SmarTeeth: Augmenting Manual Toothbrushing with In-ear Microphones
Qiang Yang, Yang Liu, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Emeli Panariti, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo
Yang Liu
Senior Research Associate & Affiliated Lecturer
Department of Computer Science and Technology
University of Camdridge
Post-Doctoral Affiliation
Newnham College
Yang Liu
I am currently a Senior Research Associate working with Prof. Cecilia Mascolo and an Affliated Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge. Prior to that I was a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof. Zhenjiang Li at City University of Hong Kong (from Oct 2020 to Dec 2021). I received the B.E. degree in Software Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi, China in 2016 and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science advised by Prof. Zhenjiang Li from City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China in 2020.
My research focuses on developing intelligent mobile and wearable technologies for human-centered sensing and computing. Currently, I am exploring earable sensing technologies to monitor human wellness, including vital signs monitoring, fitness tracking, and promoting healthy lifestyles through ear-worn sensors. Additionally, I am investigating mobile and wearable technologies for understanding human behaviors, enhancing interactions between humans and their surroundings, as well as identifying and addressing potential privacy leakage issues during these interactions. Overall, my research advances cutting-edge fields such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Ambient Interaction, mobile health, and cybersecurity.
Recent News:
- Our recent work “SmarTeeth: Augmenting Manual Toothbrushing with In-ear Microphones got conditionally accepted to ACM CHI 2025.
- Our recent work WalkEar: Holistic Gait Monitoring using Earables” got accepted to IEEE PerCom 2025.
- Our recent work RespEar: Earable-Based Robust Respiratory Rate Monitoring got accepted to IEEE PerCom 2025.
- I am awarded N2Women: Rising Stars in Computer Networking and Communications 2024!
- I have started the position of Affilated Lecturer at University of Cambridge, effective October 2023.
Publications:
RespEar: Earable-Based Robust Respiratory Rate Monitoring
Yang Liu, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Adam Pullin, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo
IEEE PerCom 2025
[pdf (arxiv version)]
WalkEar: Holistic Gait Monitoring using Earables
Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Yang Liu, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Josh Carte, Qiang Yang, Ezio Preatoni, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo
IEEE PerCom 2025
[pdf]
Finger Tracking Using Wrist-Worn EMG Sensors
Jiani Cao, Yang Liu, Lixiang Han, Zhenjiang Li
IEEE TMC, 2024
[pdf] [slides] [website] [source code]
Real-time Arm Skeleton Tracking and Gesture Inference Tolerant to Missing Wearable Sensors
Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li, Zhidan Liu, Kaishun Wu
ACM MobiSys, 2019
[pdf] [slides] [website] [source code]
Rulers on Our Arms: Waving to Measure Object Size through Contactless Sensing
Yang Liu, Yonghang Jiang, Zhenjiang Li, Jianping Wang
ACM TOSN, 2019
[pdf]
More Publications:
- [NeurIPS'24] Yuwei Zhang, Tong Xia, Jing Han, Yu Wu, Georgios Rizos, Yang Liu, Mohammed Mosuily, Jagmohan Chauhan, Cecilia Mascolo. Towards Open Respiratory Acoustic Foundation Models: Pretraining and Benchmarking. [pdf]
- [EarComp'24] Qiang Yang, Yang Liu, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Dong Ma, Cecilia Mascolo. BrushBuds: Toothbrushing Tracking Using Earphone IMUs. [pdf]
- [IEEE TMC'24] Jiani Cao, Jiesong Chen, Chengdong Lin, Yang Liu, Kun Wang, Zhenjiang Li. Practical Gaze Tracking on Any Surface with Your Phone. [pdf]
- [BodySys'24] Changshuo Hu, Thivya Kandappu, Jake Stuchbury-Wass, Yang Liu, Anthony Tang, Cecilia Mascolo, Dong Ma. Detecting Foot Strikes during Running with Earbuds. [pdf]
- [BodySys'24] Tamisa Ketmalasiri, Yu Wu, Kayla-Jade Butkow, Cecilia Mascolo, Yang Liu. IMChew: Chewing Analysis using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units. [pdf]
- [Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal'24] Kayla-Jade Butkow, Ting Dang, Andrea Ferlini, Dong Ma, Yang Liu, Cecilia Mascolo. An Evaluation of Heart Rate Monitoring with In-ear Microphones under Motion. [pdf]
- [IEEE TMC'24] Jiao Li, Jiakai Xu, Yang Liu, Weitao Xu, Zhenjiang Li. Enhancing the Applicability of Sign Language Translation. [pdf]
- [ACM SmartWear'23] Jacob Brown, Yang Liu, Cecilia Mascolo. Yawning Detection using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units. [pdf]
- [EarComp'23 Best Paper Award] Jiao Li, Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li, Jin Zhang. EarPass: Continuous User Authentication with In-ear PPG. [pdf]
- [ACM TURC'23] Jiani Cao, Chengdong Lin, Yang Liu, Kun Wang, Zhenjiang Li. Poster: Gaze Tracking on Any Surface with Your Phone. [pdf]
- [IEEE TMC'21] Zhen Xiao, Tao Chen, Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li. Keystroke Recognition with the Tapping Sound Recorded by Mobile Phone Microphones. [pdf]
- [IEEE IoT-J'20] Jiao Li, Yang Liu, Tao Chen, Zhen Xiao, Zhenjiang Li, Jianping Wang. Adversarial Attacks and Defenses on Cyber-Physical Systems: A Survey. [pdf]
- [IEEE TMC'19] Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li. aLeak: Context-Free Side-Channel from Your Smart Watch Leaks Your Typing Privacy. [pdf]
- [IEEE/ACM TON'19] Kang Yang, Tianzhang Xing, Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li, Xiaoqing Gong, Xiaojiang Chen, Dingyi Fang. cDeepArch: A Compact Deep Neural Network Architecture for Mobile Sensing. [pdf]
- [IEEE DySPAN'19] Yonghang Jiang, Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li. Data Fusion and Alignment for Location-Aware Crowdsourcing Applications. [pdf]
- [ACM MobiSys'19 Poster] Yang Liu, Chengdong Lin, Zhenjiang Li, Zhidan Liu, Kaishun Wu. Poster: When Wearable Sensing Meets Arm Tracking. [pdf]
- [IEEE INFOCOM'18 Poster] Yang Liu, Zhenjiang Li. Poster Abstract: Context-Free Wearable Side-Channel Leaks Your Typing Privacy. [pdf]
Honors & Awards:
- N2Women: Rising Stars in Computer Networking and Communications -- 2024
- Best Paper Award -- EarComp, 2023
- Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award -- ACM SIGBED China, 2021
- Institutional Research Tuition Scholarship -- CityU, 2019
- Outstanding Academic Performance Award -- CityU, 2019
- Student Travel Grant Award -- ACM MobiSys, 2019
- Best-in-Session Presentation Award -- IEEE INFOCOM, 2018
- Student Travel Grant Award -- IEEE INFOCOM, 2018
- Outstanding Academic Performance Award -- CityU, 2018
- Outstanding Poster Award -- CityU, 2017
- SiYuan Scholarship -- XJTU, 2015
- Excellent Student -- XJTU, 2015
- Fuji Xerox Scholarship (China) -- XJTU, 2014
- Excellent Student -- XJTU, 2014
- SiYuan Scholarship -- XJTU, 2013
Professional Service:
Organizing Committee:
- Computer Science Ethics Committee, University of Cambridge
- Chairs, IEEE SWC -- 2024
- Publicity & Social Media Chairs, ACM UbiComp/ISWC -- 2024
- Publicity Chairs, ACM MobiCom -- 2022
- Web Chairs, IEEE ICPADS -- 2021
TPC Member:
- ACM SenSys -- 2025
- ACM MobiSys -- 2025
- Euromicro DSD -- 2025
- IEEE ICDCS -- 2024, 2023
- ACM MobiSys (Artifact Evaluation) -- 2024, 2023
- ACM MobiCom (Artifact Evaluation) -- 2024, 2023
- ACM EarComp -- 2024, 2023, 2022
- IEEE ICPADS -- 2024, 2022
- ACM ISWC -- 2024
- ACM IPSN (Poster) -- 2024
- IEEE TrustCom -- 2024
- IEEE UIC -- 2024
- ACM MobiCom4AgeTech -- 2024
- ACM EIFCom -- 2024
- ACM HumanSys -- 2024, 2025
- ACM BodySys -- 2024
- ACM SmartWear -- 2023
- ACM SenSys (Shadow Program) -- 2022
- IEEE ICDCS (Ph.D. Symposium) -- 2022
- EAI Qshine -- 2020
Paper Reviewer:
- Nature Communications
- ACM CHI
- ACM IMWUT journal (UbiComp)
- ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks
- ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (TIOT)
- IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing
- IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoT-J)
- IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
- IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering
- IEEE ICPADS 2021
- Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing
- Sensors Journal
- Applied Science Journal
Funding Reviewer:
- pro² network+ funding
Teaching:
- Mobile, Wearable Systems and Machine Learning, University of Cambridge
Lecturer -- Michaelmas term 2024/2025, Michaelmas term 2023/2024 - Computer Networking, University of Cambridge
Group Supervisor -- Lent term 2024/2025, Lent term 2023/2024, Lent term 2022/2023 - Computer Programming, City University of Hong Kong
Lab Tutor -- Sem B 2019/2020, Sem B 2018/2019
Teaching Assistant -- Sem A 2017/2018, Sem A 2016/2017 - Introduction to Computer Studies, City University of Hong Kong
Teaching Assistant -- Sem A, 2019/2020 - Computer Networks, City University of Hong Kong
Tutorial Tutor -- Sem A, 2018/2019 - Cloud Computing, City University of Hong Kong
Teaching Assistant -- Sem B, 2017/2018 - The Art and Science of Data, City University of Hong Kong
Teaching Assistant -- Sem B, 2016/2017
Mentorship:
- Jordan Waters (University of Cambridge) -- Oct. 2023 - July 2024
Heart Sound Segmentation using In-Ear Microphones - Jiani Cao (City University of Hong Kong) -- Feb. 2023 - May 2024
Finger Tracking Using Wrist-Worn EMG Sensors
IEEE TMC'24 - Tamisa Ketmalasiri (University of Cambridge) -- Oct. 2023 - May 2024
IMChew: Chewing Analysis using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units
ACM BodySys'24 - Jiani Cao (City University of Hong Kong) -- April. 2022 - May 2024
Gaze Tracking on Any Surface with Your Phone
ACM SenSys'22, ACM TURC'23, IEEE TMC'24 - Jacob Brown (University of Cambridge) -- Oct. 2022 - July 2023
Yawning Detection using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units
ACM SmartWear'23 - Jiao Li (City University of Hong Kong) -- Oct. 2022 - July 2023
EarPass: Continuous User Authentication with In-ear PPG
ACM EarComp'23 Best Paper Award - Jiao Li (City University of Hong Kong) -- Oct. 2021 - July 2023
GASLA: Enhancing the Applicability of Sign Language Translation
IEEE INFOCOM'22, IEEE TMC'24
Presentations & Talks:
- Intelligent Wearable Sensing for Understanding Human Behavior and Monitoring Wellness
University of Southampton, January 2025, Southampton, UK. - Toward More Interactive, Healthier, and More Secure Lives Through Intelligent Sensing
University College London, January 2025, London, UK. - Less is More: Innovative Wearable Sensing for Understanding Human Behavior and Monitoring Wellbeing
North Carolina State University, October 2024, Virtual Event. - Respiratory Rate Monitoring from Earables
MobiUK, July 2024, Southampton, UK. - IMChew: Chewing Analysis using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units
MobiUK, July 2024, Southampton, UK. - Yawning Detection using Earphone Inertial Measurement Units
ACM SmartWear, October 2023, Madrid, Spain. - EaRR: Audio-Based Robust Respiratory Rate Monitoring from Earables
Mobile Systems Lab, July 2023, Cambridge, UK. - Human Behavior Sensing and Understanding with Sparse Wearable Sensors
City University of Hong Kong, August 2020, Hong Kong, China. - WR-Hand: Wearable Armband can Track User's Hand
ACM UbiComp, September 2021, Virtual Event. - Real-time Arm Skeleton Tracking and Gesture Inference Tolerant to Missing Wearable Sensors
ACM MobiSys, June 2019, Seoul, South Korea. - cDeepArch: A Compact Deep Neural Network Architecture for Mobile Sensing
IEEE SECON, June 2018, Hong Kong, China. - aLeak: Privacy Leakage through Context-Free Wearable Side-Channel
IEEE INFOCOM, April 2018, Honolulu, HI, USA.