Abstract
Wearable devices are increasingly central to health monitoring, authentication, and ubiquitous computing. Yet they remain fundamentally constrained by the limitations of battery capacity and wireless connectivity. This talk explores a new class of systems that treat human tissue not merely as a substrate, but as a medium for both power delivery and data communication.
I will present the design and implementation of capacitive backscatter systems that enable low-power devices to communicate across the body surface—supporting identification, sensing, and interaction without relying on active radios or batteries. These systems use the body’s capacitive and conductive properties to create energy-efficient, secure, and scalable interfaces for devices that are either continuously worn or intermittently used.
The talk will detail system architecture, signal models, circuit design, and experimental evaluation, while also situating this work within a broader vision for energy-autonomous wearable computing. I’ll conclude by discussing future directions in runtime support, multi-device coordination, and sustainable sensing architectures that build on this foundation.
Biography
Jeremy Gummeson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research spans wearable sensing, low power embedded systems, energy harvesting, and wireless communication, with a particular emphasis on enabling long-term, battery-free operation of devices in real-world settings. His work combines hardware design, communication protocols, and system-level integration to support emerging applications in health monitoring, ubiquitous computing, and sustainable sensing.
Jeremy’s research has been published in premier venues such as ACM SenSys, MobiSys, SIGCOMM, NSDI, and IMWUT, and has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, among others. He is a co-inventor on multiple U.S. patents and has prior industry research experience at HP Labs and Disney Research.
In addition to his research, Jeremy is an active member of the academic community. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on the Internet of Things, and has held major leadership roles including General Co-Chair of ACM SenSys 2022, Technical Program Committee Chair for ACM HotMobile 2023, and Program Co-Chair for ACM/IEEE IPSN 2024 and SenSys 2026. He regularly serves on the TPCs of top-tier conferences and has contributed to initiatives in embedded systems, wireless sensing, and the future of ubiquitous computing.
