Abstract

Transformative Computing is the opportunistic cross-fertilisation of computing and communication technologies, leveraging existing infrastructures and natural signals to uncover novel, compelling, and sometimes unexpected ways to redefine our everyday computational experiences. For instance, computational models can faithfully explain minute human behaviours and vital signs by analysing ambient wireless signals. Human mobility and social behaviour dynamics can be revealed by deciphering data signatures of smartphones. Representative learning models with acoustics and motion signals obtained from a pair of earbuds can meaningfully interpret an individual’s facial expressions, emotions, and mental health. Naturally, this new paradigm is creating interminable possibilities. It is opening doors for technologies and systems to augment our awareness, cognition, and intelligence; improve our health, and help us experience physical and digital reality in radically different ways. In this talk, I will discuss how this opportunistic sensing approach can transform quantified noise into sensory signals by examining several case studies, that use travel network, home network, mobile network, and Wi-Fi signals instead of dedicated sensing infrastructure to extract meaningful and valuable contextual knowledge about personal and community behaviour.

Biographical Profile

Dr. Fahim Kawsar is the Founding Director of Pervasive Systems research at Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK and holds a Design United Professorship at TU Delft, Netherlands. An experimental computer scientist at heart, he spends most of his time at Cambridge building sensory AI systems with different computational forms to explain human behaviour with other people, places, and things. He is intrigued by the power of design and frequently visits TU Delft to teach and debate the influence of sensory data systems in redefining design, and vice versa.  Fahim is a frequent keynote speaker, (co-)authored 150+ publications, filed 40+ patents, is an AEIC of IEEE Pervasive Computing, sits at the editorial board of ACM IMWUT, serves (or served) as a committee member of leading mobile and ubiquitous computing conferences and had multiple million-scale projects commissioned.