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Dr. Zilu

Liang

 

Associate Professor

Director, Ubiquitous and Personal Computing Lab

Faculty of Engineering

Kyoto University of Advanced Science (KUAS), Japan​

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Check out our lab website for more information of on-going research projects!

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Research areas: ubiquitous computing, wearable computing, personal informatics, digital health (sleep, stress, circadian rhythm)

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Chichén Itzá 

Yucatán, México

WHO AM I ?

I received my MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Tokyo in 2011 and 2015 respectively. During my studies, I had the opportunity to pursue exchange programs at the University of Oxford in 2010 and at Imperial College London (working with Prof. John Polak) in 2012. In 2015, I was honored to receive the Australian Government Endeavor Research Fellowship, which supported my postdoctoral research at the University of Melbourne with Prof. James Bailey, Prof. Lars Kulik, and Dr. Bernd Ploderer. From 2016 to 2019, I served as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, where I played an active role in several initiatives aimed at internationalizing engineering education. I am a member of multiple research associations and have received several awards for my research contributions.


As an avid supporter of the Quantified Self movement, my research focuses on integrating a variety of sensing, computing, and data mining techniques to address challenges in data collection, analysis, and human-computer interaction, particularly in the context of health and well-being. In 2020, I founded and have since led the Ubiquitous and Personal Computing Lab at KUAS. My research has been supported by the JSPS and AMED. I currently serve as an associate editor for the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and JMIR mHealth and uHealth, as well as associate chair for ACM CHI. I am also actively involved in international collaborations and look forward to mentoring highly motivated students in several exciting ongoing research projects.


Growing up in a family of teachers, I developed a natural passion for education. I hold a teaching certificate from the University of Melbourne and an English Medium Instruction (EMI) certification from the University of Tokyo. In line with the ISTE standards from the International Society for Technology in Education, my mission is to prepare students to thrive in the Innovation Age by teaching them to think at three levels: WHAT (what is the basic concept?), SO WHAT (what is its relevance and how does it connect to other concepts?), and NOW WHAT (how can I apply what I've learned to solve real-world problems?). I am also committed to educational research focused on learning design. Since 2018, I have served as a program committee member and reviewer for leading international conferences on engineering and computing education, and I am a member of several educational research societies.

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I treasure physical strength and self-discipline. When I'm not researching or teaching, you can find me doing HIIT (Les Mills), barbell training, kick boxing, Pilates, yoga (Bikram) to maintain pro-athlete level metabolic profile. I have trained for 10 years in Taekwondo, Chinese martial art and Shotokan Karate. I follow a Paleo diet with time-restricted feeding and I'm strongly against sugar and artificial sweeteners. 

NEWS

[Journal] 24 March 2025. Frontiers in Digital Health (Q1)

​Our following paper was accepted by Frontiers in Digital Health, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Conference] 15 March 2025. CHI 2025 @ Yokohama, Japan​

​​Our following paper will be published in the Proceedings of the 2025 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025), the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction.

  • ​​ Human-Centered Evaluation and Auditing of Language Models (HEAL@CHI '25)

    • Yapa HPPP, Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2025) PIFU: A novel framework to evaluate the interpretability of synthetic free-text explanations in digital mental health.

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[Conference] 10 March 2025. ICMHI 2025 @ Kyoto, Japan​

​​Our following papers were accepted by the 9th International Conference on Medical and Health Informatics.

  • Saskovets M, Lohachov M, Karlsson DC, Liang Z.  (2025) Exploring the Feasibility of Cortisol Level Prediction Using Multimodal Physiological Signals.

  • Hoang HN, Liang Z. (2025) Systematic Investigation of the Impact of Data Granularity on Feature Utility in SpO2-Based Sleep Apnea Detection. 

  • Karunarathna T, Carvalho CF, Liang Z. (2025) Predicting Glucose Levels: The Role of Physiological, Circadian, Behavioral and Demographic Features.

  • Carvalho CF, Karunarathna T, Liang Z. (2025) Exploring Gender Differences in Interstitial Glucose Dynamics through Multiscale Entropy Analysis.

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[Journal] 07 March 2025. Sensors (Q1)

​Our following paper was accepted by Sensors, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Award] 22 Feb 2025. Honorable Mention for Best Poster Award @ HEALTHINF 2025

Our following poster received an Honorable Mention for Best Poster Award at the 18th International Conference on Health Informatics, a premier international conference of health informatics.

  • Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2025) Anxiety Detection in Reddit Posts through Emotion Dynamics Analysis.

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[Conference] 20 Feb 2025. HEALTHINF 2025 @ Porto, Portugal​

​​Our following papers will be published in the Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Health Informatics, a premier international conference of health informatics.

  • Liang Z. (2025) Assessing Dietary Protein Intake: A Comparative Study of Two Consumer Mail-In Nutrition Test Kits​.

  • Liang Z, Melcer EF, Hwang D, Chen S, Hoang NH, Khotchasing K. (2025) Game On for Better Sleep: Designing Serious Games to Promote Sleep Hygiene in University Students​.

  • Yapa HPPP, Liang Z. (2025) Improving In-Context Learning Interpretability with Free-Text Explanations for Complex Tasks​.

  • Hoang N, Liang Z. (2025) Reconsidering AHI as an Indicator of Sleep Apnea Severity: Insights from Mining Large, Longitudinal Sleep Datasets.

  • Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2025) Anxiety Detection in Reddit Posts through Emotion Dynamics Analysis.

  • Kosasih KK, Karlsson DC, Karunarathna TS, Liang Z. (2025) Eyes as Windows to the Heart: Predicting Heart Rate from Pupillometric Features.

  • Carvalho CF, Karunarathna T, Liang Z. (2025) Multiscale Entropy Analysis of Continuous Glucose Monitoring Data: A Comparative Study of Diabetic and Healthy Populations.

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[Award] 18 Feb 2025. Special Recognition for Outstanding Review @ CHI 2025

I was honored to receive a Special Recognition for Outstanding Review for my work at the 2025 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25), the premier international conference in Human-Computer Interaction. This marks the third time I have received this recognition, following CHI '22 and IMWUT '21.

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[Program Committee]13 Feb 2025. WSSE 2025 @ Okayama, Japan

​​I was invited to serve on the TPC of the 7th World Symposium on Software Engineering.

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[Journal] 05 Feb 2025. JMIR Mental Health (Q1)

​Our following paper was accepted by JMIR Mental Health, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Conference] 11 Dec 2024. ICLT 2024 @ Sydney, Australia​

​​Our following papers were published in the Proceedings of 2024 IEEE Consumer Life Tech Conference.

  • Liang Z. (2024) Harnessing Consumer Smartwatches for Real-Time Heart Rate Streaming in Unity Game Engine.

  • Karunarathna T, Liang Z. (2024) Developing Consumer Wearable Compatible Computational Models for Non-Invasive Glucose Estimation in Diabetes Patients.

  • Ahmed H, Liang Z. (2024) CLOUDS: Seamless Mood Tracking on the Wrist.

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[Conference] 18 Nov 2024. HealthCom 2024 @ Nara, Japan

​​Our following papers were published in the Proceedings of 2024 IEEE International Conference on E-health Networking, Application & Services.

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[Conference] 29 Oct 2024. GCCE 2024 @ Kokura, Japan

​​Our following papers were published in the Proceedings of 2024 IEEE 13th Global Conference on Consumer Electronics.

  • Liang Z, Nishida S, Noguchi T, Maenaka T. (2024) GyroTetris: Merging Mobile Gaming and Motion Sensing to Boost Motor Skills and Enjoyment.

  • Khotchasing K, Hoang HN, Saleh A, Liang Z. (2024) WristPet: Promoting Daily Physical Activity Through Nudge Theory in a Smartwatch App.

  • Carvalho CF, Karunarathna TS, Liang Z. (2024) LSTM-Based Glucose Prediction for Prediabetes.

  • Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2024) Time Series Analysis for Social Media Anxiety Detection: A Mini Review.

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[Editorial Service] 21 Oct 2024. JMIR mHealth and uHealth (Q1)

I was invited to serve as an Associate Editor for JMIR mHealth and uHealth, a top journal in health informatics and digital health.

 

[Conference] 27 Sep 2024. CCBDIoT2024 @ Chengdu, China

​​We made the following presentation at 3rd International Conference on Computing, Big Data and Internet of Things.

  • Liang Z. (2024) Computational Modeling for Effective Sleep Apnea Screening with Consumer Wearable Devices.

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[Journal] 23 Sep 2024. JMIR Serious Games (Q1)

​Our following paper was accepted by JMIR Serious Games, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Award] 14 Sep 2024. Best Presentation Award @ WSSE 2024

​​Our following presentation won a Best Presentation Award at the 6th World Symposium on Software Engineering.

  • Liang Z. (2024) Middleware Solution for Real-Time Physiological Data Streaming from Consumer Smartwatches.

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[Award] 14 Sep 2024. Best Presentation Award @ BDCI 2024

​​Our following presentation won a Best Presentation Award at the 4th International Conference on Big Data and Computational Intelligence. 

  • Franca Carvalho C, Liang Z. (2024) Glucose Prediction with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Models.​

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[Conference] 13 Sep 2024. BDCI 2024 @ Kyoto, Japan

​​We made the following presentation at the 4th International Conference on Big Data and Computational Intelligence. 

  • Franca Carvalho C, Liang Z. (2024) Glucose Prediction with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Models.

  • Karunarathna ST, Liang Z. (2024) Glucose Estimation Models for Diabetes and Their Utility on Healthy Individuals.

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[Conference] 13 Sep 2024. WSSE 2024 @ Kyoto, Japan

​​We made the following presentation at the 6th World Symposium on Software Engineering.

  • Liang Z. (2024) Middleware Solution for Real-Time Physiological Data Streaming from Consumer Smartwatches.

  • Khotchasing K, Hoang HN, Liang Z. (2024) A Human-Computer Interaction Study of Smartwatch Application for Promoting Healthy Lifestyle.

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[Conference] 10 Sep 2024. fNIRS 2024 @ Birmingham, UK

​​We made the following presentation at the VIII Biennial Meeting of the Society for functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

  • Saskovets M, Liang Z, Piumarta I. (2024) The Utility of fNIRS for Evaluating Human Voice Acoustics for Stress Management. 

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[Journal] 14 Aug 2024. Sleep and Breathing

​Our following paper was published by Sleep and Breathing, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Conference] 24 July 2024. NEURO 2024 @ Fukuoka, Japan

​​We made the following presentation at NEURO2024, the joint meeting of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society (JNS), the 67th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Neurochemistry (JSN), the 46th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Biological Psychiatry (JSBP), and the 8th Federation of Asian-Oceanian Neuroscience Societies (FAONS) Congress.

  • Saskovets M, Liang Z, Piumarta I. (2024) The Effect of Soothing Human Voice on the Stress Response.

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[Outreach] 17 July 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for visitors from our industrial partners.​​

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[Conference] 30 June 2024. IEEE IJCNN 2024 @ Yokohama, Japan

​​Our following submission will be published in the Proceedings of The International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).

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[Award] 30 June 2024. 2024 IEEE CIS Student Grand Competition @ Yokohama, Japan

​​Our PhD student Mr. Yapa Prasan won an Honorable Mention Award at the 2024 IEEE CIS Student Grand Competition in Computational Intelligence in Biomedicine and Healthcare, with the following project Vishadha: Early Smart Depression Detector.

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[Conference] 7 June 2024. ACM BTIW 2024 @ Tokyo, Japan

​​Our following submission was published in the Proceedings of The 2nd Behavior Transformation by IoT International Workshop (BTIW 2024).

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[Outreach] 6 June 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for high school visitors from Vietnam.​​

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[Journal] 3 June 2024. Frontiers in Education

​Our following paper was accepted by Frontiers in Education - Higher Education, indexed by SCI and Scopus.

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[Program Committee] 31 May 2024. CHI 2025 @ Yokohama, Japan

​​I was invited to serve as an Associate Chair (AC) for the ACM CHI 2025 (Subcommittee: Health), a premier conference in the field of human-computer interaction.​

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[Outreach] 29 May 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for high school visitors from Indonesia.​​

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[Journal] 28 May 2024. Frontiers in Digital Health

​Our following paper was accepted by Frontiers in Digital Health - Digital Mental Health, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Outreach] 27 May 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for visitors from Brazil, SEMESP.​​

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[Outreach] 13 May 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for undergraduate visiting students from Ohio State University.​​

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[Journal] 2 May 2024. JMIR Research Protocols

​Our following paper was accepted by JMIR Research Protocols, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Outreach] 10 April 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for high school visitors from Thailand.​​

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[Journal] 28 March 2024. Frontiers in Digital Health

​Our following paper was accepted by Frontiers in Digital Health - Human Factors and Digital Health, indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus.

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[Conference] 18 March 2024. ICIET 2024 @ Yamaguchi, Japan

​​We presented the following paper at the 12th International Conference on Information and Education Technology.

  • Liang Z. (2024) Analysis of Students’ Response Time and Performance in Kahoot! Quiz Games in a University Engineering Course.

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[Outreach] 14 March 2024.  夢ナビ講義Video 

I provided a lecture entitled "薬ではない“薬”～デジタル健康の最前線～(“Medicine” that is not a medicine ~frontiers of digital health~ )" on YumeNavi video stream platform to promote our research among high school students.​

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[Conference] 6 March 2024. IEICE General Conference 2024 @ Hiroshima, Japan

Our following short papers will be published in the Proceedings of the 2024 General Conference of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers.

  • Kosasih K. K., Liang Z. (2024) Predicting heart rate from pupillometric data.

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[Conference] 23 Feb 2024. HEALTHINF 2024 @ Rome, Italy

​​Our following papers will be published in the Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Health Informatics (HEALTHINF 2024), indexed by Scopus.)

  • Hoang HN, Liang Z. (2024) Apnea hypopnea index estimation from low-granularity overnight oxymetry data.

  • Hoang HN, Khotchasing K, Melcer E, Liang Z. (2024) Serious gamification app for improving sleep-wake cycle and sleep education.

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[Invited Talk] 18 Feb 2024. National Electronic & Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Thailand.

​​I was invited to give a talk at the Language & Semantic Technology Research Team (LST), Artificial Intelligence Research Unit (AINRU), National Electronic & Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), Thailand. 

  • From smartwatches to social network services: digitalize health with ubiquitous and personal computing technologies.

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[Review] 23 Jan 2024. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications 

I was invited to review papers for the Springer Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.

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[Outreach] 18 Jan 2024. University Guidebook 2025

Our research was featured in the 2025 university guidebook. 

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[Program Committee] 17 Jan 2024. IEEE EDUCON 2024

I was invited to join the program committee of the 2024 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference. 

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[Conference] 16 Jan 2024. CHI 2024 PC Meeting  

I participated the ACM CHI 2024 Program Committee meeting as an Associate Chair of the HEALTH subcommittee. 

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[Outreach] 15 Jan 2024. MS&AD Digital College from Kyoto 

I gave a lecture on data analytics for wearable technology in the MS&AD Digital College from Kyoto, a customized employee training and development program for the MS&AD Insurance Group.

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[Outreach] 13 Jan 2024. Interactive Webinar

I provided a demo lecture on app development based on OpenAI in an webinar for Indian students, co-organized by KUAS and Education Japan.

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[Outreach] 10 Jan 2024. Open Lab

We hosted an open lab event for visitors from our industrial collaborators.​​

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[Program Committee] 1 Jan 2024. IEEE CSEE&T 2024

I was invited to join the program committee of the 36th Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T). ​​​​​

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...[Omitted]...

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[Experiment] 27 Jul 2015. Study Participants Wanted ($25 voucher/interview)

Do you have a Fitbit? Are you using Fitbit to track your sleep and lifestyle data like steps walked, exercise or diet? We are building a new web app to help you analyse how your lifestyle affects your sleep. We are looking for Fitbit users to try out the app over 2 weeks and to comment on it in interviews at the start and at the end of the study (1 hour per interview). Volunteers will receive a $25 book/iTunes voucher per interview. HREC #1339336. Register interest at http://go.unimelb.edu.au/39qn or get in touch with Zilu Liang (zilu.liang@unimelb.edu.au).

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"Vitality and beauty are gifts of nature for those who live according to its laws." - Leonardo da Vinci 

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© 2025 by Dr Zilu Liang. 

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