Michael Sung

Wearables Lab/Human Dynamics Group
MIT Media Laboratory
E15-384b, 20 Ames Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

msung @ media . mit . edu

Background

I'm currently a Ph.D student and senior researcher for the MIT Wearables Group, part of the Human Dynamics Group at the MIT Media Laboratory. My current research interests encompass biomedical applications of wearable computing, including remote ambulatory health monitoring, physiologic data streaming and real-time classification, and multi-modal physiologic sensing for applications such as behavior profiling, social interaction analysis, long-term physiological/health life trending, and distributed healthcare. These applications makes use of the wearable infrastructure I helped develop at the MIT Wearables Laboratory, which consists of the MIThril 2003 architecture, SAK2 sensor hub and interface board, and BioSense physiologic sensing board).

In a previous life, I was a graduate student with the SCALE/Computer Architecture Group (CAG) at MIT Laboratory of Computer Science (LCS, now part of CSAIL), where I designed low-power VLSI/microarchitectures for next-generation microprocessors. Prior to that, I was with the Computer Structures Group (CSG) at LCS working on computer architecture design. Here's a slightly out-of-date resume.

Current Projects

  • LiveNet: My Ph.D thesis research on using wearable technology for non-invasive physiological and contextual ambulatory/wearable sensing, proactive real-time health monitoring and classification, long-term continuous physiological behavior trending, and distributed healthcare applications involving the sharing of physiological information among peer groups.
  • MIThril 2003: The new flagship wearable platform for the MIT Wearables Group. This wearable platform leverage commodity embedded hardware and centers around a sensor hub and interface board I developed call the SAK2. The architecture allows for the rapid prototyping of a variety of distributed, group-based applications and is capable of real-time data streaming, complex data processing and classification, and a variety of interaction modalities. This technology recently won the Most Visionary Technology Award at the MIT Enterprise Forum's 25th Annual Technology Conference.

  • MGH Depression Study: A study in collaboration with Dr. Carl Marci, Director of the Social Neuroscience at the Massachusetts General Hospital using mobile physiologic sensing technology to classify depression and the effects of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) on depression state.
  • Poker-Physiometrics Study: A pilot study to correlate non-invasive physiology and contextual sensing data to stress in no-limit Texas Holdem tournaments. Volunteers Wanted!!!
  • Army Natick Labs: We have recently started a research collaboration with the Army Research Institute for Environmental Medicine (ARIEM) at Natick. Our pilot study involves using non-invasive accelerometer sensing to determine hypothermia states, as part of a broader initiative to develop a physiologic monitoring device for soldiers under the US. Army's Objective Force Warrior Program.

  • UR Epilepsy Study:
    • A colloboration with the Dr. Berg at the University of Rochester's Strong Hospital, to quantify epileptic seizures through accelerometry and to be able to develop a ambulatory monitor with a real-time classifier.
  • Voxys Healthcare Systems: Co-founded a startup venture focusing on developing wearable physiologic monitoring applications for the consumer healthcare market. Our current focuses are on long-term predictive healthcare applications and electronic data capture/monitoring applications.

  • Low-Cost Biometric and Health Monitors: In developing countries, it is difficult to provide adequate monitoring services to the critically ill as hospitals are understaffed and cannot afford expensive monitoring systems. This initiative focuses on developing a portable, cheap, wearable device with low-power processing and sensing capabilities that can monitor and record vital patient signs (EKG, temperature, movement, respiration, etc.) in order to take the place of direct human monitoring. VitaMon is my first attempt at using Media Lab technologies toward this end.

  • SocioSalon: This was the spearheading event at a Bob Metcalfe hosted salon event for a long-term MIT initiative to explore new enabling technologies to help people to analyze and data-mine social networks.

  • Advanced Diamond Solutions, Inc.: Co-founded a company which has developed a revolutionary diamond composite material for the thermal management industry and semiconductor packaging industries. The company was a case study for SEM.089, an undergraduate entrepreneurship seminar this Fall, 2003. We won the 2003 MIT 1K Business Plan Award for the Materials Industry and were a 2004 MIT 50K Business Plan Competition Finalist.

Teaching

  • Digital Anthropology and Innovation Seminar: A now three-year old seminar course on technology testbeds and distributed groupware applications I helped organize and teach. This Spring-term class is a cross-registered course (MAS.996, 15.970) between the MIT Media Laboratory and Sloan Business School.

  • Hackfest: This is an annual MIT IAP class that I organize and teach to implement various sensor, embedded systems, and software technologies related wearable applications.

  • Computer Architecture: Head teaching assistant for the graduate course on computer architecture (6.823), taught by Prof. Asanovic and Prof. Arvind. I think I have the honor of breaking the record for the number of times TAing the class, with a grand total of 4 years (1997-98, 2000-01 terms).

Invited Talks and Exhibitions

  • "Wearable Systems for Real-Time Soldier Monitoring Applications"
    MIT EECS RQE Talk
    January 5, 2005
  • "Non-Invasive Sensing Technologies for Physiologic Context Classification"
    HP Cambridge Research Labs
    December 13, 2004
  • "LiveNet: Mobile Technologies for Long-Term Proactive Healthcare Applications"
     Computational Medicine Seminar Series, MIT CSAIL
    November, 2004
  • "Long-Term Wearable Health and Physiological Monitoring Systems"
    Thinks That Think Corporate Sponsor Consortia, MIT Media Laboratory
    October, 2004
  • "Wearable Sensing Technologies for Long-Term Health Monitoring"
    Workshop To Explore the Design Innovation Opportunities by the Placelab, a New Residential Research Facility
    December 8, 2003
  • "FutureWorks: Wearable System Architetures"
    Samsung Exhibition, Samsung Corporation, Suwon, Korea
    August 8-16, 2003

  • "Wearable Systems for Real-Time Health Monitoring Applications"
     PlaceLab: Workshop To Explore the Proactive Health Agenda for a New Residential Research Facility
    April 29, 2003

  • "Smart Clothes for the Future"
    Keynote speech at the Massachusetts Future Problem Solving Program (MFPSP) 2003 Kick-Off Conference
    October 18, 2003

  • "Multithreading Decoupled Architectures for Complexity-Effective General Purpose Computing"
    Workshop on Memory Access Decoupled Architectures MEDEA'01, September 8, 2001.
    Won best paper award for the workshop.

Workshop, Conference, and Journal Papers

  • " Flexible Sensor Network for Ambulatory Wearable Monitoring Systems "
     Michael Sung, Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    Submitted to the International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks, (BSN'05)

  • " Real-time Classification of Affective State Using Non-Invasive Physiological Sensing"
     Michael Sung, Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    Submitted to the HCI International 2005, (HCII'05)

  • "Wearable Infrastructure and Sensing for Real-time Clinical Feedback Systems for Rehabilitation"
     Michael Sung, Carl Marci, Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    Submitted to the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, (JNER'05)

  • "MIT.EDU: M-learning Applications for Classroom Settings"
     Michael Sung, Jonathan Gips, Nathan Eagle, Anmol Madan, Ron Caneel, Rich DeVaul, Joost Bonsen, and Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL'04)
    (PDF)

  • "A Shiver Motion and Core Body Temperature Classification for Wearable Soldier Health Monitoring Systems"
     Michael Sung, Rich DeVaul, Silvia Jimenez, Jonathan Gips, and Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    9th IEEE International Symposium of Wearable Computers (ISWC'04), Arlington, VA, October, 2004
    (PDF)

  • "MIThril LiveNet: Health and Lifestyle Networking"
     Michael Sung and Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    Workshop on Applications of Mobile Embedded Systems (WAMES'04) at Mobisys'04, Boston, MA, June, 2004
    (PDF)

  • "MIT.EDU: System Architecture for Real-World Distributed Multi-user Applications in Classroom Settings"
     Michael Sung, Jonathan Gips, Nathan Eagle, Rich DeVaul, and Alex "Sandy" Pentland
    2nd IEEE Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technology for Education (WMTE'03), Jungli, Taiwan, March, 2004
    (PDF)

  • "MIThril 2003: Applications and Architecture"
    Rich DeVaul, Michael Sung, Jonathan Gips, and Alex "Sandy"Pentland,
    8th IEEE International Symposium of Wearable Computers (ISWC'03), White Plains, NY, October, 2003
    (PDF)

  • "Multithreading Decoupled Architectures for Complexity-Effective General Purpose Computing"
    Michael Sung, Ronny Krashinsky, and Krste Asanovic
    ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, 29(5), December 2001
    Also appeared in Workshop on Memory Access Decoupled Architectures (MEDEA'01) at the International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compiler Techniques, PACT'01, Barcelona, Spain, September 2001.
    (PDF)

  • "Carbon Nitride and Other Speculative Superhard Materials"
    Chien-Min Sung and Michael Sung
    Proceedings of Materials Chemistry & Physics 43, 1996

Technical Reports and Theses

  • "Shivering Motion/Hypothermia Classification for Wearable Soldier Health Monitoring Systems"
     Michael Sung
    Technical Report
    December 2003
    Human Dynamics Group
    MIT Media Laboratory
    (PDF)
  • "P10K Superscalar Microprocessor Architecture Specification"
     Michael Sung
    Technical Report
    July 2002
    SCALE/Computer Architecture Group
    MIT Laboratory of Computer Science
    (PDF)
  • "Poison Queue Reorder Buffer Mechanism"
     Michael Sung
    Technical Report
    December 2001
    SCALE/Computer Architecture Group
    MIT Laboratory of Computer Science
    (PDF)
  • "Term Rewriting System (TRS) Specification for the Intel x86 Architecture"
     Michael Sung
    Technical Report
    January 2001
    Computer Structures Group
    MIT Laboratory of Computer Science
    (PDF)

  • "Trace Caches: High-Bandwidth Instruction Fetching for Next Generation Microprocessors"
    Michael Sung
    M.Eng. Thesis, June 1998
    Computation Structures Group
    MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    (PDF)

Undergraduate Research Advisees

  • Xingpeng Huang: Long-term behavorial modelling
  • Anurupa Ganguly: Livenet System integration
  • John Pavlish: LiveNet System integration

Former students include Jennifer Yeh, Xavid Pretzer, Justin Cannon, Shirli Li, Ben Maron, Jeff Pan, Leo, Pramook Khungurn, Cemal Akcaba, Albert Sun, Jeffrey Huang, Kathy Chen, and Hyunsuk Kim.