the mechanisms of UA’s impact.
Qualifications: Coding/digital hardware experience preferred (CS/EE major would be ideal but not required)
Base stipend is $8500 with up to $1500 additional stipend based on financial need.
- Tasks may include analyzing vocal recordings for stress detection to understand number, timing, and effectiveness of interactions
- Analyzing other ambient "acoustic signatures" -- like ratios of biophony (nature) vs. anthrophony (human/traffic) and public safety cues (e.g., sirens, alarms)
- Analyzing urban form and disorder through visual markers captured through privacy–preserving cameras and computer vision.
- This is a full-time position; students are expected to participate 35+ hours/week for 10 consecutive weeks. Participants are not permitted to engage in another full-time internship, job, or volunteer opportunity (whether funded by Stanford or otherwise). They also may not hold a part-time internship, job, or volunteer opportunity unless their faculty mentors or program mentors have approved these arrangements before the start of the summer. Students also cannot receive an additional VPUE part-time grant within the same quarter.
- Students must be current undergraduates in good standing at Stanford during the summer quarter; those graduating in June are not eligible.
- Students may not receive both academic units and a stipend for any single project activity.
- Students pursuing a coterminal MA degree are eligible ONLY IF 1) they have not conferred their undergraduate degree AND 2) they are in the undergraduate (not graduate) tuition group.
- Students may not be serving a suspension or be on a Leave of Absence (LOA) while using grant funding.
