![Nick Pham DPhil (Oxon)](https://profiles-cardiff.imgix.net/attachments/5958?w=200&h=200&auto=format&crop=faces&fit=crop&q=90")
Dr Nick Pham
(he/him)
DPhil (Oxon)
Lecturer
School of Computer Science and Informatics
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
This page is not always up-to-date, please see my lab website (https://www.agilecps.org/team/nick) instead.
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I lead the Agile Cyber-Physical Systems lab at the School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, UK, I am a member of the larger Cardiff IoT and Human Centred Computing sections and also the current Deputy Director of IT and Infrastructure for the School of Computer Science and Informatics. My research interests include Intelligent and Efficient Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-based Sensing, On-chip Intelligence. Before joining Cardiff University, I obtained my DPhil (PhD) with my research on intelligent head-worn physiological sensing wearables, fully funded by the University of Oxford DPhil Scholarship. I also worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the EPSRC ACE-OPS project at Oxford University from 2022 to 2023.
My research has been recognised by Oxford University's nominee for ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award'24, Communication of the ACM Research Highlight'21, ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight'20, ACM GetMobile'19 Research Highlight, and the Best Paper at ACM MobiCom'19. I helped to spin off a tech startup (Earable Neuroscience Inc) and produced multiple international patents. My group’s work has been featured in several press articles from Bloomberg, BBC News, DailyMail, Euronews, etc. I am leading several funded projects from EPSRC, the Royal Society, Global Wales, Academy of Medical Science, British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Alan Turing Institute, and recognised as a GW4 future research leader of the Southwest and Wales.
Publication
2024
- Lloyd, C., Lemoine, L. L., Al-Shaikh, R., Ly, K. T., Kayan, H., Perera, C. and Pham, N. 2024. Stress-GPT: Stress detection with an EEG-based foundation model. Presented at: ACM MobiCom '24: 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Washington DC, USA, 18-22 November 2024Proceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. New York: ACM pp. 2341-2346., (10.1145/3636534.3698121)
- Aziz, A. et al. 2024. An unobtrusive and lightweight ear-worn system for continuous epileptic seizure detection. ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare (10.1145/3703164)
- Jia, H., Kwon, Y. D., Mat, D., Pham, N., Qendro, L., Vu, T. and Mascolo, C. 2024. UR2M: Uncertainty and resource-aware event detection on microcontrollers. Presented at: International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, Biarritz, France, 11-15 March 20242024 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom). IEEE, (10.1109/PerCom59722.2024.10494467)
2023
- Nguyen, A. et al. 2023. A comprehensive study on the efficacy of a wearable sleep aid device featuring closed-loop real-time acoustic stimulation. Scientific Reports 13, article number: 17515. (10.1038/s41598-023-43975-1)
- Pham, N. et al. 2023. Detection of microsleep events with a behind-the-ear wearable system. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing 22(2), pp. 841-857. (10.1109/TMC.2021.3090829)
- Alevizaki, A., Pham, N. and Trigoni, N. 2023. Invited paper: Hierarchical activity recognition with smartwatch IMU. Presented at: 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, Kharagpur, India, 4-7 January 2023ICDCN '23: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking. New York, US: Association for Computing Machinery pp. 48–57., (10.1145/3571306.3571390)
2022
- Pham, N. et al. 2022. PROS: an efficient pattern-driven compressive sensing framework for low-power biopotential-based wearables with on-chip intelligence. Presented at: MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 661-675., (10.1145/3495243.3560533)
- Dang, T., Tran, T., Nguyen, K., Pham, T., Pham, N., Vu, T. and Nguyen, P. 2022. IoTree: a battery-free wearable system with biocompatible sensors for continuous tree health monitoring. Presented at: MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 352-366., (10.1145/3495243.3567652)
- Dang, T., Tran, T., Nguyen, K., Pham, T., Pham, N., Vu, T. and Nguyen, P. 2022. ioTree: a battery-free wearable system with biocompatible sensors for continuous tree health monitoring. Presented at: ACM MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 769-771., (10.1145/3495243.3558749)
2021
- Bui, N. et al. 2021. eBP: an ear-worn device for frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring. Communications of the ACM 64(8), pp. 118-125. (10.1145/3470446)
2020
- Nguyen, P. et al. 2020. DroneScale: drone load estimation via remote passive RF sensing. Presented at: SenSys '20: The 18th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Virtual Event Japan, 16-19 November 2020SenSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 326-339., (10.1145/3384419.3430778)
- Kim, T., Nguyen, P., Pham, N., Bui, N., Truong, H., Ha, S. and Vu, T. 2020. Epileptic seizure detection and experimental treatment: a review. Frontiers in Neurology 11, article number: 701. (10.3389/fneur.2020.00701)
- Pham, N. et al. 2020. WAKE: a behind-the-ear wearable system for microsleep detection. Presented at: MobiSys '20: 18th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 15-19 June 2020MobiSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 404-418., (10.1145/3386901.3389032)
- Truong, H. et al. 2020. Painometry: wearable and objective quantification system for acute postoperative pain. Presented at: MobiSys '20: 18th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 15-19 June 2020MobiSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 419-433., (10.1145/3386901.3389022)
- Bui, N. et al. 2020. eBP: frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring from inside human's ears. GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications 23(4), pp. 34-38. (10.1145/3400713.3400721)
2019
- Bui, N. et al. 2019. eBP: a wearable system for frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring from user's ear. Presented at: MobiCom '19: The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Los Cabos Mexico, 21-25 October 2019MobiCom '19: The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 1-17., (10.1145/3300061.3345454)
- Pham, N., Kim, T., Thayer, F. M., Nguyen, A. and Vu, T. 2019. Earable -- an ear-worn biosignal sensing platform for cognitive state monitoring and human-computer interaction (demo). Presented at: MobiSys '19: 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 17-21 June 2019MobiSys '19: Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 685-686., (10.1145/3307334.3328582)
- Tolcha, Y. k. et al. 2019. Oliot-OpenCity: open standard interoperable smart city platform. Presented at: 2018 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), Kansas City, MO, USA, 16-19 September 20182018 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2). IEEE pp. 1-8., (10.1109/ISC2.2018.8656763)
2018
- Pham, N., Kwon, K. and Kim, D. 2018. MSHCS-MAC: A MAC protocol for Multi-hop cognitive radio networks based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach. Presented at: 2018 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), Natal, Brazil, 25-28 June 20182018 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC). IEEE pp. 00001-00007., (10.1109/ISCC.2018.8538496)
2017
- Pham, N., Hassan, M., Nguyen, H. M. and Kim, D. 2017. GS1 global smart parking system: one architecture to unify them all. Presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 June 20172017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC). IEEE pp. 479-482., (10.1109/SCC.2017.69)
- Kim, H. et al. 2017. IsV2C: an integrated road traffic-network-cloud simulator for V2C connected car services. Presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 June 20172017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC). IEEE pp. 434-441., (10.1109/SCC.2017.62)
Articles
- Aziz, A. et al. 2024. An unobtrusive and lightweight ear-worn system for continuous epileptic seizure detection. ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare (10.1145/3703164)
- Nguyen, A. et al. 2023. A comprehensive study on the efficacy of a wearable sleep aid device featuring closed-loop real-time acoustic stimulation. Scientific Reports 13, article number: 17515. (10.1038/s41598-023-43975-1)
- Pham, N. et al. 2023. Detection of microsleep events with a behind-the-ear wearable system. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing 22(2), pp. 841-857. (10.1109/TMC.2021.3090829)
- Bui, N. et al. 2021. eBP: an ear-worn device for frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring. Communications of the ACM 64(8), pp. 118-125. (10.1145/3470446)
- Kim, T., Nguyen, P., Pham, N., Bui, N., Truong, H., Ha, S. and Vu, T. 2020. Epileptic seizure detection and experimental treatment: a review. Frontiers in Neurology 11, article number: 701. (10.3389/fneur.2020.00701)
- Bui, N. et al. 2020. eBP: frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring from inside human's ears. GetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications 23(4), pp. 34-38. (10.1145/3400713.3400721)
Conferences
- Lloyd, C., Lemoine, L. L., Al-Shaikh, R., Ly, K. T., Kayan, H., Perera, C. and Pham, N. 2024. Stress-GPT: Stress detection with an EEG-based foundation model. Presented at: ACM MobiCom '24: 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Washington DC, USA, 18-22 November 2024Proceedings of the 30th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. New York: ACM pp. 2341-2346., (10.1145/3636534.3698121)
- Jia, H., Kwon, Y. D., Mat, D., Pham, N., Qendro, L., Vu, T. and Mascolo, C. 2024. UR2M: Uncertainty and resource-aware event detection on microcontrollers. Presented at: International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications, Biarritz, France, 11-15 March 20242024 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom). IEEE, (10.1109/PerCom59722.2024.10494467)
- Alevizaki, A., Pham, N. and Trigoni, N. 2023. Invited paper: Hierarchical activity recognition with smartwatch IMU. Presented at: 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, Kharagpur, India, 4-7 January 2023ICDCN '23: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking. New York, US: Association for Computing Machinery pp. 48–57., (10.1145/3571306.3571390)
- Pham, N. et al. 2022. PROS: an efficient pattern-driven compressive sensing framework for low-power biopotential-based wearables with on-chip intelligence. Presented at: MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 661-675., (10.1145/3495243.3560533)
- Dang, T., Tran, T., Nguyen, K., Pham, T., Pham, N., Vu, T. and Nguyen, P. 2022. IoTree: a battery-free wearable system with biocompatible sensors for continuous tree health monitoring. Presented at: MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 352-366., (10.1145/3495243.3567652)
- Dang, T., Tran, T., Nguyen, K., Pham, T., Pham, N., Vu, T. and Nguyen, P. 2022. ioTree: a battery-free wearable system with biocompatible sensors for continuous tree health monitoring. Presented at: ACM MobiCom '22: The 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Sydney, Australia, 17- 21 October 2022MobiCom '22: Proceedings of the 28th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing And Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 769-771., (10.1145/3495243.3558749)
- Nguyen, P. et al. 2020. DroneScale: drone load estimation via remote passive RF sensing. Presented at: SenSys '20: The 18th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Virtual Event Japan, 16-19 November 2020SenSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 326-339., (10.1145/3384419.3430778)
- Pham, N. et al. 2020. WAKE: a behind-the-ear wearable system for microsleep detection. Presented at: MobiSys '20: 18th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 15-19 June 2020MobiSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 404-418., (10.1145/3386901.3389032)
- Truong, H. et al. 2020. Painometry: wearable and objective quantification system for acute postoperative pain. Presented at: MobiSys '20: 18th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 15-19 June 2020MobiSys '20: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 419-433., (10.1145/3386901.3389022)
- Bui, N. et al. 2019. eBP: a wearable system for frequent and comfortable blood pressure monitoring from user's ear. Presented at: MobiCom '19: The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, Los Cabos Mexico, 21-25 October 2019MobiCom '19: The 25th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 1-17., (10.1145/3300061.3345454)
- Pham, N., Kim, T., Thayer, F. M., Nguyen, A. and Vu, T. 2019. Earable -- an ear-worn biosignal sensing platform for cognitive state monitoring and human-computer interaction (demo). Presented at: MobiSys '19: 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 17-21 June 2019MobiSys '19: Proceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. Association for Computing Machinery pp. 685-686., (10.1145/3307334.3328582)
- Tolcha, Y. k. et al. 2019. Oliot-OpenCity: open standard interoperable smart city platform. Presented at: 2018 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2), Kansas City, MO, USA, 16-19 September 20182018 IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2). IEEE pp. 1-8., (10.1109/ISC2.2018.8656763)
- Pham, N., Kwon, K. and Kim, D. 2018. MSHCS-MAC: A MAC protocol for Multi-hop cognitive radio networks based on Slow Hopping and Cooperative Sensing approach. Presented at: 2018 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), Natal, Brazil, 25-28 June 20182018 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC). IEEE pp. 00001-00007., (10.1109/ISCC.2018.8538496)
- Pham, N., Hassan, M., Nguyen, H. M. and Kim, D. 2017. GS1 global smart parking system: one architecture to unify them all. Presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 June 20172017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC). IEEE pp. 479-482., (10.1109/SCC.2017.69)
- Kim, H. et al. 2017. IsV2C: an integrated road traffic-network-cloud simulator for V2C connected car services. Presented at: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC), Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 June 20172017 IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC). IEEE pp. 434-441., (10.1109/SCC.2017.62)
Research
Overview:
My research team focus on interdisciplinary research of Intelligent and Efficient Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-based Sensing, Edge-AI and On-chip Computing, especially for healthcare applications such as epilepsy, narcolepsy, stress, sleep disorders, etc. We have strong collaborations with leading UK and international institutions including the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, University of Masshachusset Amherst, University of Colorado, and University of Wyoming. The work of my research group has been published in highly selective international conferences and journals such as MobiCom, MobiSys, SenSys, and IEEE Transactions.
Research Fundings:
- "Enabling distributedly self-powered wearables for mobile healthcare applications", funded by EPSRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). (PI, 2024-2028)
- "Developing a multimodal biosensing ear-worn wearable system for continuous stress monitoring", funded by the Royal Society. (PI, 10/2024-10/2025)
- "ARCADE: Adversarial Resilience in Compressed AI for Defensive Edge", funded by The Alan Turing Institute. (Co-I, 10/2024-3/2025)
- "Explore sensory overload detection with biosensing wearables", funded by GW4 Crucible Seedcorn Grant. (PI, 9/2024-3/2025)
- "Utilization of Digital Twin for Cardiovascular Disease Care Management Through Multimodal Physiological Sensing Wearables", with Asan Medical Centre and KAIST (South Korea), funded by the Academy of Medical Science, British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the Royal Society. (UK PI, 2024-2025).
- "Edge-AI in the Internet of Things", with Vietnam National University - Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, funded by Global Wales. (PI, 3-11/2024)
- "AI in Smart Heathcare", with VinUniversity, Vin-Illinois Smart Health Centre, funded by Global Wales. (PI, 3-11/2024)
- "Developing wearable smart shirt to monitor continuously vital signs for emergency responders.", funded by Digital Transformation Innovation Institute Seedcorn grant. (PI, 5-7/2024, Internal)
- Taith Research Mobility funding. (PI, 6/2024)
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For more details on our research, please refer to our group's website
Teaching
I am teaching several modules at National Software Academy, Cardiff University and AIMS Centre for Doctoral Training, University of Oxford.
- Cardiff NSA: Mobile Development (Spring 2024)
- Oxford AIMS CDT: Internet of Things (Hilary 2023, 2024)
- NSA Year 1 tutor.
- MSc tutor.
Biography
Education
- 2023: DPhil (PhD) in Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK.
- 2018: M.Sc. in Computer Science, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea.
- 2015: B.E. in Computer Engineering, Vietnam National University - University of Technology (HCMUT), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Honours and awards
- 2024: Nominated for SIU PhD Dissertation Award 2024 by Vietnamese Embassy London
- 2024: Nominated for ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award by Oxford University.
- 2024: GW4 future research leader of the South West and Wales.
- 2022: ACM MobiCom 2022 Travel Grant.
- 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, South Korea.
- 2015: Honda Young Engineers and Scientists - Top 30 applicants, Vietnam.
- 2015: Silver graduation medal, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam.
- 2009 - 2011: Odon Vallet's Fellowship, Vietnam.
Professional memberships
- Member of the ACM, SIGMOBILE.
Academic positions
- 2023 - now: Lecturer (~Assistant Professor), School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, UK.
- 2022 - 2023: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cyber-Physical Systems group, University of Oxford, UK.
- 2018 - 2020: Graduate Research Assistant, Mobile and Networked Systems Lab, CU Boulder, USA.
- 2018: Researcher, Real-time and embedded systems lab, KAIST, South Korea.
- 2015-2016, Associate Lecturer, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Speaking engagements
- “Robust Sensing and Efficient Computing for Intelligent Biosignal-based Earables”, Earable computing tutorial at ACM MobiCom 2022.
Committees and reviewing
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Committees
- ACM BodySys 2024, Technical Program Committee.
- Taith Research Mobility Program 2023-2024, Review Panel.
- ACM MobiSys 2023-2024, Artifact Evaluation Committee.
- ACM SenSys 2022, Technical Shadow Program Committee.
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Reviewer
- The International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI) 2023.
- IEEE Transaction on Mobile Computing 2022.
- ACM MobiCom 2019-2023.
- ACM MobiSys 2021-2022.
- ACM SenSys 2019-2020.
- ACM HotMobile 2021.
- IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems 2021.
- IEEE SECON 2020.
- IEEE/ACM CHASE 2020.
Supervisions
I am interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of Intelligent and Efficient Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-based Sensing, Edge-AI and On-chip Computing. I am having fully-funded PhD positions (School's scholarships), more details can be found at my lab's website (https://www.agilecps.org/home).
I am currently supervising:
PhD students:
- Kha Huynh, PhD student (joining in Oct/2024, funded by EPSRC DTP studentship).
- Nima Valizadeh, Research Engineer.
Undergraduate and Master's students:
- Loic Lorente Lemoine, BSc final project on "Design a tiny machine learning model to detect epileptic seizures on wearables".
- Hadeel Abed, BSc final project on "Controlling IoT devices with our brain, eyes, and facial muscles".
- Sanad Jarrad, BSc final project on "Capturing heart activities by using acoustic signals from mobile phones".
- Eryk Bojczewski, BSc final project on "Developing Lego Self-driving IoT Cars".
- And several BSc and MSc students are a personal tutor.
Past projects
I have supervised and mentored several PDRA (postdoctoral research associate), PhDs and master's students at the University of Oxford and the University of Colorado Boulder (USA).
- Ada Alevizaki, DPhil student, EPSRC AIMS CDT at Oxford, co-supervised with Niki Trogoni, submitted her DPhil thesis on "Smartwatch-based semantic learning of elements of human behaviour" in Jan 2024.
- Xinyu Hou, PDRA, Cyber-Physical Systems group at Oxford, mentoring with Niki Trogoni and Andrew Markham.
- Tuan Tran, PhD student, University of Colorado Boulder.
- Leopold Beuken, PhD student, Peer-mentoring, University of Colorado Boulder.
- Amit Roy, MSc student, University of Colorado Boulder.
Contact Details
PhamN@cardiff.ac.uk
+44 29225 14938
Abacws, Floor 3, Room 3.62, Senghennydd Road, Cathays, Cardiff, CF24 4AG
+44 29225 14938
Abacws, Floor 3, Room 3.62, Senghennydd Road, Cathays, Cardiff, CF24 4AG
Research themes
Specialisms
- Cyberphysical systems and internet of things
- Human-centred computing
- Mobile computing
- Electronics, sensors and digital hardware