Bhawana Chhaglani
CS PhD Candidate at UMass Amherst
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I am a final year Computer Science PhD candidate in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at University of Massachusetts Amherst. I work in the lass lab with Prof. Prashant Shenoy and Prof. Jeremy Gummeson. My research lies at the intersection of ubiquitous computing, mobile sensing, human-centered computing, cyber-physical systems, and responsible AI. My work advances intelligent sensing and AI-driven systems for responsible, human-centric, and holistic health sensing.
My vision is to transform everyday devices such as wearables, smartphones, and smart assistants into reliable and responsible environment and human health monitors. During my PhD, I have worked on using ambient acoustic signals for healthy indoor spaces, designing privacy-aware sensing and computing pipelines, and advancing collaborative wearable health sensing. Methologically, my work integrates signal processing, edge AI/ML, and privacy analysis with real-world system prototyping, and validation, resulting in solutions that are scientifically novel, ethical, and practically deployable.
My research has appeared in premier venues such as IMWUT/UbiComp, SenSys, BuildSys, HotMobile, EMBC, BSN, and IROS, and has been recognized with the ACM MobiSys Rising Star Award (2025), ML & Systems Rising Star (2024), CPS-IoT Week PhD Forum Best Poster (2025), IEEE SPS Scholarship (2023), and N2Women Young Researcher Fellowship (2025). I have also collaborated with Nokia Bell Labs, Samsung Research, Dolby Laboratories, Meta Reality Labs, and CMU to translate these ideas into deployable systems.
See Publications
What's New?
What's New?
October 2025: Guest lecture in Intelligent Mobile Systems course at Rice University.
June 2025: I am co-organizing EvalComp @UbiComp and S3 workshop @MobiCom. Consider submitting you work!
May 2025: Started interning @Meta Reality Labs, Burlingame, CA (XR Sonic team)
May 2025: My work is accepted to be presented at MobiSys Rising Stars forum 2025. See you in Anaheim!
May 2025: Awarded the N2Women Young Researcher Fellowship and Best Poster Award @CPS-IoT week 2025 PhD Forum!
May 2025: Invited talk @UCSD [slides]
April 2025: I will be presenting my poster, vision paper, and PhD forum presentation in SenSys. See you in Irvine! I am also organizing the N2Women panel discussion. Please sign up!
February 2025: Serving as TPC for SenSys posters
February 2025: Successfully passed my thesis proposal! [Slides]
September 2024: Student Volunteer @UbiComp 2024 and presented my work AeroSense @UbiComp 2024
September 2024: Serving as a mentor in ML4H
August 2024: Our work on privacy-aware EEG-based seizure detection is accepted at IEEE BSN 2024
June 2024: Adaptive Sampling work accepted at IEEE IROS 2024
May 2024: Started my research internship at Dolby Laboratories in SF, ATG group
May 2024: Selected as a Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star 2024
April 2024: My internship work at Samsung Research, Cough-DL is accepted to IEEE EMBC 2024
April 2024: AeroSense accepted at IMWUT 2024.
April 2024: Awarded the inaugural Health Tech for the People Ethics Fellowship 2024
March 2024: Paper accepted at HotEthics 2024 Co-located with ASPLOS 2024
December 2023: Passed my portfolio – officially a Ph.D. candidate now!
September 2023: Received IEEE Signal Processing Society Scholarship 2023
May 2023: Started my internship at Samsung Research America with Digital Health Lab
May 2023: BreathEasy got accepted in EnvSys workshop, colocated with MobiSys 2023
February 2023: ACM HotMobile 2023 student travel award
December 2022: My Bell Labs internship work Cocoon got accepted in HotMobile 2023
November 2022: Serving as a Student Volunteer in SenSys 2022
September 2022: Presented FlowSense in UbiComp'22
June 2022: I am invited to serve as the Shadow PC on SenSys '22.
March 2022: This summer, I will be working as a Research Intern at Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK.
January 2022: FlowSense got accepted at IMWUT 2022
December 2021: Received N2Women Travel Grant to attend MobiCom 2021
November 2021: FLAIR received best paper runner-up award at ACM BuildSys 2021
September 2021: Received Student grant to attend UbiComp 2021
September 2021: My work at MSR got accepted in BuildSys 2021
July 2021: Received Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration 2021 scholarship
June 2021: Secured second place in Stage 2 of VTS Drone Competition.
June 2021: Awarded the ACM SIGMOBILE Conference Grant to attend ACM MobiSys 2021
June 2021: Camera Communication meets Drone-based Sensing paper accepted at Internet of Lights Workshop colocated with MobiSys'21
May 2021: Received the 2021 David W. Stemple Scholarship for Systems Research from CICS, UMass Amherst
March 2021: I will be attending 2021 CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women on April 23 and 24
December 2020: Our team has acclaimed third place in Stage 1 of VTS Drone Competition.
September 2020: Presented paper at “Light Up the IoT” - Workshop Co-located with ACM MobiCom 2020
August 2020: Started PhD at UMass Amherst remotely
July 2020: "Evaluating LED-Camera Communication for Drones" accepted in “Light Up the IoT” - Workshop Co-located with ACM MobiCom 2020
May 2020: "Gauntlet" accepted in ACM WearSys'20 (Mobisys), Toronto, Canada
April 2020: Selected as ACM SIGBED Scholar 2020
November 2019: Started working as a research intern at IIIT Delhi with Dr. P.B. Sujit.
October 2019: Secured Second position in ACM Student Research Competition held at ESWEEK 2019 (NYU)
June 2019: Started research internship at Microsoft Research Lab India, under guidance of Dr. Venkat Padmanabhan and Dr. Srinivasan Iyengar.
Research Experience
Research Experience
Research Assistant in LASS lab, University of Massachusetts Amherst (CICS) (August 2020 - Present)
Designing privacy-aware ubiquitous sensing systems for healthier indoor environments. ACM IMWUT/UbiComp'22, ACM EnvSys '23, ACM IMWUT/UbiComp'24, HotEthics'24
ML and Systems Rising Star 2024, CPS-IoT Week 2025 Best PhD forum award, MobiSys Rising Star 2025
Advised by : Prof. Prashant Shenoy and Prof. Jeremy Gummeson.
My thesis is on advancing privacy-aware ubiquitous sensing systems for healthier indoor environments. I have worked on audio-based non-intrusive ventilation monitoring (FlowSense), aerosol prediction from human activities (AeroSense), and privacy-aware feature-based audio sensing (FeatureSense). Currently, I am working on predicting crowded regions using passive WiFi sensing (CrowdSense).
Research Intern in Meta Reality Labs, Burlingame (May 2025 - October 2025)
Detecting and reducing generative artifacts in diffusion-based speech enhancement (under review at ICASSP 2026)
Advised by: Yang Gao, Traun Pruthi
Research Intern in Dolby Laboratories, SF (May 2024 - August 2024)
Preventing tech neck using hearables
Advised by : Alan Seefeldt
Research Intern in Samsung Research America, Mountain View, CA, USA (June 2023 - September 2023)
Worked on health sensing using hearables (IEEE EMBC 2024)
Advised by : Ebrahim Nemati and Jilong Kuang
Research Intern in Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge , UK (June 2022 - September 2022)
Worked on on-body microphone collaboration for ambient intelligence (ACM HotMobile 2023)
Advised by : Utku Acer, Chulhong Min , Spencer Jang, and Fahim Kawsar
Research Intern at IIIT Delhi (November 2019 - April 2020)
Worked on exploring and mapping an area using efficient adaptive sampling algorithms. IROS Paper Link
Advised by Dr .P .B. Sujit.
Research Intern, Microsoft Research Lab India (June 2019-August 2019)
Worked on building an orchestration engine for surveying using multiple UAVs (ACM BuildSys 2021 best paper runner-up)
Advised by Dr. Venkat Padmanabhan and Dr. Srinivasan Iyengar.
Project Intern at Aerogram, IIT Delhi (Dec 2018-Feb. 2019)
Worked on handling the server side of the network of air pollution monitoring sensor nodes.
Advised by Dr. Sarita Ahlawat
Remote Research Intern, Georgia State University (October 2018-March 2019)
Evaluating LED-camera communication for drones. LIoT'22 Paper Link
Advised by: Prof. Ashwin Ashok
Summer Research Intern at IIT Delhi (June 2018-Aug. 2018)
Worked on implementing MAC layer for Visible Light Communication using MATLAB.
Advised by Dr. Brejesh Lall.
Trainee at Cyborgs Labs, Delhi (June 2017-Aug. 2017)
Summer Course on Embedded Systems and its Applications
Teaching Experience
Teaching Experience
CS677 Distributed and Operating Systems, Spring 2025
Instructor: Prof. Prashant Shenoy
CS677 Distributed and Operating Systems, Fall 2024
Instructor: Prof. Peter Klemperer
CS328 Mobile and Ubiquitous Computings, Spring 2024
Instructor: Prof. VP Nguyen
CS328 Mobile Health Sensing and Analytics, Fall 2023
Instructor: Prof. Deepak Ganesan
INFO 190S Introduction to Programming, Fall 2022
Instructor: Tim Richards
CS328 Mobile Health Sensing and Analytics, Fall 2021
Instructor: Prof. Deepak Ganesan
CS121 Introduction to Problem Solving with Computers, Spring 2021
Instructor: Prof. Adam Kohan
Activities
Activities
Co-organizing S3 @MobiCom 2025
Co-organizing EvalComp and WellComp @UbiComp'25
Reviewer @ICMI 2025, UbiComp/ISWC 2025
TPC @ SenSys 2025 Posters
Reviewer HRI 2025, IMX 2025
Reviewer @ CHI 2025 papers, CHI 2025 Late breaking work
Student Volunteer UbiComp 2024
Mentor in ML4H 2024
Reviewer UbiComp/ISWC (2022, 2024)
Mentored in Undergraduate Research Volunteer Program at UMass Amherst (Dec. 2023–Jan. 2024)
Served as Student Volunteer for IEEE BSN 2023 (Oct. 2023)
Served as a Student Volunteer for ACM SenSys 2022 (Nov. 2022)
Social Media Chair of IEEE Pervasive (July 2022 – Present)
PhD Co-chair of GradCSWomen at UMass Amherst (Aug.2021–Dec. 2022)
Serving as Shadow Program Committee member in ACM SenSys(July 2022–Oct. 2022)
Mentored in Undergraduate Research Volunteer Program at UMass Amherst (Jun. 2021–Jul. 2021)
ACM N2Women Membership Co-chair (Apr. 2021–Present)
Mentored in Undergraduate Research Volunteer Program at UMass Amherst (Dec. 2020–Jan. 2021)
Participated in PhD Applicant Support Program organized by CICS CARE, UMass Amherst (Nov. 2020–Dec. 2020)
Awards
Awards
Awarded the N2Women Young Researcher Fellowship for SenSys 2025
Selected as a Machine Learning and Systems Rising Star 2024
Awarded the inaugural Health Tech for the People Ethics Fellowship 2024
ACM HotMobile 2023 student travel award
Received N2Women Travel Grant to attend MobiCom 2021
Received best paper runner-up award at ACM BuildSys 2021
Received Grace Hopper Celebration 2021 Scholarship July 2021
Secured second place in Stage 2 of IEEE VTS Drone Competition. June 2021
Conference Grant ACM MobiSys 2021, ACM SIGMOBILE June 2021
Received David W. Stemple Scholarship for Systems Research, UMass Amherst May 2021
Selected to attend the 2021 CRA-WP Grad Cohort workshop Apr. 2021
Third place in Stage 1 of IEEE VTS Drone Competition Dec. 2020
Selected as ACM SIGBED Scholar 2020 Apr. 2020
Second Position in ACM Student Research Competition Oct. 2019
1st in eYantra - National Robotics Competition, IIT Bombay Apr. 2019
1st in Smart India Hackathon 2019 Mar. 2019
Winner of Hack-A-BIT Oct. 2018
2nd Runner-up in Smart India Hackathon 2018 Jun. 2018
Winner of EV Hackathon Apr. 2018
AIR 19 in IEEE Xtreme 11.0 Oct. 2017
Click here to see Awards
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