Beyond Wearables: The Rise of AI-Powered Invisible Health Tech

Speaker: Professor Dina Katabi
Thuan and Nicole Pham Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Director of MIT’s Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing
MIT

Title: Beyond Wearables: The Rise of AI-Powered Invisible Health Tech

Date: Wednesday, 27 August 2025

Time: 2:15pm - 3:15pm

Venue: Lecture Theater E (Cheung On Tak Lecture Theater), Chia-Wei Woo Academic Concourse, HKUST

Join Zoom Meeting: https://hkust.zoom.us/j/98484331565?pwd=gMigG9nnARYzEmanKjT4QemNxc7Gvn.1
Meeting ID: 984 8433 1565
Passcode: 537573

Abstract:

Healthcare still relies on episodic, clinic-based measurements, leaving blind spots between visits when symptoms evolve and can lead to disease exacerbations. Continuous, in-home monitoring is essential, yet today’s dominant approach—wearables—often falters where it matters most: older adults adopt them slowly, and even younger users tend to abandon devices when feeling unwell.

I will present Emerald, an AI-driven, contactless home sensing platform that resembles a Wi-Fi router. Emerald emits low-power wireless signals and analyzes their reflections using advanced AI models to recover rich physiological information without on-body sensors or user effort, including respiration, motor symptoms, sleep and even EEG. This passive, always-on design improves adherence and reveals longitudinal trajectories that episodic care misses.

I will show how Emerald enables early screening for conditions such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, tracks symptom dynamics, and quantifies medication response—including the effectiveness of antidepressants. Our vision is a future in which ambient, AI-powered sensing is a standard home capability, shifting care from reactive to proactive and improving health and well-being.

Biography:

Dina Katabi is the Thuan and Nicole Pham Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and the director of MIT’s Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing. Katabi is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Katabi received her Ph.D. and Master’s degrees from MIT, and her B.S. from Damascus University. Her research focuses on innovations in digital health, wireless sensing, and applied machine learning. Dr. Katabi’s research has been recognized with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Prize in Computing, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, two ACM SIGCOMM and one ACM SIGMOBILE Test of Time Awards, the Faculty Research Innovation Fellowship, a Sloan Research Fellowship, the NBX Career Development Chair, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Her students twice received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in computer science and engineering. Her work was also recognized with the IEEE William R. Bennett Prize, three ACM SIGCOMM Best Paper awards, a Networked Systems Design and Implementation Best Paper award, and a TR10 award. Several startups have been spun out of Katabi’s lab, including PiCharging and Emerald.