Dartmouth Events

Abstract:   Analyzing observations of the physical world can be a messy process. But the rise of intelligent sensing systems to measure and understand energy consumption, air quality, urban situations, and even our own physical and mental conditions is allowing us to study our physical environment and take actions like never before. In this talk, I will discuss several recent projects that use intelligent sensor systems and data analytics to better understand the physical world and improve our daily lives. In one, we create ePrints -- a system that tracks each occupant’s personal share of energy use, or “energy footprint”, inside commercial building environments, and provides insights to occupants on the real-time energy impact of their actions. ePrints supports different apportionment policies, with μs-level footprint computation time and graceful scaling with size of building, frequency of energy updates, and rate of occupant location changes. In another project, we create PAWS -- an ultra-low-power wearable system that uses multi-channel audio sensors embedded in a headset, combined with machine learning in the smartphone, to help detect, classify, locate, and warn pedestrians of dangers from nearby vehicles. Finally, I’ll share early results from our in-situ bio-signal acquisition and emotion recognition platform. 

Bio:  Dr. Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering at Columbia University and co-Chair of Smart Cities Center at the Data Science Institute. Prof. Jiang received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley, in 2004, 2007, and 2010, respectively. He was Director of Analytics and IoT Research at Intel Labs China prior to joining Columbia University in 2015. His research interest lies at the intersection of systems and data, with a focus on intelligent embedded systems and their applications in mobile and wearable computing, intelligent built environments, Internet of Things, and connected health. He led one of the earliest projects on IP-based smart-buildings, bringing about the first IPv6/6LowPAN smart metering network and fine-grain real-time energy analytics. His ACme building energy platform was widely adopted by industry and academia. His city-scale air-quality project was featured on China Central Television and Peoples Daily, and was successfully incubated into a startup. Prof. Jiang has several US patents and published many peer-reviewed papers with over 3,500 total citations, including Best Paper at IEEE/ACM IPSN ’05, Best Demo at ACM SenSys ’11, Best Poster at ACM BuildSys ’16, Best Paper-Runner Up at ACM BuildSys ’17, and Best Demo at ACM IoTDI ’18. He has chaired BuildSys