GVU Center Distinguished Alumnus Brown Bag: Shwetak Patel

Much of the fundamental research in computer science has been driven by the needs of those attempting to utilize computing for various applications, such as energy and health. Shwetak will first briefly talk about a new generation of electricity and water sensing systems that are capable of providing consumption data down to the individual appliance or device from single sensing points. He will then describe how his work in energy has helped inform his approach to the area of unobtrusive mobile health sensing. Shwetak will describe a collection of research projects conducted with his clinical collaborators that leverage the sensors on mobile devices (e.g., microphones, cameras, WiFi) in new ways to enable the self-management and study of diseases. These projects follow the theme of finding usable signals in unusual places, and often noise to most people, in order to enable scale. Shwetak's remarks will underscore advances in energy and health through the convergence of sensing, machine learning, and human-computer interaction.

Shwetak N. Patel is an Associate Professor in the departments of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, where he directs his research group, the Ubicomp Lab. His research interests are in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Sensor-enabled Embedded Systems, and User Interface Software and Technology. He is particularly interested in developing new sensing technologies with a particular emphasis on energy monitoring and health applications. Shwetak was a co-founder of Zensi, Inc., a residential energy monitoring company, which was acquired by Belkin, Inc in 2010. He is also a co-founder of SNUPI Technologies, a low-power wireless sensor company. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008 and B.S. in Computer Science in 2003 both under the supervision of Gregory Abowd. Dr. Patel is a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship (2011), Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (2011), Sloan Fellowship (2012), TR-35 Award (2009), World Economic Forum Young Global Scientist Award (2013), and an NSF Career Award (2013).