Submitted by Rachel Gardner on Wed, 04/06/2025 - 09:44
"One of the next frontiers for AI lies in deciphering human-centred data captured by wearable devices." So says Dr Dong Ma who will join us in January 2026 as an Associate Professor in Wearable Computing. He will be contributing to our research and teaching in this area.
Dong is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Singapore Management University. His research interests lie broadly in the area of mobile computing with a special focus on wearable-based human sensing systems.
The goal of his research is to explore, design and implement intelligent, efficient and practical wearable systems to understand human behaviours (eg physical activities and interactions) and physiological states (eg vital signs) in real-world scenarios.
Recently, he has been focusing on robust health monitoring with wearable technology and how it can shape the future of fitness and boost athletic performance – including, for example, how wireless earbuds can track heart rate and breathing patterns, providing real-time feedback on runners' form, pace, and endurance. In parallel, he has been exploring on-device computation, aiming to design advanced frameworks and strategies that can facilitate efficient and adaptive deep learning execution on resource-constrained wearable devices.
"One of the next frontiers for AI lies in deciphering human-centred data captured by wearable devices. This holds the promise to tackle some of the most profound societal challenges of our time, such as aging and mental health."
Dr Dong Ma
These efforts earned him the Mark Weiser Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications in two consecutive years. He received the award for his papers DiTMoS: Delving into Diverse Tiny-Model Selection on Microcontrollers in 2024 and Respear: Earable-based robust respiratory rate monitoring in 2025.
He also received the 2024 Google South Asia & Southeast Asia Research Award to support further exploration of the DiTMoS project.
"We have seen remarkable breakthroughs in how AI understands and reasons about traditional modalities like text and images. Yet, I believe one of the next frontiers for AI lies in deciphering human-centred data captured by wearable devices, which holds the promise to tackle some of the most profound societal challenges of our time, such as aging and mental health. To achieve this, my work will focus on pioneering novel sensing technologies to sense more sophisticated human signals and developing efficient AI frameworks tailored for the unique constraints of wearable platforms."
Before going to Singapore, Dong was a postdoctoral researcher here at the Cambridge University Department of Computer Science and Technology, pioneering passive in-ear sound detection for human monitoring. He obtained his PhD in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Australia, in 2019. During his PhD study, he was also a research assistant at Data61, CSIRO, Australia's national science agency.
He completed his bachelor's and master's degree studies in Communication Engineering in Central South University, China from 2010 to 2016. He holds a Tier 2 grant from Singapore Ministry of Education.
