Dust to Doctors: Wireless Sensor Networks for Home Medical Care

Speaker:	Professor John A. STANKOVIC
		Department of Computer Science
		University of Virginia

Title:		"Dust to Doctors: Wireless Sensor Networks for Home
		 Medical Care"

Date:		Friday, 8 January, 2010

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theatre H
		(Chen Kuan Cheng Forum, near lifts 27/28), HKUST

Abstract:

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) composed of large numbers of small devices
(called motes or dust) can self-organize and be used for a wide variety of
applications. In particular, these systems can be used to improve the
quality of healthcare, be applied in the home, in continuous care
retirement communities or in large-scale assisted living facilities, and
significantly contribute to longitudinal studies. I will present,
AlarmNet, a novel testbed system for health care that uses a two-way flow
of data and analysis between front-end body networks, intermediate
environmental sensing and communication networks, and back-end context
aware protocols that are tailored to residents' individual living
patterns. In the back-end, programs have been implemented to determine
Circadian Activity Rhythms for patients and perform activity recognition.
These programs also infer medical issues such as depression. In this talk
I will describe the overall AlarmNet architecture, various front-end
(heterogeneous and multi-function) body networks, the intermediate
wireless sensor network, and the back-end analysis. Key research issues
and solutions addressed include: flexible and evolvable heterogeneous
configurations, privacy, robustly detecting falls, and a real-time query
system.


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Biography:

Professor John A. Stankovic is the BP America Professor in the Computer
Science Department at the University of Virginia. He served as Chair of
the department for 8 years. He is a Fellow of both the IEEE and the ACM.
He won the IEEE Real-Time Systems Technical Committee's Award for
Outstanding Technical Contributions and Leadership.  He also won the IEEE
Technical Committee on Distributed Processing's Distinguished Achievement
Award (inaugural winner). He has won four Best Paper awards, including one
for ACM SenSys 2006. He is ranked among the top 250 highly cited authors
in CS by Thomson Scientific Institute. He has given many Keynote talks at
conferences and in Distinguished Lecture series at major Universities.
Professor Stankovic also served on the Board of Directors of the Computer
Research Association for 9 years.  Before joining the University of
Virginia, Professor Stankovic taught at the University of Massachusetts
where he won an outstanding scholar award. He has also held visiting
positions in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon
University, at INRIA in France, and Scuola Superiore S. Anna in Pisa,
Italy. He was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Distributed
and Parallel Systems and was founder and co-editor-in-chief for the
Real-Time Systems Journal. He was General and Program Chair for many
conferences including ACM Sensys 2004 and ACM/IEEE IPSN 2006. His research
interests are in distributed computing, real-time systems, and wireless
sensor networks. He has built three sensor networks: VigilNet, a military
surveillance system funded by Darpa and now being constructed by
Northrup-Grumman, Luster, an environmental science system for measuring
the effect of sunlight on plant growth, and AlarmNet, an emulation of as
assisted living facility (smart home). Prof. Stankovic received his PhD
from Brown University.