Yasha Iravantchi

A portrait iamge of me. I am wearing glasses and a blue shirt.

I am on the job market and am eager to hear about opportunities in both academic and industry research positions, so please don't hesitate to reach out!
Links to my statements below:
Research Statement
Teaching Statement
DEI Statement

Hello there! I am Yasha Iravantchi, a CSE Ph.D. Candidate at University of Michigan EECS, a 2022 Meta PhD Research Fellow, and a 2024 Rackham Predoctoral Fellow. I am advised by Alanson Sample. My committee members include Kang G. Shin, Gregory Abowd, Nikola Banovic, and Anna Kratz.

My research incorporates Privacy by Design (PbD) principles at the device level to create sensors that provide user privacy guarantees while supporting valuable interactive and ubiquitous AI-driven sensing applications, such as continuous remote health monitoring and activity inferencing. Please see my CV and Google Scholar for more information. A taxonomy of my research can be found below:

A figure showing my research taxonomy, with three overlapping circles corresponding to privacy, sensing, and interaction.

Recent and Upcoming Travel:
- November 18-22: MobiCom '24, Washington, D.C. (check out Polaris!)
Recent and Upcoming Talks:
- Invited Talk: UCLA 10/22/24 (Thanks Yang!)
- Invited Talk: University of Chicago 8/19/24 (Thanks Pedro!)

SoK Accepted to PETS

SoK Accepted to PETS

As the number of smart devices increases in our lives, the data they collect to perform valuable tasks, such as voice assistant requests, comes at the cost of user privacy. To mitigate their privacy impact, emerging usable privacy-aware sensing (UPAS) research has relied on cross-disciplinary approaches that extend past the...

Polaris Presented at MobiCom

Polaris Presented at MobiCom

Fiducial marking is indispensable in mobile robots, including their pose calibration, contextual perception, and navigation. However, existing fiducial markers rely solely on vision-based perception which suffers such limitations as occlusion, energy overhead, and privacy leakage. We present Polaris, the first vision-free fiducial marking system, based on a novel, full-stack magnetic...

MagDesk Accepted to IMWUT

MagDesk Accepted to IMWUT

Accurate and responsive 3D tracking enables interactive and context-aware workspaces, including mixed reality 3D interfaces and collaborative tangible interactions. However, limitations of current tracking mechanisms - line-of-sight occlusion, drifting errors, small working volumes, or instrumentation that requires maintenance - ultimately restrict their adoption. This paper introduces MagDesk, an interactive tabletop...

PrivacyLens Presented at PETS

PrivacyLens Presented at PETS

Internet-connected cameras support many useful home monitoring and health applications. However, these same cameras indiscriminately capture sensitive and Personally Identifiable Information (PII), limiting their acceptance in certain settings, such as the home. Prior works removed Region of Interest (ROI) to secure images and improve privacy. However, the methods that rely...

SAW ECG Presented at EMBC

SAW ECG Presented at EMBC

Effective means of enabling single-lead, non-intrusive, and dry electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements offer the potential for prolonged cardiac rhythm monitoring of mobile users in non-clinical environments. However, existing ECG measurement approaches require accurate electrode placement, cumbersome wiring, and require users to be stationary. Alternatively, current heart sound-based approaches such as phonocardiograms...

T4Train Course at CHI

T4Train Course at CHI

Pairing real-time ML with sensor data drives many interactive applications. However, the tools to prototype these applications are often proprietary and not open-source. This course instructs how to build interactive sensing applications using T4Train, an open-source and user-friendly framework for rapid prototyping. Participants will learn sensor interfaces (e.g., on a...

2024 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

2024 Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship

The Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship is an honor given to doctoral candidates with an outstanding record of achievement and who have demonstrated exceptional progress toward completing their dissertation. Awarded to a select group of PhD students annually, the fellowship recognizes individuals based on the results of their research, as well as...

METRO Presented at SenSys

METRO Presented at SenSys

Road surface markings, like symbols and line markings, are vital traffic infrastructures for driving safety and efficiency. However, real-world conditions can impair the utility of existing road markings. For example, adverse weather conditions such as snow and rain can quickly obliterate visibility. We propose a novel MagnETic ROad marking system...

BrushLens Presented at UIST

BrushLens Presented at UIST

Touchscreen devices, designed with an assumed range of user abilities and interaction patterns, often present challenges for individuals with diverse abilities to operate independently. Prior efforts to improve accessibility through tools or algorithms necessitated alterations to touchscreen hardware or software, making them inapplicable for the large number of existing legacy...

Privacy Voiding Presented at EMBC

Privacy Voiding Presented at EMBC

Uroflowmetry is a non-invasive diagnostic test used to evaluate the function of the urinary tract. Despite its benefits, it has two main limitations: high intra-subject variability of flow parameters and the requirement for patients to urinate on demand. To overcome these limitations, we have developed a low-cost ultrasonic platform that...

SAWSense Receives Best Paper at CHI

SAWSense Receives Best Paper at CHI

Enabling computing systems to understand user interactions with everyday surfaces and objects can drive a wide range of applications. However, existing vibration-based sensors (e.g., accelerometers) lack the sensitivity to detect light touch gestures or the bandwidth to recognize activity containing high-frequency components. Conversely, microphones are highly susceptible to environmental noise,...

Ubichromics Presented at ISS

Ubichromics Presented at ISS

Pervasive and interactive displays promise to present our digital content seamlessly throughout our environment. However, traditional display technologies do not scale to room-wide applications due to high per-unit-area costs and the need for constant wired power and data infrastructure. This research proposes the use of photochromic paint as a display...

MAGIC Presented at MobiCom

MAGIC Presented at MobiCom

Magnetic sensing is emerging as an enabling technology for various engaging applications. Representative use cases include high-accuracy posture tracking, human-machine interaction, and haptic sensing. This technology uses multiple MEMS magnetometers to capture the changing magnetic field at a close distance. However, magnetometers are susceptible to real-world disturbances, such as hard-...

2022 Meta PhD Research Fellowship

2022 Meta PhD Research Fellowship

The Meta PhD Research Fellowship program awards PhD candidates conducting cutting-edge research in emerging topics across computer science and engineering, including AI system hardware/software co-design, blockchain and cryptoeconomics, human-computer interaction, programming languages, and AR/VR future technologies. Link to 2022 Meta PhD Research Fellowship

MagX Presented at MobiCom

MagX Presented at MobiCom

Accurate tracking of the hands and fingers allows users to employ natural gestures in various interactive applications. Hand tracking also supports health applications, such as monitoring face-touching, a common vector for infectious disease. However, for both types of applications, the utility of hand tracking is often limited by the impracticality...

PrivacyMic Receives Best Paper HM at CHI

PrivacyMic Receives Best Paper HM at CHI

Sound presents an invaluable signal source that enables computing systems to perform daily activity recognition. However, microphones are optimized for human speech and hearing ranges: capturing private content, such as speech, while omitting useful, inaudible information that can aid in acoustic recognition tasks. We simulated acoustic recognition tasks using sounds...

2020 CSE Graduate Honors Competition

2020 CSE Graduate Honors Competition

The top presentation in the 2020 competition was “PrivacyMic: Utilizing Inaudible Frequencies for Privacy Preserving Daily Activity Recognition,” given by Yasha Iravantchi, who represented CSE’s Interactive Systems research area. Link to CSE Honors

Digital Ventriloquism Presented at CHI

Digital Ventriloquism Presented at CHI

Smart speakers with voice agents are becoming increasingly common. However, the agent’s voice always emanates from the device, even when that information is contextually and spatially relevant elsewhere. Digital Ventriloquism allows smart speakers to render sound onto everyday objects, such that it appears they are speaking and are interactive. This...

Sozu Presented at UIST

Sozu Presented at UIST

Robust, wide-area sensing of human environments has been a long-standing research goal. We present Sozu, a new low-cost sensing system that can detect a wide range of events wirelessly, through walls and without line of sight, at whole-building scale. To achieve this in a battery-free manner, Sozu tags convert energy...

BeamBand Presented at CHI

BeamBand Presented at CHI

BeamBand is a wrist-worn system that uses ultrasonic beamforming for hand gesture sensing. Using an array of small transducers, arranged on the wrist, we can ensemble acoustic wavefronts to project acoustic energy at specified angles and focal lengths. This allows us to interrogate the surface geometry of the hand with...

Interferi Receives Best Paper HM at CHI

Interferi Receives Best Paper HM at CHI

Interferi is an on-body gesture sensing technique using acoustic interferometry. We use ultrasonic transducers resting on the skin to create acoustic interference patterns inside the wearer’s body, which interact with anatomical features in complex, yet characteristic ways. We focus on two areas of the body with great expressive power: the...

SwellFit Presented at HICSS 52

SwellFit Presented at HICSS 52

Peripheral edema is a swelling of the legs, feet, or hands due to the accumulation of excessive fluid in the tissues. For patients with some chronic diseases, peripheral edema is a crucial indicator of onset or exacerbation of the condition. Thus, early detection of peripheral edema is important for timely...