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Bashima Islam

Assistant Professor of ECE, CS, & DS
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering with an affiliated position at the Compter Science Department, and Data Science Department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. I will direct the Bringing Awareness through Systems for Humans Lab (BASH Lab).

My mission is to enable individuals, caregivers, and clinicians to understand and act on continuous multimodal sensor data that captures everyday human behavior. I build ubiquitous AI systems that learn from motion, audio, physiological, and ambient signals to generate insights that support behavioral well-being. My work spans key layers of the intelligence stack for real-world sensing, including multimodal representation learning, natural-language interaction, and resource-constrained inference on edge devices. I develop signal-processing informed neural architectures and sensor-grounded language models that reason about the physical and physiological processes underlying behavior, alongside edge machine learning methods designed for computation, energy, memory, time, and privacy constraints. These integrated efforts support applications such as infant development, sleep and self-regulation, and the dynamics of attention and emotional clarity during mindfulness practice.


After recieving my B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2016, I finished my Ph.D. in Computer Science under the supervision of Prof. Shahriar Nirjon at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in 2021. After that, I have spent a year as a a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate working with Prof. Romit Roy Choudhury and Prof. Nancy McElwain at University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

News:
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  • 2022

    • Our paper Protean: An Energy-Efficient and Heterogeneous Platform for Adaptive and Hardware-Accelerated Battery-free Computing got published in SenSys 2022.
    • Our poster Poster Abstract: Studying the Security Threats of Partially Processed Deep Neural Inference Data in an IoT Device got published in SenSys 2022.
    • Started at Worcester Polytechnic Institute as an Assistant Professor from August 2022.
    • Taught WPI Summer Frontier Course for Pre-Collegiate Outreach.
    • Our paper Cyber-Physical Verification of Intermittently Powered Embedded Systems got published at EMSOFT 2022.

  • 2021

    • Featured in Forbes 30 under 30 for contribution in Science 2021.
    • Paper on BreathTrack: Detecting Regular Breathing Phases from Unannotated Acoustic Data got accepted in IMWUT/UbiComp 2021.
    • Started at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate from June 2021.
    • Accepted a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Joining from Fall 2022.
    • Defended my dissertation "Scheduling Tasks on Intermittently-Powered Real-Time Systems" on April 1.
    • Giving a talk at the Auburn University (CSSE) on March 30 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (CS) on March 24 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at the University of Utah on March 16 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at the University of Texas Austin (ECE) on March 10 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at the Worchester Polytechnic Institute (ECE) on March 8 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at Vanderbilt University (EECS) on March 2 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at Northwestern University (CS) on February 22 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at Syracuse University (EECS) on February 18 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Giving a talk at Carnegie Mellon University (ECE) on January 25 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.

  • 2020

    • Giving a talk at Portland State University (CS) on December 16 on Computing on the Extreme Edge.
    • Invited to give a talk at Northwestern University on December 9.
    • Invited to give a talk at Georgia Institute of Technology on October 26 on Zygarde: Time-Sensitive On-Device Deep Inference and Adaptationon Intermittently-Powered Systems.
    • Session Chair of BuildSys 2020 and ENSsys 2020 in conjunction with ACM SenSys.
    • Selected for the EECS Rising Stars, 2020 at UC Berkley.
    • Selected for ACM CRA-WP Career Mentoring Workshop, 2020.
    • I became the finalist of the prestigious Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student Award, UbiComp 2020.
    • We got the Best Presentation, Judges Award at UbiComp 2020.
    • Successfully finished my internship at Digital Health Lab in Samsung Research America.
    • Two papers co-authored with Digital Health Lab, SRA on breath monitoring and time synchronization for cough monitoring got accepted in ICMI 2020.
    • My work on Time-Sensitive On-Device Deep Inference in Intermittent Systems got accepted in IMWUT/UBICOMP'20.
    • Our work on Intelligent Charger got accepted in IEEE Design & Test.
    • My paper on Real-Time Intermittent Systems got accepted in RTAS 2020.
    • Our paper on Intermittent Learning got accepted in IMWUT-UbiComp 2020.

  • 2019

    • Our work on Pedestrian Safety got featured in IEEE Sprectrum.
    • I will present my poster(IPSN) and WiP(RTAS) on Intermittent Intelligence in CPS-IoT Week 2019.
    • My WiP on Indoor Localization with LORA got accepted in PerCom 2019.

  • 2018

    • Our paper on Real-Time LORAWAN got accepted in DCOSS 2018.
    • My papers on Approximate 3D Reconstruction got accepted in IPSN 2018.
    • My papers on Passive BLE Localization got accepted in MMSys 2018.
    • Two of our papers got accepted in IoTDI 2018.
    • We have received Runner-Up Best App Award and Best Presentation Award in VNC 2018.

  • 2017

    • I have received Best Intern Presentation Award at Nokia Bell Labs.
    • I have received MobiSys N2Women Young Researcher Fellowship.
    • Our paper on Privacy-Aware Homehub Devices got accepted in MobiSys 2017.

  • 2016

    • We received Best Demo Runner Up Award for our work on Pedestrian Safety in SenSys 2016.

Professional Activities:

Faculty Advisor: WPI Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Program Committees Chair: ISWC-IMWUT, ENSys, IASA-MobiSys

Publication Chair: IPSN

Program Committees: IPSN, SenSys, MobiCom, EuroSys, EWSN, IoTDI, ICDCS, ISWC-IMWUT, DigiBiom Workshop, DATA Workshop, ENSys, LPIoT Workshop, SenSys Poster-Demo Session

General Chair: SigComm N2Women Workshop (2023), ENSSys Workshop (2023, 2022)

Education.

.
  • 2021

    Ph.D. in Computer Science

    UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

  • 2016

    B.Sc. in Computer Science & Engineering

    BANGLADESH UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

Award.

• Forbes 30 under 30 (Science) 2021.

• EECS Rising Star, University of California Berkley 2020.

• Finalist Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student Award, UBICOMP/ISWC 2020.

• Best Presentation, Judge's Award, UBICOMP 2020.

• Runner-Up Best App Award & Best Presentation Award, VNC 2018.

• Best Summer Intern Presentation Award, Nokia Bell Labs 2017.

• N2Women Young Researcher Fellowship Award, MobiSys 2017.

• Runner-Up Best Demo Award, SenSys 2016.

• World Finalist & National Champion, Microsoft Imagine Cup 2013.

Research.

Mind Meets Machine: AI Transforming Behavioral Health

Leveraging artificial intelligence to revolutionize behavioral health, providing innovative tools for diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment to improve developmental and mental well-being.

Sensing the Future: Bridging Sensors and Language Intelligence

Exploring the synergy between sensor data and large language models to create intelligent systems that understand and interpret the world through a fusion of modalities.

Tiny Power, Big Impact: ML for Sustainable Edge Innovation

Pioneering the development of efficient machine learning algorithms for ultra-low-power edge devices (specially battery-free devices), enabling intelligent sensing in resource-constrained environments.

Research Funding

Current research funding supporting our work in AI, machine learning, and ubiquitous computing across multiple federal agencies and industry partners.

Transforming AI with sensor fusion, speech intelligence, edge TinyML for sustainability, and breakthroughs in behavioral health.

Research Collaborators

Partnering with leading institutions worldwide to advance research in AI, machine learning, and ubiquitous computing.

Publications.

View All Publications

Teaching.

Contact.

Email

bislam@wpi.edu

Office Address

Atwater Kent Lab, Room 310
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
100 Institute Rd
Worcester, MA 01609