Richard Li

Employment

2025 - Present

University of Washington - Postdoctoral Fellow

Mentors: James Fogarty (DUB Group), Shwetak Patel (UbiComp Lab), and Cindy Lin (School of Medicine)

2019 - 2025

University of Washington - Graduate Research Assistant

Mentors: James Fogarty (DUB Group) and Shwetak Patel (UbiComp Lab)

2022

Microsoft Research - Research Intern

Mentors: Teddy Seyed, Nicolai Marquardt, Nathalie Riche, and Ken Hinckley (EPIC Team)

2021

Microsoft Research - Research Intern

Mentors: Eyal Ofek, Nicolai Marquardt, and Ken Hinckley (EPIC Team)

2020

Microsoft Research - Research Intern

Mentors: Alex Fiannaca and Ed Cutrell (Ability Team)

2019 - 2020

X, the Moonshot Factory (Google [x]) - Research Scholar

Mentors: JB Berent and Yash Ahluwalia

2018 - 2019

Google Research - Research Scholar

Mentors: Dimitri Kanvesky, Thad Starner, Dick Lyon

2017 - 2019

Georgia Institute of Technology - Graduate Research Assistant

Mentors: Thad Starner and Gregory Abowd

2017

Nvidia Research - Research Intern

Mentor: Kaan Akşit

2015

Amazon.com - Software Engineering Intern

2014

Intel - Research and Development Intern

2013

Broadcom - Software Configuration Management Intern

Education

2019 - 2025

University of Washington

Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering

Advisors: James Fogarty and Shwetak Patel

2016 - 2018

Georgia Institute of Technology

M.S. in Computer Science

Advisors: Gregory Abowd and Thad Starner

2012 - 2016

Georgia Institute of Technology

B.S. in Computer Science, minor in Music Performance (clarinet)

Awards

2025

Young Researcher - Heidelberg Laureate Forum

2025

CHI 2025 Best Paper Award - CHI Conference on Human Factors

2024

Travel Grant to UbiComp/ISWC 2024 - UbiComp/ISWC

2024

I-Corps Participant - UW NSF Innovation Corps Site

2024

Innovation Gap Fund (~$10k) - UW CoMotion Labs

2023

Inventor of the Year Finalist - UW School of Medicine

2023

Husky 100 - University of Washington

2023

Population Health Pilot Grant (~$100k) - UW Population Health Initative

2019

Futuremaker Fellowship (~$50k) - Siemens

2017

Runner-Up Master's Thesis - GT Three Minute Thesis Competition

2017

Outstanding Master's Thesis - GT College of Computing

2017

Best Computing Poster Award - GT Career, Research, and Innovation Development Conference

2015

Travel Grant to CSCW 2015 - GT GVU Center

2015

President's Undergraduate Research Award - GT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program

2014 - 2016

HOPE Scholarship - GT Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid

Refereed Publications

2025

Beacon: At-Home, Self-Administration of a Test for Critical Flicker Frequency as a Screening Test for Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy

AASLD The Liver Meeting

Philip Vutien*, Richard Li*, Ravi Karkar, James Fogarty, Sean A Munson, Sabrina Omer, Michael Yacoub, James Kashima, George N Ioannou

campaign Oral Presentation

2025

What Motivates Bladder Cancer Patients to be Active? A Qualitative Study Assessing Attitudes Towards Physical Activity and Digital Health Technologies

Urologic Oncology: Seminars and Original Investigations

Alex Zhu, Jessica Sher, Richard Li, Otari Ioseliani, Leah Cantor, Elena G Brewer, Karla Landis, David Bridges, Sean A Munson, Hanna Hunter, Cindy Lin, Sarah P Psutka

2025

Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring with Critical Flicker Frequency

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Richard Li, Philip Vutien, Sabrina Omer, Michael Yacoub, George Ioannou, Ravi Karkar, Sean A Munson, James Fogarty

emoji_events Best Paper Award

2025

ECG Necklace: Low-power Wireless Necklace for Continuous ECG monitoring

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Qiuyue Xue, Eric Steven Martin, Jiaqing Liu, Ruiqing Wang, Antonio Glenn, Richard Li, Vikram Iyer, Shwetak Patel

2023

Evaluating a Novel, Portable, Self-Administrable Device ("Beacon") that Measures Critical Flicker Frequency as a Test for Hepatic Encephalopathy

ACG American Journal of Gastroenterology

Philip Vutien*, Richard Li*, Ravi Karkar, Sean A Munson, James Fogarty, Kara Walter, Michael Yacoub, George N Ioannou

2023

AdHocProx: Sensing Mobile, Ad-Hoc Collaborative Device Formations using Dual Ultra-Wideband Radios

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Richard Li, Teddy Seyed, Nicolai Marquardt, Eyal Ofek, Steve Hodges, Mike Sinclair, Hugo Romat, Michel Pahud, Jatin Sharma, William AS Buxton, Ken Hinckley, Nathalie Riche

2022

Food, Mood, Context: Examining College Students' Eating Context and Mental Well-Being

ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare

Mehrab Bin Morshed, Samruddhi Shreeram Kulkarni, Koustuv Saha, Richard Li, Leah G Roper, Lama Nachman, Hong Lu, Lucia Mirabella, Sanjeev Srivastava, Kaya De Barbaro, Munmun De Choudhury, Thomas Plötz, Gregory Abowd

2022

SilentSpeller: Towards Mobile, Hands-Free, Silent Speech Text Entry using Electropalatography

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Naoki Kimura, Tan Gemicioglu, Jonathan Womack, Richard Li, Yuhui Zhao, Abdelkareem Bedri, Zixiong Su, Alex Olwal, Jun Rekimoto, Thad Starner

2021

Understanding the Design Space of Mouth Microgestures

ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Victor Chen, Xuhai Xu, Richard Li, Yuanchun Shi, Shwetak Patel, Yuntao Wang

2021

Augmented Silkscreen: Designing AR Interactions for Debugging Printed Circuit Boards

ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Ishan Chatterjee, Olga Khvan, Tadeusz Pforte, Richard Li, Shwetak Patel

2020

A Real-Time Eating Detection System for Capturing Eating Moments and Triggering Ecological Momentary Assessments to Obtain Further Context: System Development and Validation Study

JMIR mHealth and uHealth

Mehrab Bin Morshed, Samruddhi Shreeram Kulkarni, Richard Li, Koustuv Saha, Leah Galante Roper, Lama Nachman, Hong Lu, Lucia Mirabella, Sanjeev Srivastava, Munmun De Choudhury, Kaya de Barbaro, Thomas Ploetz, Gregory D Abowd

2020

Optical Gaze Tracking with Spatially-Sparse Single-Pixel Detectors

IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality

Richard Li, Eric Whitmire, Michael Stengel, Ben Boudaoud, Jan Kautz, David Luebke, Shwetak Patel, Kaan Akşit

2020

KissGlass: Greeting Gesture Recognition using Smart Glasses

Augmented Humans International Conference

Richard Li, Juyoung Lee, Woontack Woo, Thad Starner

2019

Prediction of Mood Instability with Passive Sensing

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Mehrab Bin Morshed, Koustuv Saha, Richard Li, Sidney K D'Mello, Munmun De Choudhury, Gregory D Abowd, Thomas Plötz

2019

ScratchThat: Supporting Command-Agnostic Speech Repair in Voice-Driven Assistants

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Jason Wu, Karan Ahuja, Richard Li, Victor Chen, Jeffrey Bigham

2019

TongueBoard: An Oral Interface for Subtle Input

Augmented Humans International Conference

Richard Li, Jason Wu, Thad Starner

2018

ScratchVR: Low-Cost, Calibration-Free Sensing for Tactile Input on Mobile Virtual Reality Enclosures

ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Richard Li, Victor Chen, Gabriel Reyes, Thad Starner

2018

Buccal: Low-Cost Cheek Sensing for Inferring Continuous Jaw Motion in Mobile Virtual Reality

ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Richard Li, Gabriel Reyes

2018

WristWash: Towards Automatic Handwashing Assessment Using a Wrist-Worn Device

ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers

Hong Li, Shishir Chawla, Richard Li, Sumeet Jain, Gregory D Abowd, Thad Starner, Cheng Zhang, Thomas Plötz

2017

EarBit: Using Wearable Sensors to Detect Eating Episodes in Unconstrained Environments

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies

Abdelkareem Bedri, Richard Li, Malcolm Haynes, Raj Prateek Kosaraju, Ishaan Grover, Temiloluwa Prioleau, Min Yan Beh, Mayank Goel, Thad Starner, Gregory Abowd

Lightly-Reviewed Publications

2025

Towards Characterizing Knowledge Distillation of PPG Heart Rate Estimation Models

NeurIPS Workshop on Learning from Time Series for Health

Kanav Arora, Girish Narayanswamy, Shwetak Patel, Richard Li

2025

Investigating the Use of Beacon for Cognitive Monitoring in People with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia via the Critical Flicker Frequency

AMIA Workgroup on Interactive Systems in Healthcare

Richard Li, Philip Vutien, Ravi Karkar, Sabrina Omer, Michael Yacoub, Sarah Payne, Sean A Munson, James Fogarty, George Ioannou, Debby Tsuang

2024

Improving Medical Outcomes through At-Home, Longitudinal Health Monitoring

UbiComp/ISWC Doctoral Colloquium

Richard Li

2024

Exploring and Characterizing Large Language Models for Embedded System Development and Debugging

ACM CHI Late-Breaking Work

Zachary Englhardt, Richard Li, Dilini Nissanka, Zhihan Zhang, Girish Narayanswamy, Joseph Breda, Xin Liu, Shwetak Patel, Vikram Iyer

2024

Opportunistic Nudges for Task Migration Between Personal Devices

ACM CHI Late-Breaking Work

Nikhita Joshi, Richard Li, Jiannan Li, Leonardo Pavanatto, Michel Pahud, Jatin Sharma, Bongshin Lee, Hugo Romat, William Buxton, Nicolai Marquardt

2024

The "Get Moving Trial": A Phase I/II RCT of Home-Based (P)rehabilitation ((P)REHAB) with ExerciseRx in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer (MIBC)

ASCO Journal of Clinical Oncology

Hanna Hunter, Cindy Lin, Richard Li, Otari Ioseliani, Leah Cantor, Elena Brewer, Samia Jannat, Karla Landis, David Bridges, Sean Munson

2023

Smart-Pikachu: Extending Interactivity of Stuffed Animals with Large Language Models

ACM UIST Student Innovation Challenge

Toma Itagaki, Richard Li

2022

Accuracy of Home Exercise Detection Using Novel Sonar Mobile Application Technology

ACSM Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise

Ahmed I El-Sayed, Richard Li, Parker Ruth, Libby Lavitt, Matthew Essman, Shwetak N Patel, Cindy Y Lin

2021

Mobile, Hands-Free, Silent Speech Texting using SilentSpeller

ACM CHI Late-Breaking Work

Naoki Kimura, Tan Gemicioglu, Jonathan Womack, Richard Li, Yuhui Zhao, Abdelkareem Bedri, Alex Olwal, Jun Rekimoto, Thad Starner

2020

Evaluating a Novel, Portable, Self-Administered Device ("Flicker-App") that Measures Critical Flicker Frequency as a Test for Hepatic Encephalopathy in Patients with Cirrhosis

AASLD The Liver Meeting Digital Experience

Philip Vutien, Ravi Karkar, Richard Li, Kara Walter, Sean Munson, James Fogarty, George Ioannou

2016

Tactile Teacher: Enhancing Traditional Piano Lessons with Tactile Instructions

ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing Poster

Richard Li, Yingyan Wang, Chih-Pin Hsiao, Nicholas Davis, James Hallam, Ellen Yi-Luen Do

2015

Tactile Teacher: Sensing Finger Tapping in Piano Playing

ACM Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction Demo

Chih-Pin Hsiao, Richard Li, Xinyan Yan, Ellen Yi-Luen Do

Invited Talks

2025

Designing and Deploying Next-Generation Health Technologies: Producing Actionable Insights from Novel Biomarkers

Host: Interactive Intelligent Systems Laboratory (University of Tokyo)

2025

Designing and Deploying Next-Generation Health Technologies: Producing Actionable Insights from Novel Biomarkers

Host: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Columbia University)

2024

Towards Personal Interpretation of Health Data for Improving Medical Outcomes

Host: VAK Sustainable Computing Lab (Northwestern University)

2024

Supporting Exercise as a Medicine using Generative AI

Host: Computer Science & Engineering Industry Affiliates Day (UW)

2024

Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring with Critical Flicker Frequency

Host: Advanced Topics in Human-Computer Interaction (UW CSE 510)

2024

ExerciseRx-CP: At-Home Sensor-Driven Strengthening

Host: Cerebral Palsy Grand Rounds (Seattle Children's Hospital)

2023

Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring with Critical Flicker Frequency

Host: Computer Science & Engineering Industry Affiliates Day (UW)

2022

Sensing Device Formations using Ultra-Wideband Radios

Host: Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (Microsoft Research)

2022

Critical Flicker Frequency for Minimal Hepatic Encephalopathy

Host: Hepatology Grand Rounds (Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Medical Center)

Teaching

Fall 2024

Embedded Systems Capstone (UW CSE/EE475, EE 542) - Instructor

Prepared and taught lectures on advanced embedded systems topics (i.e., PCB design, wireless communication, on-device machine learning). Guided 9 team projects from ideation to presentation. 36 students, overall rating of 4.5/5.

Fall 2021 - Spring 2025

Ubiquitous Computing Seminar (UW CSE 599U) - Instructor

Organized weekly seminar presentations on literature from ubiqutious computing, human-computer interaction, and mobile systems.

Winter 2020

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (UW CSE 440) - Teaching Assistant

Conducted lab sessions and graded assignments. 32 students.

Spring 2015 - Spring 2016

Technical Interview Prep (GT TIP) - Founder and Instructor

Designed curriculum to prepare students for technical software engineering interviews, presented weekly lectures and organized class activities.

Spring 2015

Introduction to Computer Science (GT CS 1100) - Teaching Assistant

Presented lectures on opportunities for computer science majors.

Student Mentorship

2024 - Present

Kanav Arora

Deep learning for health sensing.

2022 - Present

Jason Miller

Communication over audio, deep learning for pose tracking.

2022 - Present

Jonathan Shu - Now: Software Engineer at Amazon.com

UW Undergraduate Research Symposium. Gaze tracking, Beacon hardware.

2021 - 2024

Toma Itagaki - Now: PhD Student at Columbia University

NSF GRFP. Brain-computer interfaces, health sensing.

2020 - 2021

Millicent Li - Now: PhD Student at Northeastern University.

NSF GRFP, UW Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Brain-computer interfaces.

2020 - 2023

Annalice Ni - Now: Software Engineer at Bytedance

UW Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Fabrication and sensing techniques for interactive cardboard widgets.

2020 - 2023

Eddy Zhou - Now: Software Engineer at F5

Fabrication and sensing techniques for interactive cardboard widgets.

2020 - 2023

Victor Chen - Now: MS Student at Stanford, Software Engineer at Zoom

Sensing and interaction techniques for low-cost VR headsets.

2018 - 2019

Sophia Sun - Now: Software Engineer at Yelp, PhD student at University of Minnesota

GT Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Face sensing for low-cost VR headsets.

2018 - 2019

Ruihan Xu - Now: Software Engineer at Google

GT Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Face sensing for low-cost VR headsets.

Service

Conference Organizing

ACM CHI - 2026

Paper Reviewing

Asterisk (*) denotes outstanding review

ACM CHI - 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024*, 2025, 2026

ACM IMWUT - 2019, 2021*, 2022*, 2023, 2024

ACM ISWC - 2017, 2018, 2020

ACM UIST - 2021, 2022, 2025

ACM Health - 2025

NeurIPS TS4H - 2025

IEEE TVCG - 2024

ACM TEI - 2023

IEEE VR - 2022

ACM MobileHCI - 2022

IEEE ISMAR - 2020*

Student Volunteering

UbiComp - 2019

UIST - 2022

Institution Volunteering

UW Faculty Recruiting Host (HCI) - 2024

UW CSE Visit Days Area Oraganizer (Ubicomp) - 2022 - 2024

UW CSE PhD Admissions Area Chair (HCI and Ubicomp) - 2023

UW CSE PhD Admissions Reviewer - 2022 - 2024

UW CSE PhD Pre-Application Mentorship Service (PAMS) Mentor - 2021 - 2024