Dong Li

My research develops intelligent sensing systems that transform everyday devices into powerful tools for health, interaction, and trustworthy computing.

🫀 Mobile and Wearable Health: Developing accessible sensing technologies that turn smartphones, earphones, and wearables into tools for physiological and health monitoring.

📡 Ubiquitous Sensing: Unlocking new sensing capabilities in everyday devices by combining acoustic, inertial, wireless, and other sensing modalities.

🛡️ Intelligent and Trustworthy Sensing: Building intelligent sensing systems that are secure, robust, and trustworthy in real-world human and AI interactions.

Research support. My research has been supported by the Google Research Scholar Award, Cyber Graduate Fellowship, UMB ICTR ATIP Grant, UMBC START Award, UMBC-UMB ICTR CONNECT Funding, UMBC CIP Award, and a portfolio of student research awards.

Translational impact. I work to translate sensing research from laboratory prototypes to real-world healthcare solutions through clinical collaborations, invention disclosures, and entrepreneurship. My commercialization efforts have been supported by UMBC CENTRE Funding and FEAT Award, and our PocketCardio team won 1st Place at the 2026 Maryland NEW VENTURE™ Program Pitch Night.

Recognition. My work has received a MobiSys Featured Paper, IEEE S&P SecureTrans Best Demo Award, and MobiQuitous Best Paper Runner-Up. My students have received the Computing for Social Good Award, Best of COEIT Graduate Award, CSEE Research Day Best Poster Award, Doctorate Student Award, and multiple Undergraduate Student Awards.

Research Highlights

Selected work in accessible acoustic sensing, mobile health, and human-device interaction.

News

Updates from research, students, and the academic community.

    People

    Ph.D. students

    Rishav Gupta
    Rishav Gupta

    CSEE, UMBC

    Likairui Zhang

    Incoming Ph.D. student, Fall 2026

    Master’s students

    Dharani Nadendla
    Dharani Nadendla

    Data Science, UMBC

    Thomas Getachew

    CSEE, UMBC

    Undergraduate students

    Kodi Mkpasi
    Kodi Mkpasi

    CSEE, UMBC

    Marianne Nguyen
    Marianne Nguyen

    CSEE, UMBC

    Aima Waheed
    Aima Waheed

    CSEE, UMBC

    Samuel Bajulaiye
    Samuel Bajulaiye

    CSEE, UMBC

    Shrikant Bhatnagar
    Shrikant Bhatnagar

    CSEE, UMBC

    Corey Benjamin
    Corey Benjamin

    CSEE, UMBC

    Affiliates

    Shirui Cao (UMass Amherst), Xiaoxuan Liang (UMass Amherst), and Renzhi Hao (Independent Researcher).

    Alumni

    Mu Du, Ayodeji Adesina, and Kaleem Butt.

    Selected Publications

    Figure comparing clinical artery assessment with the Acoustoscillogram earphone-based approach

    IMWUT / UbiComp · 2026

    Acoustoscillogram: Unlocking Arterial Health Insights via Acoustic Sensing with Low-cost Wired Earphones

    Xiaoxuan Liang, Zhaolong Wei, Shirui Cao, Quan Zhang, Longfei Shangguan, Dong Li, Jeremy Gummeson

    Figure illustrating how higher acoustic bandwidth improves range resolution

    MobiCom · 2023

    PowerPhone: Unleashing the Acoustic Sensing Capability of Smartphones

    Shirui Cao, Dong Li, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Jie Xiong

    Figure showing smart-speaker gesture interaction scenarios

    SenSys · 2022

    Room-scale Hand Gesture Recognition Using Smart Speakers

    Dong Li, Jialin Liu, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Jie Xiong

    Figure illustrating acoustic eye-blink sensing

    IMWUT / UbiComp · 2021

    BlinkListener: “Listen” to Your Eye Blink Using Your Smartphone

    Jialin Liu, Dong Li, Lei Wang, Jie Xiong

    Figure showing multi-target hand and finger tracking scenarios

    SenSys · 2020

    FM-Track: Pushing the Limits of Contactless Multi-target Tracking Using Acoustic Signals

    Dong Li, Jialin Liu, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Jie Xiong

    Complete publication list on Google Scholar →

    Teaching

    CMSC 491/691: Special Topics in Computer Science
    Course materials

    Service

    Technical program committee member and reviewer for leading venues in mobile, ubiquitous, sensing, and networking systems, including MobiSys, SenSys, EWSN, PerCom, and IMWUT.