Shyam Gollakota ( Also go by as Shyamnath Gollakota )
Torode Professor, Paul G. Allen School of CSE
Adjunct Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Adjunct Professor, ECE
Director of Mobile Intelligence Lab
Room 568, Paul G. Allen Center
University of Washington
Box 352350, Seattle, WA 98195
gshyam@cs.washington.edu

My group is highly inter-disciplinary spanning computer scientists, electrical, mechanical and aerospace engineers and we closely work with biologists and physicians. We are driven by our curiosity to explore science and technology and to tackle hard technical and societal problems. We work across hardware, algorithms, signal processing and machine learning to build systems that previously were not thought possible. My group has made multiple inventions including battery-free computers that float in the wind, ambient backscatter, Wi-Fi sensing, battery-free phones, active sonar on smart phones, Internet of plastic things, computing for insects, wireless bio-robots and created various computing tools that democratize medical diagnostics and care including contactless breathing and heart rhythm monitoring, blood clot and ear infection testing using smartphones.

Inventions from our lab

• Internet of bio-inspired things: computers that float in the wind, UW Robofly, airdropping sensors
• Internet of biological things: bees with sensors, cameras imitating insect eyes, tracking "murder" hornets
• Internet of plastic things: 3D printing Wi-Fi sensors, prosthetic arms and clothes as hard drives
• Battery-free computing: phones without batteries, streaming cameras and power over Wi-Fi
• Ambient backscatter: reflecting TV, Wi-Fi, FM, Bluetooth and LoRa signals to communication
  
  
• AI for earables: on-device directional hearing, clearbuds for speech enhancement
• Mobile computing for audiology: ear infections, middle ear disorders with tymponometry
• Blood testing on smartphones: blood clot testing with a single drop, laser speckle with smartphone LiDAR
• Technology for opioid overdoses: detection using smartphones, naloxone wearable injector
• AI for contactless cardiology: Detecting cardiac arrest, irregular heart rhythm
• Smart speakers and phones as tricorders: breathing monitor, sleep apnea, infant monitoring
• Wireless sensing: Wi-Fi gesture recognition, RFID gestures, imaging using Wi-Fi, tracking fingers tracking, and VR headsets
• Embracing wireless interference: ZigZag decoding, analog network coding, and securing implants

News

• Our work on blood clot testing wins three different awards at the 2022 AACC Annual Scientific Meeting
• Communications Medicine paper on middle ear disorder detection using smartphones (Stat News article)
• Check out our work on AI-enabled wireless clearbuds
• ACM IMWUT paper on laser speckle using smartphones (coverage by Register)
• AAAI paper on deep learning for on-device directional hearing
• Nature paper on computers and sensors that float in the wind like dandelion seeds
• Check out our work on wearable injector for opioid overdose reversal with West Pharma
• Contactless breathing monitoring using ultrasound on phones got FDA 510(k) clearance
• Honored to be named a Moore Inventor Fellow
• Endowed with the Torode Family Career Development Professorship (2021 - 2024)
• Honored to receive the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award in 2021
• Nature Communications paper on bloot clot testing using smartphones
• Vikram Iyer joins UW CSE as an assistant professor in 2021
• Rajalakshmi wins the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation award in 2021
• Rajalakshmi joins Cornell as an assistant professor in 2020
• Check out our work on using smart speakers to monitor irregular heart rhythm (Washington Post, Telegraph)
• IEEE Spectrum article on our Internet of Plastic things
• Ongoing efforts with Department of Agriculture on wirelessly tracking murder hornets
• Check out our MobiCom work on airdropping wireless sensors
• Science Robotics paper and focus article on insect-scale steerable wireless cameras (NPR, CNN, CNBC)
• NYTimes op-ed on using smart devices for COVID19 early detection
• Read our privacy-preserving protocols (PACT) for contact tracing while upholding civil liberties
• Serving on the ACM MobiCom steering committee
• Check out our work on Living IoT for insects (NBC News, Forbes, Seattle times)
• npj Digital Medicine paper on contactless cardiac arrest detection (Bloomberg, Stat News, Digital Trends)
• Science Translational Medicine paper on middle ear fluid detection with smartphones (NYTimes, NPR)
• Science Translational Medicine paper on opioid overdose detection (Scientific American, Washington Post)

Graduate Students and Mentees

• Justin Chan
• Maruchi Kim
• Bandhav Veluri
• Tuochao Chen
• Malek Itani

Alumni

• Anran Wang (Ph.D., Sound Life Sciences)
• Vikram Iyer (Ph.D., assistant prof. at University of Washington, Marconi Young Scholar, SIGMOBILE Dissertation award)
• Mehrdad Hessar (Ph.D., OctoML)
• Ali Najafi (Ph.D., VMWare Research)
• Kelly Michaelsen (Mentee, assistant prof at UW Medicine, FAER Grantee)
• Rajalakshmi Nandakumar (Ph.D., assistant Prof at Cornell, Marconi Young Scholar, SIGMOBILE Dissertation award)
• Vamsi Talla (Postdoc, CTO of Jeeva Wireless, SIGMOBILE Dissertation award, SIGCOMM Dissertation award)
• Bryce Kellogg (M.S., co-founder Jeeva Wireless)
• I also worked closely with Vincent Liu (now assistant Prof at U. Penn) and Aaron Parks (co-founder Jeeva Wireless)

Awards

• Moore Inventor Fellow, 2021
• ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, 2020
• SenSys Best Paper Award, 2018
• IMWUT Distinguished Paper Award, 2018
• SIGMOBILE RockStar Award, 2017
• Forbes 30 under 30 All-Star Alumni, 2017
• Popular Science Brilliant Ten, 2016
• SIGCOMM Best Paper Award, 2016
• Visionaries 2020, CNN, 2016
• NSDI Best Paper Award, 2016
• 10 Tech Breakthroughs, MIT Tech Review, 2016
• World Technology Award, Communication Technology, 2015
• CoMotion Presidential Innovation Fellow, 2015
• NSF Career Award, 2015
• Alfred Sloan Fellowship, 2015
• Forbes 30 under 30 Energy, 2015
• Technology Review TR35, Innovators Under the Age of 35, 2014
• ACM MOBICOM Best Paper Award, 2013
• ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper Award, 2013
• George M. Sprowls Award for Best Dissertation in CS, MIT, 2013
• ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award, 2012
• ACM SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award, 2012
• ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper Award, 2011
• ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper Award, 2008
• William A. Martin SM Thesis Award, 2008
• IIT Madras Institute Award in Computer Science, 2006

Open source code & Technology transfer

• Earbud source separation: Clearbuds
• Smartphone tympanometer: Middle ear detection
• Dandelion floating sensors: Wind dispersal sensors
• Directional hearing: Hybridbeam
• Blood clot testing: Coagulation Phone
• Airdropping wireless sensors: Sensor Drop
• Low-power steerable wireless camera: Beetlecam
• Bluetooth and GPS based COVID19 exposure assist: CovidSafe → WA notify
• Low-Power SDR platform: TinySDR
• Millimeter-level acoustic tracking: Millisonic
• RF gesture recognition: AllSee
• Active sonar on smartphones and speakers: Sound Life Sciences
• Ear Infection detection on smartphones: Wavely Diagnostics
• Sleep apnea diagnosis on phones: ResMed & Sleepscore
• Ambient backscatter communication: Jeeva Wireless

Recent Publications (full list)

• Underwater messaging using mobile devices
  Tuochao Chen, Justin Chan, Shyam Gollakota
  ACM SIGCOMM 2022
  
  
• ClearBuds: Wireless binaural earbuds for learning-based speech enhancement (Project page)
  Ishan Chatterjee, Maurchi Kim, Vivek Jayaram, Shyam Gollakota, Ira Kemelmacher, Shwetak Patel, Steve Seitz
  ACM MobiSys 2022
  
  
• Performing tympanometry using smartphones (Project page)
  Justin Chan, Ali Najafi, Mallory Baker, Julie Kinsman, Lisa Mancl, Susan Norton, Randall Bly, Shyam Gollakota
  Communications Medicine 2022
  
  
• Wind-dispersal of battery-free wireless devices (Project page)
  Vikram Iyer, Hans Gaensbauer, Tom Daniel, Shyam Gollakota
  Nature 2022
  
  
• Testing a drop of liquid using smartphone liDAR (Project page)
  Justin Chan, Ananditha Raghunath, Kelly Michaelsen, Shyam Gollakota
  ACM IMWUT 2022
  
  
• Micro-mechanical blood clot testing using smartphones (Project page)
  Justin Chan, Kelly Michaelsen, Joanne Estergreen, Daniel Sabath, Shyam Gollakota.
  Nature Communications 2022
  AACC Annual Scientific Meeting 2022 (Distinguished Abstract; Clinical Translational Science Division - Best Abstract Award; Hematology And Coagulation Division - Best Abstract Award)
  
  
• Hybrid neural networks for on-device directional hearing (Project page)
  Anran Wang, Maruchi Kim, Hao Zhang, Shyam Gollakota.
  AAAI 2022
  
  
• Closed-loop wearable naloxone injector system
  Justin Chan, Vikram Iyer, Anran Wang, Alex Lyness, Preetma Kooner, Jake Sunshine and Shyam Gollakota.
  Scientific Reports 2021
  
  
• Using Smart Speakers to Contactless Monitor Heart Rhythms (Project page)
  Anran Wang, Dan Nguyen, Arun Sridhar and Shyam Gollakota.
  Communications Biology 2021
  
  
• Advances and Open Problems in Backscatter Networking
  Vamsi Talla, Joshua Smith and Shyam Gollakota.
  GetMobile 2020
  
  
• Airdropping Sensor Networks from Drones and Insects (Project page)
  Vikram Iyer, Maruchi Kim, Shirley Xue, Anran Wang and Shyam Gollakota.
  MobiCom 2020
  
  
• Wireless steerable vision for live insects and insect-scale robots
  Vikram Iyer, Ali Najafi, Johannes James, Sawyer Fuller and Shyam Gollakota.
  Science Robotics 2020
  
  
• TinySDR: Low-Power SDR Platform for Over-the-Air Programmable IoT Testbeds (coverage)
  Mehrdard Hessar, Ali Najafi, Vikram Iyer and Shyam Gollakota.
  NSDI 2020
  
  
• Identifying Pediatric Vascular Anomalies With Deep Learning
  Justin Chan, Sharat Raju, Randall Bly, Jonathan Perkins and Shyam Gollakota.
  Arxiv 2019
  
  
• Contactless Infant Monitoring using White Noise
  Anran Wang, Jacob Sunshine and Shyam Gollakota.
  MobiCom 2019
  
  
• Contactless cardiac arrest detection using smart devices (pdf)
  Justin Chan, Thomas Rea, Shyam Gollakota and Jacob Sunshine.
  npj Digital Medicine, 2019
  
  
• Detecting middle ear fluid using smartphones (pdf)
  Justin Chan, Sharat Raju, Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Randall Bly and Shyam Gollakota.
  Science Translational Medicine, 2019
  
  
• MilliSonic: Pushing the Limits of Acoustic Motion Tracking
  Anran Wang and Shyam Gollakota.
  CHI 2019
  
  
• Opioid Overdose Detection Using Smartphones (pdf)
  Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Shyam Gollakota and Jacob Sunshine.
  Science Translational Medicine, 2019
  
  
• Living IoT: A Flying Wireless Platform on Live Insects
  Vikram Iyer, Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Anran Wang, Sawyer Fuller and Shyam Gollakota.
  MobiCom 2019
  
  
• NetScatter: Enabling Large-Scale Backscatter Networks
  Mehrdad Hessar, Ali Najafi and Shyam Gollakota.
  NSDI 2019