Intelligent Mobile and Embedded Computing Lab

At IMEC, we work at the intersection between systems, embedded AI, and data within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northwestern University. We develop resource-efficient and real-time systems that can embed intelligent perception, reasoning, and understanding into common infrastructure and everyday objects found all around us and utilize these systems in efficient ways to enable useful services and improve our overall quality of life. Our work spans a number of domains, including mobile and embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, edge computing, signal processing, machine learning, wearables, robotics, health, intelligent built environments, etc.

Recent News

2025

TW-CRL:Time-Weighted Contrastive Reward Learning for Efficient Inverse Reinforcement Learning Accepted to AAAI 2026 span style color:red Oral span
"TW-CRL:Time-Weighted Contrastive Reward Learning for Efficient Inverse Reinforcement Learning" Accepted to AAAI 2026 (Oral)

MAESTRO: Adaptive Sparse Attention and Robust Learning for Multimodal Dynamic Time Series Accepted and Presented at NeurIPS 2025 span style color:red Spotlight span
"MAESTRO: Adaptive Sparse Attention and Robust Learning for Multimodal Dynamic Time Series" Accepted and Presented at NeurIPS 2025 (Spotlight)

IMEC hosts Third ACM International Workshop on Intelligent Acoustics Systems and Applications IASA 2025 at MobiCom
IMEC hosts Third ACM International Workshop on Intelligent Acoustics Systems and Applications (IASA 2025) at MobiCom

IMUSteth: On-Body Stethoscope Localization with Inertial Sensing for Home Self-Screening Accepted and Presented at ACM IASA 2025
"IMUSteth: On-Body Stethoscope Localization with Inertial Sensing for Home Self-Screening" Accepted and Presented at ACM IASA 2025

FlexiFly: Interfacing the Physical World with Foundation Models Empowered by Reconfigurable Drone Systems Accepted and Presented at ACM SenSys 2025
"FlexiFly: Interfacing the Physical World with Foundation Models Empowered by Reconfigurable Drone Systems" Accepted and Presented at ACM SenSys 2025

DomAIn: Towards Programless Smart Homes receives span style color:red Best Paper span Award at ACM HumanSys 2025
"DomAIn: Towards Programless Smart Homes" receives Best Paper Award at ACM HumanSys 2025

Unsupervised Deep Clustering for Human Behavior Understanding Accepted and Presented at ACM HumanSys 2025
"Unsupervised Deep Clustering for Human Behavior Understanding" Accepted and Presented at ACM HumanSys 2025

Weisi Yang presents work on detecting intimate partner infiltrations on smartphones at Discovery Partners Institute
Weisi Yang presents work on detecting intimate partner infiltrations on smartphones at Discovery Partners Institute

2024

EmbodiedRDA Receives span style color:red Best Demo Runner-Up span Award at MobiCom 2024
EmbodiedRDA Receives Best Demo Runner-Up Award at MobiCom 2024

TRAMBA: Speech Enhancement for Mobile Systems , Accepted to ACM IMWUT, To Be Presented at UbiComp ISWC 2025
"TRAMBA: Speech Enhancement for Mobile Systems", Accepted to ACM IMWUT, To Be Presented at UbiComp / ISWC 2025

2023

RECA Wins span style color:red Best Paper span at BuildSys 2023
RECA Wins Best Paper at BuildSys 2023

RECA: A Multi-Task Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Recommender System for Co-Optimizing Energy, Comfort and Air Quality in Commercial Buildings , Accepted, To Be Presented at BuildSys 2023
"RECA: A Multi-Task Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Recommender System for Co-Optimizing Energy, Comfort and Air Quality in Commercial Buildings", Accepted, To Be Presented at BuildSys 2023

Anemoi: A Low-cost Sensorless Indoor Drone System for Automatic Mapping of 3D Airflow Fields Accepted and Presented at MobiCom 2023
"Anemoi: A Low-cost Sensorless Indoor Drone System for Automatic Mapping of 3D Airflow Fields" Accepted and Presented at MobiCom 2023

A Data-Driven and Human-Centric EV Charging Recommendation System at City-Scale Accepted and Presented at ACM e-Energy 2023
"A Data-Driven and Human-Centric EV Charging Recommendation System at City-Scale" Accepted and Presented at ACM e-Energy 2023

ARSteth Accepted and Presented at IPSN 2023
ARSteth Accepted and Presented at IPSN 2023

LegoSENSE Accepted and Presented at IoTDI 2023
LegoSENSE Accepted and Presented at IoTDI 2023

CaNRun Accepted and Presented at IASA 2023
CaNRun Accepted and Presented at IASA 2023