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How Shyam Gollakota is revolutionizing mobile systems and healthcare with technology

His research is already opening up new possibilities for battery-free networks, including underwater Wi-Fi, powerline communication, and even wireless cameras

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Shyam Gollakota. Image credit: By special arrangements

Prof. Shyam Gollakota, Washington Research Foundation and Thomas J. Cable Endowed Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, has been honored with the Infosys Prize 2024 in Engineering and Computer Science for his groundbreaking contributions to mobile systems and healthcare. His research, which spans multiple engineering domains, has had a profound societal impact, particularly in areas like smartphone-based healthcare tools, battery-free communication, and the augmentation of human auditory perception with artificial intelligence.

Prof. Gollakota’s innovations have not only advanced the field of mobile systems but have also provided scalable, affordable solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges. His work is reshaping how we think about the intersection of technology and healthcare, and his pioneering research promises to improve the lives of millions globally, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

At the heart of Prof. Gollakota’s innovations is his ability to repurpose existing technologies to address real-world challenges

“His work on mobile and wireless communications is game-changing. Particularly impressive is his work on active sonar systems for physiological sensing, battery-free communications, and the use of AI to selectively tailor acoustic landscapes. These innovations will continue to benefit humanity for years to come,” stated Jury Chair, Infosys Prize 2024.

Transforming Mobile Devices into Healthcare Tools

At the heart of Prof. Gollakota’s innovations is his ability to repurpose existing technologies to address real-world challenges. One of his most remarkable contributions is his development of contactless physiological sensing using smartphones. By transforming mobile devices into active sonar systems, Gollakota’s research leverages the microphones and speakers in smartphones—components that are ubiquitous in today’s devices—to detect subtle physiological movements such as breathing.

This novel approach has significant implications for mobile health, particularly in resource-constrained areas where access to traditional medical equipment is limited. According to him, the ability to perform contactless physiological sensing with just a smartphone has the potential to revolutionize medical diagnostics, and make healthcare more accessible to billions of people around the world.

Battery-Free Communication: A Leap Forward in Sustainability

In a world increasingly concerned with energy efficiency and sustainability, Prof. Gollakota’s work on battery-free communication stands out as a pioneering achievement. He developed a technique called ambient backscatter, where wireless devices communicate by reflecting existing radio signals, rather than generating their own. This method drastically reduces energy consumption, allowing devices to communicate without the need for batteries.

This research is already opening up new possibilities for battery-free networks, including underwater Wi-Fi, powerline communication, and even wireless cameras. Battery-free devices could transform industries ranging from environmental monitoring to the Internet of Things (IoT). As per his visions, we are creating a future where energy-efficient, sustainable communication systems will be a part of our everyday lives.

Augmenting Human Auditory Perception with AI

In a truly visionary move, Prof. Gollakota’s research also explores how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to augment human auditory perception. His work in this field enables people to program their acoustic environments, allowing them to focus on specific sounds or filter out others based on semantic descriptions. This breakthrough could have significant applications in hearing aids, earbuds, and assistive listening devices, where users can customize their listening experiences.

Battery-free devices could transform industries ranging from environmental monitoring to the Internet of Things (IoT)

By using AI to isolate and manipulate soundscapes in real time, Prof. Gollakota’s research is poised to improve quality of life for millions, offering individuals greater control over their auditory experiences. This technology will soon be commonplace in consumer electronics, giving people a level of control over their hearing that was once thought impossible.

A Thought Leader and Innovator

Prof. Shyam Gollakota’s career trajectory has been exceptional. A graduate of IIT Madras and MIT, where he received his Ph.D., Gollakota has quickly risen to prominence as a thought leader in mobile systems, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. He has received numerous accolades, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. His recognition on MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list and twice on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 further cements his status as one of the brightest minds in his field.

As the director of the Mobile Intelligence Lab at the University of Washington, Gollakota is at the forefront of cutting-edge research in mobile health, networking, and battery-free computing. His work has already led to the creation of novel technologies that push the boundaries of what mobile systems can achieve, all with the potential to address key societal challenges.

The Future of Computing

Looking to the future, Prof. Gollakota’s research will continue to revolutionize mobile systems and human-computer interaction. His work in programmable sound, battery-free communication, and contactless diagnostics lays the foundation for the next generation of computing technologies. These innovations promise to reshape industries, improve global health, and enhance human capabilities.

With his visionary ideas and transformative research, Prof. Shyam Gollakota’s work will undoubtedly continue to have a profound impact on both the world of technology and the lives of people worldwide.

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Space & Physics

Joint NASA-ISRO radar satellite is the most powerful built to date

NISAR – a portmanteau for the NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture global radar earth observation satellite — will only be the latest collaboration between the two space agencies.

Karthik Vinod

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A concept art on NISAR | Photo Credit: NASA

On July 30th, NISAR  — the NASA-ISRO joint space mission — launched to space aboard the GSLV Mark II rocket from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The satellite, now safely tucked into a sun-synchronous orbit around earth, will enter a commissioning phase over the next three months, to deploy all its instruments.

Perched at an altitude of 750 km, the three ton satellite will complete an orbit around the earth every 12 days, while studying the planet’s diverse geology with unprecedented detail.

NISAR, a portmanteau for the NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture radar mission, marks the culmination of a decade-long effort to build the most powerful earth observation satellite to date.

In 2007, NASA had begun actively exploring an ambitious undertaking to build a satellite, which could map the earth and the whole ecosystem. On the agenda were investigations into studying climate change and its role in exacerbating extreme weather events. These include surveillance over vulnerable hotspots, such as Greenland and Antarctica, where disappearing ice sheets have been linked to the global average increase in sea-levels over the years.

Remote sensing satellites traditionally used can’t capture the full picture, without uninterrupted sunlight exposure or obstructions namely cloud cover. But synthetic aperture radar is a fix to these problems. Clouds are transparent to radio and microwaves unlike visible light. As such, a synthetic aperture radar can work across any weather, whether sunlit or not alike.

That said, SAR technology isn’t new. They have been around for about seventy years, since the first proof of principle was proven in the 1950s. In 1978, the US launched the first SAR-equipped earth observation satellite, Seasat, to monitor oceans. Neither Seasat or for that matter any SAR-based successors, could bear resolutions as high as 1 cm, or map terrain across a swath area as wide as about 240 km, as NISAR can.

NASA engaged in a cost-effective strategy, opening doors for international partners to pool resources, and co-develop the satellite and the scientific campaigns.

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(A) Melt pond in Greenland | Photo Credit: Michael Studinger (2008) (B) NASA administrator Charles Bolden and ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan sign documents, which included a charter on NISAR, in Toronto | Photo Credit: NASA (2014)

NASA and ISRO share expertise

NASA found an interested party in ISRO, which at the time was developing the Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT), which had a smaller scope to study India’s geology. India, being especially vulnerable to floods, landslides and cyclones, couldn’t overlook the incentives an extra eye in the sky could provide.

NISAR can track and relay even the minutest of changes on the surface in near real-time. In principle, the satellite should detect a flooded area hidden from view to rescuers on-ground, or even traditional remote sensing satellites which use passive receivers. The satellite can serve a key role in an integrated multi-hazard early warning system.

In 2014, ISRO inked the NISAR agreement with NASA. The mission would only be their latest collaboration between the two space agencies. Previously, they had collaborated on 2008’s Chandrayaan-1. Back then, NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument and miniSAR radar onboard the Chandrayaan orbiter, led the famous detection of water ice on the moon. 

Although NISAR was originally slated for launch in 2020, innumerable delays followed as they sorted technical challenges, and the abrupt global lockdown amid COVID pandemic.

Upon project completion last year, NISAR had become the most expensive satellite built, with NASA and ISRO pouring some $1.5 billion into development. The costs were unevenly split between them; with NASA spending some $1.3 billion, and ISRO bearing a modest amount at $91 million.

But a white paper details ISRO had contributed an equal value in engineering various components, re-establishing parity. ISRO engineered the spacecraft body, readied tracking stations on-ground, and developed the short wavelength S-band radar. The S-band (at 12 cm) complements NASA’s longer wavelength L-band (24 cm) radar.

The L-band can track changes under thick foliage or leaves, under forests. It can even measure land deformation rates as tiny as 4 mm/year. While the L-band serves as NISAR’s primary means of acquiring radar data, ISRO’s S-band radar will help provide details that concern Indian earth scientists, monitoring coastal erosion for example. Both radars work in tandem with NASA-designed radar receiver and reflector – a 12-meter wide meshed net, resembling a canopy attached to the spacecraft body via a boom. 

Three months from now, once the commissioning phase is complete, NISAR will begin its observational runs, and beam radar data back to earth continuously. The National Remote Sensing Centre in Hyderabad, and Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, will process the respective L & S-band data independently, and archive them online for the world to see, all in a matter of few hours.

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Space & Physics

New double-slit experiment proves Einstein’s predictions were off the mark

Results from an idealized version of the Young double-slit experiment has upheld key predictions from quantum theory.

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Two individual atoms suspended in a vacuum chamber are illuminated by a laser beam, serving as the two slits. Scattered light interference is captured by a highly sensitive camera shown as a screen. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers/MIT
  • MIT physicists perform the most idealized double-slit experiment to date, using individual atoms as slits.
  • Experiment confirms the quantum duality of light: light behaves as both a particle and a wave, but both behaviors can’t be observed simultaneously.
  • Findings disprove Albert Einstein’s century-old prediction regarding detecting a photon’s path alongside its wave nature.

In a study published in Physical Reviews Letters on July 22, researchers at MIT have realized an idealized version of the famous double-slit experiment in quantum physics yet.

The double-slit experiment—first devised in 1801 by the British physicist Thomas Young—remains a perplexing aspect of reality. Light waves passing through two slits, form interference patterns on a wall placed behind. But this phenomenon is at odds with the fact light also behaves as particles. The contradiction has lent itself to a paradox, which sits at the foundation of quantum mechanics. It has sparked a historic scientific duel nearly a century ago, between physics heavyweights Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. The study’s findings have now settled the decades-old debate, showing Einstein’s predictions were off the mark.

Einstein had suggested that by detecting the force exerted when a photon passes through a slit—a nudge akin to a bird brushing past a leaf—scientists could witness both light’s wave and particle properties at once. Bohr countered with the argument that observing a photon’s path would inevitably erase its wave-like interference pattern, a tenet since embraced by quantum theory.

The MIT team stripped the experiment to its purest quantum elements. Using arrays of ultracold atoms as their slits and weak light beams to ensure only one photon scattered per atom, they tuned the quantum states of each atom to control the information gained about a photon’s journey. Every increase in “which-path” information reduced the visibility of the light’s interference pattern, flawlessly matching quantum theory and further debunking Einstein’s proposal.

“Einstein and Bohr would have never thought that this is possible, to perform such an experiment with single atoms and single photons,” study senior author and Nobel laureate, Wolfgang Ketterle, stated in a press release. “What we have done is an idealized Gedanken (thought) experiment.”

In a particularly stunning twist, Ketterle’s group also disproved the necessity of a physical “spring”—a fixture in Einstein’s original analogy—by holding their atomic lattice not with springs, but with light. When they briefly released the atoms, effectively making the slits “float” in space, the same quantum results persisted. “In many descriptions, the springs play a major role. But we show, no, the springs do not matter here; what matters is only the fuzziness of the atoms,” commented MIT researcher Vitaly Fedoseev in a media statement. “Therefore, one has to use a more profound description, which uses quantum correlations between photons and atoms.”

The paper arrives as the world prepares for 2025’s International Year of Quantum Science and Technology — marking 100 years since the birth of quantum mechanics. Yoo Kyung Lee, a fellow co-author, noted in a media statement, “It’s a wonderful coincidence that we could help clarify this historic controversy in the same year we celebrate quantum physics.”

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Researchers Uncover New Way to Measure Hidden Quantum Interactions in Materials

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Image credit: Pixabay

A team of MIT scientists has developed a theory-guided strategy to directly measure an elusive quantum property in semiconductors — the electron-phonon interaction — using an often-ignored effect in neutron scattering.

Their approach, published this week in Materials Today Physics, reinterprets an interference effect, typically considered a nuisance in experiments, as a valuable signal. This enables researchers to probe electron-phonon interactions — a key factor influencing a material’s thermal, electrical, and optical behaviour — which until now have been extremely difficult to measure directly.

“Rather than discovering new spectroscopy techniques by pure accident, we can use theory to justify and inform the design of our experiments and our physical equipment,” said Mingda Li, senior author and associate professor at MIT, in a media statement.

By engineering the interference between nuclear and magnetic interactions during neutron scattering, the team demonstrated that the resulting signal is directly proportional to the electron-phonon coupling strength.

“Being able to directly measure the electron-phonon interaction opens the door to many new possibilities,” said MIT graduate student Artittaya Boonkird.

While the current setup produced a weak signal, the findings lay the groundwork for next-generation experiments at more powerful facilities like Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s proposed Second Target Station. The team sees this as a shift in materials science — using theoretical insights to unlock previously “invisible” properties for a range of advanced technologies, from quantum computing to medical devices.

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