Nakul Garg Receives 2026 ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award

University of Maryland Department of Computer Science alum Nakul Garg (Ph.D. '25, computer science) received the 2026 Association for Computing Machinery SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award for developing sensing technologies that operate within limited power, size and computing resources.

Garg, who was advised by Associate Professor of Computer Science Nirupam Roy, is now an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University. He received the award for his dissertation, “Toward Integrating Intelligence into Everything Around Us.”

The dissertation examined how small devices can interpret their surroundings without relying on large sensors, substantial computing resources or continuous access to cloud services. Garg’s research combined hardware and software design with the physical properties of sound, radio and light to reduce the energy required for sensing and computation.

“I am deeply honored to receive the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award,” Garg said. “I am grateful to the University of Maryland, the Department of Computer Science, my committee members, collaborators and the broader SIGMOBILE community for shaping this work.”

Garg said his time at UMD allowed him to study long-term questions in ambient intelligence and mobile computing while developing systems that could be tested in physical environments.

“UMD gave me the environment to ask long-term questions about ambient intelligence and mobile computing, and to turn those questions into working systems,” he said. “I am very thankful for that.”

His research focuses on ambient intelligence, mobile computing, sensing systems and embedded artificial intelligence. He develops systems intended to help small devices detect context, movement, health-related signals and environmental conditions despite limits on power, cost, processing capacity and infrastructure.

Such constraints can affect technologies used in wearables, robots, buildings and public infrastructure. Garg’s work explores how these devices can gather and process information locally rather than depend entirely on conventional sensors or remote data centers.

“If intelligence is going to move from phones and data centers into robots, smart buildings, wearables and infrastructure, it has to be designed for the physical limits of those platforms,” Garg said.

A central component of his doctoral research was hardware-software co-design, in which physical structures, transmitted signals and computational algorithms share sensing and processing tasks.

One project used nature-inspired acoustic structures to enable small robots to achieve low-power depth perception. Another developed reconfigurable antenna that allowed compact devices to estimate their locations without depending on GPS.

“We explored how hardware-software co-design can make sensing hardware, signals and algorithms share the work,” Garg said. “The core idea is to build more capable human-centered technologies, augmented devices, robots, health systems and sustainable infrastructure for the future.”

Garg has continued that research at Rice, where his lab will study how acoustic, wireless and embedded AI systems can help devices interpret people, places and activity in their immediate surroundings.

The work will examine how devices can gain greater awareness of physical environments while remaining practical for use in small or resource-constrained systems. Potential applications include wearable technologies, robotics, health monitoring, buildings and infrastructure.

“We want to build the foundations for technologies that are physically aware and useful in everyday environments,” Garg said.

—Story by Samuel Malede Zewdu, CS Communications