About

Nhat (Nick) Pham, Research Associate, University of Oxford, UK


Nhat Pham is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford. His DPhil (PhD) study was on "Intelligent physiological sensing wearables". The study was supervised by Prof. Niki Trigoni, Prof. Andrew Markam, and Prof. Tam Vu and funded by the University of Oxford DPhil Scholarship. He received his M.Sc. in Computer Science and B.Eng. in Computer Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2018 and Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) in 2015, respectively. He is the recipient of CACM Research Highlight 2021, ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight 2020, ACM GetMobile Research Highlight 2019, and the Best Paper Award at ACM MobiCom'19. His research interests include Intelligent Wearables for Healthcare and Well-being, Edge-AI and On-chip Computing.

News

  • ★ Feb. 2023: I am going to join the School of Computer Science and Informatics at Cardiff University as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2023.
  • ★ Feb. 2023: I am teaching the Internet of Things module for the AIMS CDT program this term. The course website could be found here.
  • ★ Feb. 2023: I have successfully defended my DPhil (PhD) thesis on "Enabling human physiological sensing by leveraging intelligent head-worn wearable systems". Special thanks to my advisors (Prof. Tam Vu, Prof. Niki Trigoni, and Prof. Andrew Markham) for the memorable journey and to my assessors (Prof. Ronald Clark and Prof. Alastair Beresford) for the enjoyable and valuable discussion!
  • ★ Oct. 2022: I am going to give a talk on "Robust Sensing and Efficient Computing for Intelligent Biosignal-based Earables" at the Tutorial on Earable Computing (MobiCom'22). Please join us!
  • ★ Sep. 2022: I am transitioning to a postdoctoral research assistant position working on the ACE-OPS project from Oct. 2022!
  • ★ Aug. 2022: Our PROS and IoTree papers are officially accepted to MobiCom'22 after a rigorous shepherding round!
  • ★ Jun. 2022: Two papers are conditionally accepted to ACM MobiCom 2022!
  • ★ May. 2022: I am invited to serve in the Shadow Program Committee of ACM SenSys 2022!
  • ★ Jan. 2022: Our research in the Earable project is seeing its impacts on the world as Earable Inc. closes an equity financing round of ~$8M.
  • ★ Jul. 2021: Our eBP paper is published as a Research Highlight article in the Communications of the ACM 2021! Prof. Josiah D. Hester provides a great technical perspective article on the eBP project!
  • ★ Jun. 2021: Our Microsleep detection paper is accepted to IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing!
  • ★ Sep. 2020: Our DroneScale paper is accepted to ACM Sensys 2020!
  • ★ Jul. 2020: Our eBP paper receives ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlights Award 2020!
  • ★ Jun. 2020: Our Review on Epileptic Seizure are accepted to Frontiers in Neurology Journal!
  • ★ Apr. 2020: I'm going to join the Cyber-Physical Systems group at the University of Oxford, UK this Fall!
  • ★ Mar. 2020: Our WAKE and Painometry papers are accepted to ACM Mobisys 2020!
  • ★ Jan. 2020: Our eBP paper is invited for ACM GetMobile Research Highlights!
  • ★ Oct. 2019: Our eBP paper received Best Paper Award at ACM Mobicom 2019!
  • ★ Jun. 2019: Our Earable biosensing platform demo is presented at ACM Mobisys 2019!
  • ★ Jun. 2019: Our eBP paper is accepted to ACM Mobicom 2019!
  • ★ Apr. 2019: Our Earable biosensing platform demo won CU Boulder Get Seed Funding!
  • ★ Apr. 2019: Our Earable biosensing platform demo is presented at CU's Atlas Expo and ITLL Engineering Expo!
  • ★ Apr. 2019: Our Earable biosensing platform demo is accepted to ACM Mobisys 2019!
  • ★ Aug. 2018: I officially join MNS Lab family.

    • Publications

    Conference Proceedings

  • PROS: an Efficient Pattern-Driven Compressive Sensing Framework for Low-Power Biopotential-based Wearables with On-chip Intelligence. [Slides] [Video]
    ACM MobiCom 2022 - The 28th ACM Intl’ Conf. on Mobile Computing and Networking.
    Nhat Pham, Hong Jia, Minh Tran, Tuan Dinh, Nam Bui, Young Kwon, Dong Ma, Phuc Nguyen, Cecilia Mascolo, Tam Vu.
    (56 out of 314 submissions, acceptance ratio: 17.8%)

  • IoTree: A Battery-free Wearable System with Biocompatible Sensors for Continuous Tree Health Monitoring. [Slides] [Video]
    ACM MobiCom 2022 - The 28th ACM Intl’ Conf. on Mobile Computing and Networking.
    Tuan Dang, Trung Tran, Khang Nguyen, Tien Pham, Nhat Pham, Tam Vu, and Phuc Nguyen.
    (56 out of 314 submissions, acceptance ratio: 17.8%)

  • DroneScale: Drone Load Estimation Via Remote Passive RF Sensing.
    ACM SenSys 2020 - The 18th ACM Intl' Conf. on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems.
    Phuc Nguyen, Vimal Kakaraparthi, Nam Bui, Nikshep Umamahesh, Nhat Pham, Hoang Truong, Yeswanth Guddeti, Dinesh Bharadia, Eric Frew, Richard Han, Daniel Massey, Tam Vu.
    (44 out of 213 submissions, acceptance ratio: 20.7%)

  • WAKE: A Behind-the-ear Wearable System for Microsleep Detection. [Slides] [Video]
    ACM MobiSys 2020 - The 18th ACM Intl' Conf. on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services.
    Nhat Pham, Tuan Dinh, Zohreh Raghebi, Taeho Kim, Nam Bui, Phuc Nguyen, Hoang Truong, Farnoush Banaei-Kashani, Ann Halbower, Thang Dinh, and Tam Vu.
    (34 out of 175 submissions, acceptance ratio: 19.4%)

  • Painometry: Wearable and Objective Quantification System for Acute Postoperative Pain. [Video]
    ACM MobiSys 2020 - The 18th ACM Intl' Conf. on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services.
    H. Truong, N. Bui, Z. Raghebi, M. Ceko, N. Pham, P. Nguyen, A. Nguyen, T. Kim, K. Siegfried, E. Stene, T. Tvrdy, L. Weinman, T. Payne, D. Burke, T. Dinh, S. D'Mello, F. Banaei-Kashani, T. Wager, P. Goldstein, and T. Vu.
    (34 out of 175 submissions, acceptance ratio: 19.4%)

  • eBP: A Wearable System For Frequentand Comfortable Blood Pressure Monitoring From User’s Ear. [Slides] [Video]
    ACM MobiCom 2019 - The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking.
    Nam Bui, Nhat Pham, Jessica Jacqueline Barnitz, Zhanan Zou, Phuc Nguyen, Hoang Truong, Taeho Kim, Nicholas Farrow, Anh Nguyen, Jianliang Xiao, Robin Deterding, Thang Dinh and Tam Vu.
    (55 out of 290 submissions, acceptance ratio: 18.9%).
    Best Paper Award
    GetMobile Research Highlight 2019
    ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight 2020
    Communications of the ACM Research Highlight 2021

  • MSHCS-MAC: A MAC protocol for Multi-hop cognitive radio networks based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach. [Slides]
    IEEE ISCC 2018 - 23th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Natal, Brazil, Jun. 2018.
    Nhat Pham, Kiwoong Kwon, and Daeyoung Kim.

  • Oliot-OpenCity: Open Standard Interoperable Smart City Platform.
    IEEE ISC2 2018 - IEEE International Smart Cities Conference, Kansas City, Missouri, USA, Sep. 2018.
    Yalew k. Tolcha, Hoang Minh Nguyen, Jawook Byun, Kiwoong Kwon, Jiyong Han, Wondeuk Yoon, Nakyung Lee, Hyunseob Kim, Nhat Pham, and Daeyoung Kim.

  • GS1 Global Smart Parking System: One Architecture to Unify Them All. [Slides]
    IEEE SCC 2017 - 14th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Jun. 2017.
    Nhat Pham, Muhammad Hassan, Hoang Minh Nguyen and Daeyoung Kim.

  • IsV2C: An Integrated Road Traffic-Network-Cloud Simulator for V2C Connected Car Services.
    IEEE SCC 2017 - 14th IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Jun. 2017.
    Heejae Kim, Jiyong Han, Seonghwan Kim, Jisoo Choi, Dongsik Yoon, Minsu Jeon, Eunjoo Yang, Nhat Pham, Sungpil Woo, Daeyoung Kim and Chan-Hyun Youn

  • Towards an Open Framework for Home Automation Development. [Slides] [Demo]
    IEEE ACOMP 2015 - 14th IEEE Intl' Conf. on Services Computing, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, Nov. 2015.
    Dang-Nhat Pham-Huu, Van-Hien Nguyen, Van-Anh Trinh, Van-Hieu Bui, and Hoang-Anh Pham.

    • Journals

  • Detection of Microsleep Events with a Behind-the-ear Wearable System.
    IEEE TMC - IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (IF: 5.577, preprint).
    Nhat Pham, Tuan Dinh, Taeho Kim, Zohreh Raghebi, Nam Bui, Hoang Truong, Tuan Nguyen, Farnoush Banaei-Kashani, Ann Halbower, Thang Dinh, Phuc Nguyen, and Tam Vu.

  • eBP: an ear-worn device for frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring.
    ACM CACM - Communications of the ACM, Vol. 64, No. 8, Aug. 2021.
    Nam Bui, Nhat Pham, Jessica Jacqueline Barnitz, Zhanan Zou, Phuc Nguyen, Hoang Truong, Taeho Kim, Nicholas Farrow, Anh Nguyen, Jianliang Xiao, Robin Deterding, Thang Dinh and Tam Vu.
    Research Highlight

  • eBP: Frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring from inside human's ears.
    ACM GetMobile - Mobile Computing and Communications, Vol. 23, Iss. 4, Dec. 2019.
    Nam Bui, Nhat Pham, Hoang Truong, Phuc Nguyen, J. Xiao, Robin Deterding, and Tam Vu.
    Research Highlight

  • Epileptic Seizure Detection and Experimental Treatment: A Review
    Frontiers in Neurology, Jul. 2020.
    Taeho Kim, Phuc Nguyen, Nhat Pham, Nam Bui, Hoang Truong, Sangtae Ha, Tam Vu.

  • MSHCS-MAC: A MAC for Multi-hop Cognitive Radio Networks Based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing Approach with Time Synchronization.
    KICS - The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences, Vol. 43, No. 11, Nov. 2018.
    Won-Deuk Yoon, Nhat Pham, Ki-Woong Kwon, Jang-Gwan Im, Dae-Young Kim.

    • Invited Papers, Workshops, and Demos

  • Invited Paper: Hierarchical Activity Recognition with Smartwatch IMU.
    ACM ICDCN 2023 - 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking.
    Ada Alevizaki, Nhat Pham, and Niki Trigoni.

  • Demo: IoTree - A Battery-free Wearable System with Biocompatible Sensors for Continuous Tree Health Monitoring.
    ACM MobiCom 2022 - The 28th ACM Intl' Conf. on Mobile Computing and Networking.
    Tuan Dang, Trung Tran, Khang Nguyen, Tien Pham, Nhat Pham, Tam Vu, and Phuc Nguyen.

  • Demo: Earable - An Ear-Worn Biosignal Sensing Platform for Cognitive State Monitoring and Human-Computer Interaction. [Video]
    ACM MobiSys 2019 - 17th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services.
    Nhat Pham, Taeho Kim, Frederick M Thayer, Anh Nguyen, and Tam Vu.

  • GS1 Global Smart Parking System: Integrated architecture that provides interoperability of global systems.
    KCC 2017 - Korea Computer Congress 2017, Jeju, Korea, Jul. 2017.
    Nhat Pham, Sungpil Woo, Muhammad Hassan, Hoang Minh Nguyen and Daeyoung Kim.

    • Research

    PROS: an Efficient Pattern-Driven Compressive Sensing Framework for Low-Power Biopotential-based Wearables with On-chip Intelligence.

    ACM MobiCom 2022

    Nhat Pham, Hong Jia, Minh Tran, Tuan Dinh, Nam Bui, Young Kwon, Dong Ma, Phuc Nguyen, Cecilia Mascolo, and Tam Vu.

    This study proposes PROS, an efficient pattern-driven compressive sensing framework for low-power biopotential-based wearables. PROS eliminates the conventional trade-off between signal quality, response time, and power consumption by introducing tiny pattern recognition primitives and a pattern-driven compressive sensing technique that exploits the sparsity of biosignals. Specifically, we (1) develop tiny machine learning models to eliminate irrelevant biosignal patterns, (2) efficiently perform compressive sampling of relevant biosignals with appropriate sparse wavelet domains, and (3) optimize hardware and OS operations to push processing efficiency.


    IoTree: A Battery-free Wearable System with Biocompatible Sensors for Continuous Tree Health Monitoring

    ACM MobiCom 2022

    Tuan Dang, Trung Tran, Khang Nguyen, Tien Pham, Nhat Pham, Tam Vu, and Phuc Nguyen.

    We present a low-maintenance, wind-powered, batteryfree, biocompatible, tree wearable, and intelligent sensing system, namely IoTree, to monitor water and nutrient levels inside a living tree. IoTree system includes tiny-size, biocompatible, and implantable sensors that continuously measure the impedance variations inside the living tree’s xylem, where water and nutrients are transported from the root to the upper parts.


    Detection of Microsleep Events with a Behind-the-ear Wearable System

    IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing 2021 (IF=5.6)

    N. Pham, T. Dinh, Z. Raghebi, T. Kim, N. Bui, P. Nguyen, H. Truong, F. Banaei-Kashani, A. Halbower, T. Dinh, and T. Vu.

    This study explores the challenges of building a novel wearable sensing device for microsleep detection situated only behind the ears. We evaluate the system with our custom-built prototype on 19 subjects and obtain 76% precision and 85% recall, showing the feasibility of microsleep detection on unseen subjects.


    DroneScale: Drone Load Estimation Via Remote Passive RF Sensing

    ACM SenSys 2020

    P. Nguyen, V. Kakaraparthi, N. Bui, N. Umamahesh, N. Pham, H. Truong, Y. Guddeti, D. Bharadia, E. Frew, R. Han, D. Massey, T. Vu.

    DroneScale is a novel passive RF system that monitors the wireless signals transmitted by commercial drones and then confirms their models and loads. Its key technical contribution is a proposed technique to passively capture vibration at high resolution (i.e., 1Hz vibration) from afar, which was not possible before.


    Epileptic Seizure Detection and Experimental Treatment: A Review

    Frontiers in Neurology 2020

    Taeho Kim, Phuc Nguyen, Nhat Pham, Nam Bui, Hoang Truong, Sangtae Ha, Tam Vu.

    This article discusses recent advances in seizure sensing, signal processing, time- or frequency-domain analysis, and classification algorithms to detect and classify seizure stages. We also show a strong potential for applying recent advancements in non-invasive brain stimulation technology to treat seizures.


    WAKE - A Behind-the-ear Wearable System for Microsleep Detection

    ACM MobiSys 2020

    N. Pham, T. Dinh, Z. Raghebi, T. Kim, N. Bui, P. Nguyen, H. Truong, F. Banaei-Kashani, A. Halbower, T. Dinh, and T. Vu.

    WAKE is a novel wearable device that detects microsleep by monitoring biosignals from the brain, eye movements, facial muscle contractions, and sweat gland activities from behind the user’s ears. To ensure real-world reliability, WAKE introduces a Three-fold Cascaded Amplifying technique to tame the motion artifacts and environmental noises.


    Painometry - Wearable and objective quantification system for acute postoperative pain

    ACM MobiSys 2020

    H. Truong, N. Bui, Z. Raghebi, M. Ceko, N. Pham, P. Nguyen, A. Nguyen, T. Kim, et al.

    Painometry is a wearable system for objective quantification of users’ pain perception based on multiple physiological signals and facial expressions. The lightweight form factor and a minimal number of sensors enable the mobility of Painometry and its capability as a daily wearable device.


    Earable Computing - An Ear-Worn Biosignal Sensing Platform

    ACM MobiSys 2019 Demo

    Nhat Pham, Taeho Kim, Frederick M Thayer, Anh Nguyen, and Tam Vu.

    Earable is a novel ear-worn biosensing platform for cognitive state quantification and human-computer interaction. Earable can capture biosignal, including brain waves activities, eyes movements, and facial muscle contractions from the back of the ears. Its form-factor is also convenient to use in everyday life.


    eBP - Blood Pressure Measurement from inside the ear

    ACM MobiCom 2019 Best Paper. ACM SIGMOBILE 2020, GetMobile 2019, CACM 2021 Research Highlights

    N. Bui, N. Pham, J. Barnitz, Z. Zou, P. Nguyen, H. Truong, T. Kim, N. Farrow, A. Nguyen, J. Xiao, R. Deterding, T. Dinh and T. Vu.

    eBP is a novel wearable that can measure blood pressure from inside the user’s ear. It aims to minimize the measurement’s impact on users’ normal activities while maximizing its comfort.


    MSHCS-MAC: A MAC protocol for Multi-hop cognitive radio networks based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach

    IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications 2018 (Master's Thesis)

    Nhat Pham, Kiwoong Kwon, and Daeyoung Kim.

    MSHCS-MAC is a Cognitive Radio MAC protocol for multi-hop networks based on the Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach. MSHCS-MAC supports multi-hop communication without a dedicated control channel and multiple transceivers. It also integrates essential features such as bootstrapping, multi-channel operation, cooperative spectrum sensing, and time synchronization.


    GS1 Global Smart Parking System: One Architecture to Unify Them All

    IEEE International Conference on Services Computing 2017

    Nhat Pham, Muhammad Hassan, Hoang Minh Nguyen and Daeyoung Kim.

    This study aims to open the discussion to realize a global and common base for smart parking services by proposing a global system based on the GS1 standard. Our proposed architecture could be used globally and easily extended with different services by utilizing common and global standards.


    Towards an Open Framework for Home Automation Development

    IEEE ACOMP 2015 (Undergraduate Research)

    Dang-Nhat Pham-Huu, Van-Hien Nguyen, Van-Anh Trinh, Van-Hieu Bui, and Hoang-Anh Pham.

    This project proposes a framework for developing a home automation system based on an IPv6 personal area network protocol (6LoWPAN). The framework can automatically perform the appropriate actions based on user-predefined scenarios and provides runtime configurations without reprogramming or resetting the whole system.


    Experience

    Research Experience

  • Oct. 2022 - present: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cyber-Physical Systems group, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Aug. 2018 - Aug. 2020: Graduate Research Assistant, Mobile and Networked Systems Lab, CU Boulder, USA.
  • Mar. 2018 - Jul. 2018: Researcher, Real-time and embedded systems lab, KAIST, South Korea.

    • Teaching Experience

  • Hilary 2023: Internet of Things, Lecturer, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Michaelmas 2021: Operating Systems, Teaching Assistant, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Hilary & Trinity 2021: Digital Systems, Teaching Assistant/Tutor, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Hilary 2021: Concurrent Programming, Tutor, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Michaelmas 2020: Linear Algebra, Tutor, University of Oxford, UK.
  • Fall 2015: Data and computer communication, Associate Lecturer, HCMUT, Vietnam.
  • Spring 2015: Embedded systems, Associate Lecturer, HCMUT, Vietnam.

    • Professional Experience

  • Mar. 2015 - Jul. 2015: Embedded Software Engineer, FPT Software, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
  • Jul. 2014 - Sept. 2015: Embedded Software Intern, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
  • Sept. 2014 - Jun. 2015: Kernel Maintainer, RIOT-OS (The friendly Operating System for the Internet of Things).
  • Jul. 2014: Student participant, 2014 Intel Cup Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.

    • Education

  • 2020-present: DPhil student in Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK.
  • 2018-2020: Ph.D. student in Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder, USA (Transferred to Oxford).
  • 2016-2018: M.Sc. in Computer Science, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea.
  • 2010-2015: B.E. in Computer Engineering, Vietnam National University - University of Technology (HCMUT), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

    • Awards & Recognitions

  • 2020-2023: University of Oxford DPhil Scholarship.
  • 2021: Communication of the ACM Research Highlight.
  • 2020: ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight.
  • 2019: ACM GetMobile Research Highlight.
  • 2019: Best Paper Award, ACM MobiCom 2019.
  • 2016-2018: KAIST Graduate Scholarship, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
  • October 2015: Honda Young Engineers and Scientists - Top 30 applicants, Vietnam.
  • April 2015: Silver graduation medal, HCMUT, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
  • 2011: Odon Vallet's Fellowship, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
  • 2009, 2010: Odon Vallet's Fellowship, Thua Thien Hue, Vietnam.

    • Collections

    These are my collected blogs from various sources on many aspects of being in academia and beyond.

    PhD's life

  • Randy Pausch, "The Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."
  • Ronald T. Azuma, "So long, and thanks for the Ph.D.!"
  • David Kotz, "You too can write a bad MobiSys paper, a tongue-in-cheek set of tips for writing a good systems paper."
  • Roy Levin, David Redell, "An evaluation of the ninth SOSP submissions or how (and how not) to write a good systems paper."

    • Beyond the PhD time

  • David Evans, "How to Live in Paradise."
  • Karen Kelsky, "Academia as Identity – a UK/US Comparison."

    • Favourites (outside of academia)

    I enjoy movies, animations, novels and am a big fan of StarWars, Westworld, The Chronicles of Narnia, Ratatouille, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Harrison Ford, and many more.

  • "An old friend once told me something that gave me great comfort. Something he had read. He said that Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin never died. They simply became music.", Dr. Ford (Westworld).

  • "I've always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us become the people we dreamed of being. Lies that told a deeper truth.", Dr. Ford (Westworld).

  • "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." Anton Ego (Ratatouille).

  • "The bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." Anton Ego (Ratatouille).