Mahanth Gowda

Mahanth Gowda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, leading a prolific research program at the intersection of mobile systems, wireless sensing, and human-computer interaction. His work has been continuously funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation since 2019, serving as Principal Investigator on four awards and Co-PI on two others, collectively spanning edge computing for XR, sign-language recognition, next-generation wireless networking, and healthcare-oriented wearables.

Research Interests

• Millimetre-wave and ultra-wideband sensing for 3-D finger motion tracking and speech eavesdropping
• Edge-IoT platforms for real-time sign-language recognition and translation
• Neural-augmented game streaming and super-resolution on commodity mobile devices
• Open-source wearable systems for sports analytics and rehabilitative healthcare
• Security and privacy implications of motion sensors in smartphones and IoT devices

Over the past five years his publication trajectory has concentrated on leveraging emerging radio modalities—especially millimetre-wave radar, Wi-Fi, and UWB—to extract fine-grained human-centric information such as finger gestures, facial micro-motions, and spoken content. A complementary thread develops edge-native machine-learning frameworks that push intelligence to resource-constrained devices, enabling immersive AR/VR experiences and assistive technologies for the Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.

Grants & Projects

• CAREER: Sign-to-Speech – NSF, $500k, 2021-2026; Edge-IoT platform for real-time ASL recognition.
• SHF: Medium: Next-Gen XR Edge Platform – NSF, $1.2M, 2022-2025; Co-PI with Das, Sivasubramaniam, Kandemir.
• CNS Core: IoTScope – NSF, $450k, 2020-2025; Sensing physical materials via low-cost IoT radios.
• CNS Core: Medium: ML-driven Next-G Wireless – NSF, $800k, 2020-2024; Co-PI with Yang and Mahdavi.
• I-Corps: Smart Ring for Healthcare Analytics – NSF, $50k, 2023-2025; Commercialization of finger-motion wearables.

Labs & Teams

Gowda directs a research group that operates at the confluence of wireless networking, embedded systems, and applied machine learning. The lab maintains active collaborations with faculty in computer architecture, augmented reality, and accessibility studies, and routinely mentors graduate researchers whose work appears in top-tier venues such as ACM MobiCom, IEEE INFOCOM, ISCA, and ACM IoTDI.