Elahé Soltanaghai
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in CyLab working with Anthony Rowe. I received my PhD from the University of Virginia in 2019 working with my advisor Kamin Whitehouse. I also received my M.S. in computer engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2013.
My research interests span the areas of wireless sensing and networking with applications in Cyber-Physical Systems, and Internet of Things. I create the next generation of intelligent wireless systems that are faster, lower power, pervasive, and can even sense the physical environment. You can learn more about my Ph.D research here.
My recent work seeks to build a foundation for joint communication and sensing in wireless embedded systems of the future by applying signal processing and machine learning techniques to low-level RF signals.
I am always looking for motivated and creative B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. students, as well as Postdocs to join my group.
Find more information here!
News
12-2023: Selected as the Finalist for Junkosha’s Technology Innovator of the Year Award for our Innovations in microwave/mmWave technologies. New!!
10-2023: check out This news article featuring my undergrad course on IoT! New!!
11-2023: Received a research gift from Keysight for our research on forest sustainability. Thanks for supporting our research! New!!
05-2023: Receieved Best Demo Award Runner-up at IPSN (kudos to Daniel and Thomas).
05-2023: Our research on Powerline Bacskcatter featured in GetMobile Magazine.
04-2023: Receieved NCSA Faculty Fellowship for Scientific Visualization of Invisible Wireless Signals.
04-2023: Gave a talk in Saturday Engineering for Everyone on "Unleashing the invisible world of wireless signals."
03-2023: check out this news article featuring my course on Smart Citis, Homes, and Beyond! .
02-2023: My course on "Smart Cities, Homes, and Behond" ranked as Excellent by the Students in Fall'22.
01-2023: Our paper on sub-millimeter micro-displacement sensing with passive tags as phase carriers is accepted at IPSN 2023.
01-2023: Our paper on high resolution point clouds from commodity mmWave radars is accepted at ICRA 2023.
10-2022: Received a research gift from Keysight for our research on forest sustainability. Thanks for supporting our research!
08-2022: Received a seed funding from the US Forest Service for our research on wildfire sensing. Thanks for supporting our research!
05-2022: Received a research gift from T-Mobile. Thanks for supporting our research!
03-2022: Received the Google Research Scholar Award!
01-2022: Our paper on the Feasibility of building-scale power line backscatter communication is accepted at NSDI 2022.
12-2021: Thanks to Bosch Research for supporting our research!
08-2021: Named as one of the 10 Rising Star Women Worldwide in Networking and Communications. [News Article]
07-2021: Our paper on detecting and localizing hidden IoT devices is accepted at Usenix Security 2022.
03-2021: Serving at MobiCom 2021 as N2Women Co-Chair.
02-2021: Our MobiCom paper is available at this link, introducing an RF retro-reflective marker for immersive machine perception.
01-2021: Our paper on WiFi backscatter localization is accepted in IMWUT-UbiComp 2021 .
11-2020: Our mmWave Retro-reflector paper is accepted at Mobicom 2021 .
10-2020: Our paper on On-device WiFi Human Sensing with Domain Adaptive Models is accepted at BuildSys 2020.
10-2020: Invited to give a talk at SRC-CONIX annual event on emerging application os millimeter-wave wireless systems.
06-2020: Presented our research on MMWave Backscattering at SRC e-workshop .
06-2020: Received the ACM SIGMOBILE Doctoral Dissertation Award runner-up.
11-2019: Invited to visit Texas Instrument Kilby Innovation Technology Center Dallas site.
11-2019: Invited to visit Facebook's Data Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and discussions with the networking research team (link)
10-2019: Won the Research Pitch Competition at 2019 EECS Rising Stars workshop.
Research Overview
The thrusts of my research group's current work include:
- Millimeter-wave Radar Sensing and Communication: including mmWave retro-reflectors for automotive, mixed reality, and structural Health monitoring applications
- ML for Wireless: for adaptive Sensing and Communication
- Forest IoT: for sensing biomass and soil moisture through canopy
- Metaverse Technologies: such as Gaze-based Immersive Interactions in Virtual and Augmented Reality, Pose Estimation in Multi-User AR Sessions
Some of our completed research includes:
- WiFi Sensing and Localization by repurposing the pervasive wireless infrastructure for Human Sensing, Human Identification, Indoor Navigation, and finding hidden IoT devices.
- Backscatter Communication for Battery-free IoT: including WiFi Tags, and Power-line communication.
Teaching
CS 437: Topics in IoT [Fall'23]
CS 598: Smart Cities, Homes, Phones, and Beyond (Smart-X) [Spring'22] [Fall'22][Spring'24] (Listed in Teachers Ranked as Excellent)
ECE 18-648: Advanced Real-Time Embedded Systems [Fall'21]
CS 598: Smart Cities, Homes, Phones, and Beyond (Smart-X) [Spring'22] [Fall'22][Spring'24] (Listed in Teachers Ranked as Excellent)
ECE 18-648: Advanced Real-Time Embedded Systems [Fall'21]
