Swarun Kumar

Swarun Kumar is the Sathaye Family Foundation Professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department, with affiliate appointments in the Computer Science (CS) department, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Institute, and CyLab. He leads the Emerging Wireless Technologies (WiTech) lab, focusing on next-generation wireless network protocols and services.

• Ph.D., Computer Science, MIT (George Sprowls Award winner)
• B.Tech., IIT Madras (President of India Gold Medal)

His research spans Low-Power WANs, Battery-Free IoT, mmWave Sensing, and Soft Robotics. Key projects include MetaMorph (robotic signal enhancers), WASER (RF-powered soft robots), and Hydra (multi-bounce mmWave sensing). He pioneered wireless actuation, body-frame tracking, and whale rendezvous frameworks using autonomous robots.

His recent work explores wireless systems for high-temperature materials (Viton), microwave energy optimization (MicroSurf), and dental health sensing (ToMoBrush). Articles reflect trends in Robotics, Material Science, and Wireless Systems.

• 2024 ACM SIGMOBILE Rockstar Award
• 2021 ACM SIGBED Early Career Researcher Award
• NSF CAREER Award
• George Sprowls Award (MIT Best Ph.D. Thesis)
• President of India Gold Medal (IIT Madras)

He has advised numerous Ph.D. students, including alumni joining universities like University of Washington, UC San Diego, and NUS. His teaching includes courses on Computer Networks, Wireless Systems, and Telecommunication Networks.