ADM+S researchers recognised at the International Symposium on Wearable Computing
Authors Natalie Campbell
Date 25 October 2023
ADM+S researchers have taken out two awards at the 2023 Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC) for research that uses ChatGPT to improve sleep quality and the identification of human activities using signals from wearable devices.
ADM+S students Yonchanok (Pro) Khaokaew, Kaixin Ji, Marwah Alaofi, Hiruni Kegalle, and mentor Prof Flora Salim won the Student Challenge award for their research poster ‘zzzGPT: An Interactive GPT Approach to Enhance Sleep Quality’, receiving $1000 USD prize money from the Toyota Research Institute.
Also part of the team was UNSW Master student Thuc Hanh Nguyen, supervised by Prof Flora Salim and Pro Khaokaew. Hanh’s work was instrumental given her Master research on sleep quality recognition from sensor data, and her experience in the sleep data analysis on the dataset used for the competition.
Kaixin said that people were very interested in their work, and everyone was talking about our student challenge project.
“We also learned a lot by attending the workshops, talks, and paper sessions. The Ubicomp people were really trying to use innovation to solve problems. It opened our eyes about user needs and technologies.”
ADM+S researchers Dr Damiano Spina, Kaixin Ji, Prof Falk Scholer, Dr Danula Hettiachchi and Prof Flora Salim were also awarded the Best Poster Award for their work, ‘Towards Detecting Tonic Information Processing Activities with Physiological Data’
“It’s an incredible experience to receive the awards barefooted at the beach, during the UbiComp/ISWC Gala Dinner,” said Prof Salim.
Held in Cancun, Mexico, the UbiComp/ISWC is a leading international conference that brings together researchers, designers, developers and practitioners to present and discuss understanding of human experiences and social impacts of ubiquitous, pervasive and wearable computing.
Prof Salim is a member of the UbiComp steering committee, an organising committee member and co-chair of the UbiComp/ISWC doctoral colloquium. Flora took three ADM+S students researching in the field to attend the conference and engage with the international network of researchers.
“I’m thrilled to have had the chance to take my students to UbiComp for their first time and I hope it’s not going to be their last. It’s a top-notch research community that looks at enabling ‘computing everywhere’ through sensing, mobile and wearable systems, intelligent environments, and studies of user experience and the societal impact of computing,” she said.
“It’s an amazing multidisciplinary community that is incredibly supportive. It is truly one that would be hard not to return to, and also give back.”
Pro Khaokaew and Kaixin Ji participated in the doctoral colloquium, a mentoring program designed for academic exchange between HDR students in the UbiComp community. Both Pro and Kaixin received feedback from five globally renowned experts on papers they presented on their thesis topics.
“Everyone in the UbiComp community is keen on taking the innovations discussed at the conference and making them practical. You can easily see how each project is a perfect fit for this community’s vision,” said Pro.
Hiruni Kegalle was selected to be a student volunteer following a competitive selection process.
“My involvement in the conference as a student volunteer allowed me to collaborate with the organising committee and exposed me to the community. I made new friends with other student volunteers and conference attendees,” she said.
The Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing conference (UbiComp) series commenced in 1999, and over the years this has become the premier A* peer-reviewed conference series for research in ubiquitous computing. The ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computing (ISWC) is the premier A* conference in wearable computing and has been merged with UbiComp since 2013.
ADM+S Students were supported by the ADM+S Centre to attend the Ubicomp/ISWC conference as part of the Centre’s Higher Degree Research training program.
