Speaker: Prof. Cecilia Mascolo (University of Cambridge)

Title: Exploring audio from mobile and in-ear devices for health and behavior sensing

Sensing and sensing data analysis has made strides to improve how we understand human behaviour and health. I will discuss work in the area of finding more effective and efficient ways of sensing and analysis sensing data from wearable devices to understand our health. I plan to reflect on the challenges and opportunities that mobile and wearable health systems are introducing for the community, the developers as well as the users. I will use examples from my group's ongoing research on exploring wearable and mobile devices for sensing activity and health. More precisely I will discuss two projects related to audio: one using in-ear microphones for activity detection and one using mobile crowdsourced audio for COVID-19 diagnostic pre-screening and progression.

Speaker: Prof. Xia Zhou (Dartmouth College)

Title: Lighting up Wireless Communication and Sensing

We are entering a post-smartphone era, where zillions of new wireless devices compete for the already limited radio spectrum (RF) to obtain wireless connectivity. Addressing the problem of spectrum crunch demands radical new thinking. In this talk, I will present our journey in exploring light as a new spectrum territory, which provides ten thousand times wider bandwidth than RF for wireless communication. Additionally, the physical properties of light offer unique benefits for object tracking and behavioral sensing. I will highlight two recent works as examples on light-based communication and sensing. The first work exploits laser light to enable bi-directional, high-bandwidth air-water communication to facilitate underwater robotic operations. The second work advances light sensing to enable noninvasive glucose sensing for diabetic patients using portable, low-cost, and off-the-shelf hardware. I will conclude with open challenges and ongoing work.