Welcome to the Semantic Signals Lab!

We are a research lab at Carnegie Mellon University in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The mission of our lab is to create mobile systems for physiological intelligence and augmented perception and cognition, often in ways that push the boundaries of what was previously thought possible.

Our research combines computational techniques across wireless sensing, deep learning, signal processing and hardware to enable new sensory capabilities for humans and machines.

News feed

  • May 2025Jiangyifei and Kuang win the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (17 of 266 teams, 6% acceptance rate) for their ongoing mobile health work.
    Since the program's inception in 2009, only around 5 of the 185 awarded projects have focused on mobile health systems.
  • Apr 2025Jiangyifei wins a fellowship from the Center of Machine Learning and Health (4 of 30 proposals, 12% acceptance rate)

Publications

To increase the potential impact and reach of our work, we publish in high-profile interdisciplinary journals and flagship computer science conferences.

Soft Tactile Sensors for Robot Grippers Using Acoustic Sensing


Kevin Xu, Justin Chan
To appear IROS, 2025.

Mobile medical systems for equitable healthcare


Justin Chan, Mayank Goel, Shyam Gollakota, Rajalakshmi Nandakumar
To appear Nature Reviews Bioengineering, 2025.

An Open-Source Smartphone Otoacoustic Emissions Test for Infants


Nada Ali, Justin Chan, Anna Meehan, Brent Collett, Sarah Benki-Nugent, Randall A. Bly, Shyam Gollakota, Juliana Bonilla-Velez, Emily R. Gallagher
Pediatrics, 2025.

Wireless earbuds for low-cost hearing screening


Justin Chan*, Antonio Glenn*, Malek Itani, Lisa R. Mancl, Emily Gallagher, Randall Bly, Shwetak Patel, and Shyam Gollakota
MobiSys, 2023.
Best Paper Runner Up
CACM Research Highlights

ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlights

An off-the-shelf otoacoustic-emission probe for hearing screening via a smartphone (TUNE project for universal newborn hearing screening in Kenya)


Justin Chan, Nada Ali, Ali Najafi, Anna Meehan, Lisa R. Mancl, Emily Gallagher, Randall Bly, and Shyam Gollakota
Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2022.
American Academy of Audiology Research Award
Press: Wired

Underwater messaging using mobile devices


Tuochao Chen*, Justin Chan*, and Shyam Gollakota
SIGCOMM, 2022.
ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlights








3D Printing Your Wireless Coverage


Hot Paper Award
Gold Medal - ACM Student Research Competition
Justin Chan, Changxi Zheng, and Xia Zhou
HotWireless (+ poster at MobiCom), 2015.