Yunzhi wearing an orange-color t-shirt standing on a bridge in dusk.

Bio

Yunzhi Li is a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, advised by Prof. Patrick A. Carrington. He is also a member of the AXLE Lab. Prior to CMU, he received his M.Sc. from Georgia Institute of Technology and B.Eng. from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the years, he is fortunate to be able to work with many amazing advisors including Prof. Ashutosh Dhekne, Prof. Feng Tian, Prof. Xiangmin Fan, and Prof. Gregory D. Abowd.

During the past summer, he completed a research internship at Samsung Research America, where he worked on several projects enabling novel health monitoring capabilities using wearable devices.

Yunzhi is interested in designing and developing novel computing technologies to better assist and empower users in their everyday lives. His current research interests are Accessibility, Sensing, and Human-Computer Interaction. Please feel free to contact him if you share common research interests. He would be more than happy to collaborate.

Email: yunzhil [at] cs.cmu.edu

Education

Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University, 2021 - Now.
M.Sc. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019 - 2021.
B.Eng. in Computer Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2015 - 2019.
Exchange Student in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 2018.

Publications

Optimizing Biomarkers from Earbud Ballistocardiogram: Calibration and Calibration-Free Algorithms for Accelerometer Axis Selection and Fusion.
Yunzhi Li, Md Mahbubur Rahman, Mehrab Bin Morshed, Md Saiful Islam, Hao Zhou, Weinan Wang, Holland Ernst, Li Zhu, Jilong Kuang.
ICASSP 2025: International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
Know Your Heart Better: Multimodal Cardiac Output Monitoring using Earbuds.
Hao Zhou, Md Mahbubur Rahman, Mehrab Bin Morshed, Yunzhi Li, Md Saiful Islam, Larry Zhang, Jungmok Bae, Christina Rosa, Wendy Berry Mendes, Jilong Kuang.
ICASSP 2025: International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing
BallistoBud: Heart Rate Variability Monitoring using Earbud Accelerometry for Stress Assessment.
Md Saiful Islam, Md Mahbubur Rahman, Mehrab Bin Morshed, David J Lin, Yunzhi Li, Hao Zhou, Wendy Berry Mendes, Jilong Kuang.
CHI 2025: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
WheelPoser: Sparse-IMU Based Body Pose Estimation for Wheelchair Users.
Yunzhi Li, Vimal Mollyn, Kuang Yuan, Patrick Carrington.
ASSETS 2024: ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
🏆 Best Student Paper Award - Top 1%
Privacy vs. Awareness: Relieving the Tension between Older Adults and Adult Children When Sharing In-home Activity Data.
Jiachen Li, Bingrui Zong, Tingyu Cheng, Yunzhi Li, Elizabeth D Mynatt, Ashutosh Dhekne.
CSCW 2023: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Breaking the “Inescapable” Cycle of Pain: Supporting Wheelchair Users’ Upper Extremity Health Awareness and Management with Tracking Technologies.
Yunzhi Li, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Patrick Carrington.
CHI 2023: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A semantic-based approach to digital content placement for immersive environments.
Jingyang Liu, Yunzhi Li, Mayank Goel.
The Visual Computer (2022)
“I Should Feel Like I’m In Control”: Understanding Expectations, Concerns, and Motivations for the Use of Autonomous Navigation on Wheelchairs.
JiWoong Jang, Yunzhi Li, Patrick Carrington.
ASSETS 2022: ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility
Travelogue: Representing Indoor Trajectories as Informative Art.
Yunzhi Li, Tingyu Cheng, Ashutosh Dhekne.
CHI 2022: ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts
Flexible computational photodetectors for self-powered activity sensing.
Dingtian Zhang, Canek Fuentes-Hernandez, Raaghesh Vijayan, Yang Zhang, Yunzhi Li, Jung Wook Park, Yiyang Wang, Yuhui Zhao, Nivedita Arora, Ali Mirzazadeh, Youngwook Do, Tingyu Cheng, Saiganesh Swaminathan, Thad Starner, Trisha L Andrew, Gregory D Abowd.
npj Flexible Electronics 6, Article number: 7 (2022)
Duco: Autonomous Large-Scale Direct-Circuit-Writing (DCW) on Vertical Everyday Surfaces Using A Scalable Hanging Plotter.
Tingyu Cheng, Bu Li, Yang Zhang, Yunzhi Li, Charles Ramey, Eui Min Jung, Yepu Cui, Sai Ganesh Swaminathan, Youngwook Do, Manos Tentzeris, Gregory D. Abowd, and HyunJoo Oh.
IMWUT (UbiComp) 2021: ACM Annual Conference on Interactive, Mobile, and Ubiquitous Technologies
OptoSense: Towards Ubiquitous Self-Powered Ambient Light Sensing Surfaces
Dingtian Zhang, Jung Wook Park, Yang Zhang, Yuhui Zhao, Yiyang Wang, Yunzhi Li, Tanvi Bhagwat, Wen-Fang Chou, Xiaojia Jia, Bernard Kippelen, Canek Fuentes-Hernandez, Thad Starner, and Gregory D. Abowd.
IMWUT (UbiComp) 2020: ACM Annual Conference on Interactive, Mobile, and Ubiquitous Technologies
🏆 IMWUT Distinguished Paper Award
How Presenters Perceive and React to Audience Flow Prediction In-situ: An Explorative Study of Live Online Lectures.
Wei Sun*, Yunzhi Li*, Xiangmin Fan, Feng Tian, Hongan Wang.
CSCW 2019: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing

* indicates equal contribution.