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    <title>Edison Thomaz | UT Austin ECE</title>
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        <div class="col-lg-4"><h2><a href="./index.html">Edison Thomaz</a></h2></div>
        <div class="col-lg-8"><a href="./publications.html">Publications</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<a href="./teaching.html">Teaching</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="https://github.com/Human-Signals-Lab">Code + Data</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="./cv/cv.pdf">Vita</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; <a href="./prospective.html">Prospective Students</a></div>
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          <img id="ethomaz_photo" src="./images/ethomaz-eerc-small.jpg"><br><br>

          <strong>Contact Info</strong><br><br>
          
          ethomaz at utexas dot edu<br/>
          Twitter: @ethomaz<br/>
          <br/>
          EER 7.818<br/>
          2501 Speedway<br/>
          Austin, TX 78712<br/>

          <br>

          <strong>Office Hours</strong><br><br>
          
          Spring 2026<br>
          <small>Thursdays 3:30-4:30pm</small><br><br>

          <strong>Teaching</strong><br><br>

          Spring 2026<br>
          <small>Human Signals: Sensing & Analytics</small><br><br>

          Fall 2026<br>
          <small>EE422C Software Design II</small><br><br>

          <strong>Ph.D. Students</strong><br><br>

          <a href="https://enwq.github.io">Yufei Shen</a><br>
          <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/alice-zhang-gatech/">Alice Zhang</a><br>
          <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/codyarvonen/">Cody Arvonen</a><br>
          <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuxin-du-490ba12a1/">Yuxin Du</a><br>
          <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hao-jiang-484953229/">Hao "Jacky" Jiang</a><br><br>

          <strong>Ph.D. Alumni</strong><br><br>

          <a href="https://www.ks-chun.com">Keum San Chun</a> (2021)<br/>
          <small>Samsung Research America</small><br><br>

          <a href="https://www.rebeccaadaimi.com">Rebecca Adaimi</a> (2023)<br>
          <small>Apple</small><br><br>

          <a href="https://www.dwliang.com">Dawei Liang</a> (2024)<br/>
          <small>Billion Labs</small><br><br>

          <strong>Affiliations</strong><br><br>

          <a href="https://www.utexas.edu"><img id="ut_logo" src="./images/utexas.png"></a><br><br>
          <a href="https://www.wncg.org"><img id="wncg_logo" src="./images/wncg.png"></a><br><br>
          <a href="https://imagine.utexas.edu"><img id="imagine_logo" src="./images/imagine.png"></a><br><br>
          <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caps/"><img id="caps_logo" src="./images/caps.png"></a><br><br>

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         I am an Associate Professor and William H. Hartwig Fellow in the <a href="http://ece.utexas.edu">The Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering</a> at <a href="http://www.utexas.edu">The University of Texas at Austin</a>, where I direct the Human Signals lab. My research focuses on human-centered sensing and machine perception using wearable and ubiquitous technologies. My students and I explore how to build computational systems that make sense of people; intelligent systems that recognize and model people's behaviors and activities, health conditions, emotional state, surronding context, social interactions and more. I am affiliated with <a href="https://www.ece.utexas.edu/academics/graduate/tracks/dice">DICE</a>, <a href="https://www.ece.utexas.edu/academics/graduate/tracks/bio">bioECE</a> and <a href="https://www.ece.utexas.edu/academics/graduate/tracks/software">SES</a>. I am also a member of <a href="http://www.wncg.org">WNCG</a>, <a href="https://imagine.utexas.edu">iMAGiNE</a> and a faculty affiliate of <a href="https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caps/">CAPS</a>. I am an Editor of <a href="https://imwut.acm.org">IMWUT</a> and Steering Committee Chair for <a href="https://ubicomp.org/sc/">UbiComp</a>. <br/> <hr>

        <i>Interested in research positions and opportunities?</i> Please visit the page for <a href="./prospective.html"><u>prospective students</u></a>.<br> <hr>

          <!-- <span style="color:#bf5700;"><strong>Fall 2025 Ph.D. Positions Available</strong>: The Human Signals Lab is considering applicants for Ph.D. positions with strong interest in human-centered computing, wearables, machine learning and health. If interested, please visit the page for <a href="./prospective.html"><u>prospective students</u></a>, and make sure you formally apply to the <a href="https://www.ece.utexas.edu/academics/graduate/admissions"><u>Texas ECE graduate program</u></a>.</span><br><br> -->

          <strong>Recent News</strong> | <a href="./news.html">All</a><br><hr>

          <i class="bi bi-book-fill">&nbsp;&nbsp;Audio Embeddings Paper</i><br>Acoustic sensing has been a research interest of ours for several years. Alice recently published a paper titled "Transformation of Audio Embeddings into Interpretable, Concept-Based Representations". For more details, check the <a href="https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~ethomaz/papers/c22.pdf">paper</a>. <br><small>Jun 2025</small><br><br>

          <i class="bi bi-book-fill">&nbsp;&nbsp;LLMs and Data Annotation</i><br>We have been exploring how LLMs might have an impact in activity recognition. Sloke has conducted studies centered on how they might change data annotation. For more details, check the <a href="https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~ethomaz/papers/c20.pdf">paper</a>, which will be presented at the <a href="https://conferences.computer.org/chase2024/">CHASE 2024</a> conference. The paper is titled "Leveraging Large Language Models to Annotate Activities of Daily Living Captured with Egocentric Vision". <br><small>Feb 2024</small><br><br>

          <strong>Recent Activities</strong> | <a href="./activities.html">All</a><br><hr>

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          <strong>Select Publications</strong> | <a href="./publications.html">All</a><br><hr>

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              <i><a href="./papers/j28.pdf">Detecting Eating Events with Inertial Sensing in a Ring Wearable</a></i><br/>
              Dawei Liang, Bobby Chiu, Cody Arvonen, Austin James, Yeji Kim, Edison Thomaz<br>
              PACM IMWUT 2026 | <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3789678">DOI</a><br><br>
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              <i><a href="./papers/j27.pdf">Multimodal Passive Smartphone Sensing in Older Adults: A Guide for Clinical Scientists Based upon an Ongoing Cohort Study</a></i><br/>
              Yufei Shen, Minchao Huang, Ji Park, Jared Benge, Justin Rousseau, Rosemary Lester-Smith, Edison Thomaz<br>
              Innovation in Aging 2026 | <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igag007">DOI</a><br><br>
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              <i><a href="./papers/c21.pdf">Improving Audio Classification with Low-Sampled Microphone Input: An Empirical Study using Model Self-Distillation</a></i><br/>
              Dawei Liang, Alice Zhang, David Harwath, Edison Thomaz<br>
              Interspeech 2024 | <a href="https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2024-2285">DOI</a><br><br>
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              <i><a href="./papers/c20.pdf">Leveraging Large Language Models to Annotate Activities of Daily Living Captured with Egocentric Vision</a></i><br/>
              Sloke Shrestha, Edison Thomaz<br>
              CHASE 2024 | <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/CHASE60773.2024.00031">DOI</a><br><br>
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              <i><a href="./papers/j21.pdf">Automated Face-to-Face Conversation Detection on a Smartwatch with Acoustic Sensing</a></i><br/>
              Liang, Dawei, Alice Zhang, Edison Thomaz<br>
              IMWUT 2023 | <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/3610882">DOI</a><br><br>
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