Presenter: Saad Ahmed

Abstract: 

Batteries are not a sustainable way to power the trillions of devices in the future Internet of Things (IoT). Only 5% of batteries in small electronics are recycled. The remaining ones are discarded and often end up in landfills, releasing toxic fumes and leaching chemicals into the soil as they break down. 

Next-generation IoT devices must be liberated from batteries by powering via ambient energy sources such as solar, RF, and motion to reduce the environmental and societal impact of IoT growth. Ambient energy, however, has spatiotemporal variability and can interrupt program execution at any point thus giving rise to various challenges including memory inconsistencies and non-terminating paths that are not present in continuous execution. Existing system stack for IoT devices is unable to cope with these challenges as it is designed with a notion of continuous energy which is no longer valid when powering from harvested energy. This calls for rethinking the entire system stack to enable sustainable computing for the next-generation IoT devices. In this talk, I will present system support that cuts across the system stack to address the challenges arising from frequent power failures and ensures energy-efficient, reliable, and adaptive application execution. I will also discuss unique applications in different domains that are only possible by getting rid of batteries.

Bio: 

Saad Ahmed is a Postdoctoral researcher in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. His work has appeared in top computing conferences and journals, including ACM IMWUT, ACM SenSys, ACM IPSN, ACM SIGOPS EuroSys, ACM TECS, and ACM TCPS, among others. His research work was nominated for the best paper award (EWSN), invited to the Communications of ACM, GetMobile magazine for the SIGMOBILE research highlight, named a finalist for Fast Company’s Innovation by Design Award, and covered by top media outlets such as ACM Tech News, Forbes, Tech Crunch, Gizmodo, and many more.

Hosted by: Professor Tyler Sorensen

Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/94784153196?pwd=cmZFeTJGZHNPaE9XV3NxRHRhOTR1dz09