Jin receives 2020 UbiComp Outstanding Student Award

Fifth year Ph.D. student Haojian Jin received the Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student Award on Thursday, September 17, 2020, during the virtual UbiComp 2020 awards ceremony.

This UbiComp (ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing) award is given to a graduate student who has made outstanding research and service contributions to the field of ubiquitous computing.

Jin’s ubiquitous computing research focuses on building systems at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Mobile Computing and Privacy & Security.

Jin believes that ubiquitous computing can offer tremendous potential to improve lives, but not at the expense of people’s privacy. Through his research, Jin demonstrates that an always-connected world can be both efficient and privacy-friendly.

Jin highlights systems and privacy work in his research statement. “On the one hand, I am interested in demonstrating the superior values of ubiquitous connections. For example, in software-defined cooking, we present a novel re-design of the microwave oven that heats food along programmable thermal trajectories of every volumetric pixel, making it possible, for example, for microwave ovens to roast bacon or heat baby formula uniformly. On the other hand, my research moves the needle for privacy protection from multiple perspectives: making it easier for companies to protect users’ privacy, motivating people to protect their own privacy, and creating a new architecture that prioritizes privacy protection.”

In addition to research contributions, Jin also gives back through service as an active member of HCI, Mobile Computing, and Privacy research communities. He served on the Program Committee Members for SIGCHI LBW (since 2019), Chinese CHI (since 2018), MobiCom S^3 Workshop 2018, IEEE S&P student shadow committee 2020.

Jin is co-advised by HCII Professor Jason Hong and ECE Assistant Professor Swarun Kumar.

The Gaetano Borriello Outstanding Student Award is named after Gaetano Borriello, computer scientist and pioneering ubiquitous computing researcher, who died in 2015 after a battle with cancer.