Joe Breda

About Me

I am a final year PhD student advised by Shwetak Patel in the Ubiquitous Computing Lab at the University of Washington Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineer.

My work is on leveraging ubiqutious technology and artificial intelligence for public health, urbanism, and sustainability. More about my work in the section below.

I got my B.S. in Computer Engineering with a Minor in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst where I worked with Jay Taneja, Prashant Shenoy, and David Irwin.

CV / Google Scholar

Research Interests

I'm broadly interested in using sensing, ubiqutious technology, and artificial intelligence for social good. I am passionate about my work having a positive impact on environmental sustainability, health, and equity of built environments and the societies that occupy them. To do this, I like to build and deploy AI powered sensing on ubiquitous and scalable platforms like smartphones, wearables, and embedded systems.

Most recently, I have built and deployed a suite of smart bicycle sensors with a local active transport activist group to passively crowdsource a measure of cyclist safety across the road network and I have lead a year long clinical influenza challenge study at the NIH to explore how biomarkers measured from wearables can predict illness.

Some Cool Things I've Done During My PhD

During my time as a PhD student I have been fortunate to work on a variety of different applications. Personal Health Sensing: I have run clinical trials using experimental health sensing technology at multiple hospitals including the NIH. Urbanism: I have built and or deployed custom embedded systems for mobile sensing with bicyclist communities in Seattle and Motorcycle Rideshare communities in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. Qualitative Science: I have conducted multiple interview studies with urban populations in Seattle and Thailand. Applied AI: I have explored the use of Satellite imagery for applied computer vision tasks including wildfire prediction at UW and road safety at Google. Interactions: I have built custom wearables and conducted user studies for AI-enabled touch sensing. I have also participated in a number of community based organizations including co-founding and leading the Allen School Graduate Entrepreneurship Club, and helped start and lead the CS4Env cross-department collaborative initiative. I have also helped teach multiple levels of undergraduate and graduate embedded systems courses including embedded capstone.

Personal Interests

Outside of my research, I like to make digital art through a variety of mediums including computer graphics, electronic music production software, hardware synthesizers, and photography. Some themes I find inspiring across all mediums are ambience, harsh noise, procedural generation, and the design of everyday things. I also like to boulder, bike, write, and spend time in public shared space.

Publications

Exploring and characterizing large language models for embedded system development and debugging

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

Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI LBW 2024 [PDF]

"I will just have to keep driving": A Mixed-methods Investigation of Lack of Agency within the Thai Motorcycle Rideshare Driver Community

Nussara Tieanklin*, Joseph Breda*, Tim Althoff, Kurtis Heimerl

Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), 2024 [PDF]

* Indicates equal contribution

Thermal Earring: Low-power Wireless Earring for Longitudinal Earlobe Temperature Sensing

Qiuyue Shirley Xue, Yujia Liu, Joseph Breda, Mastafa Springston, Vikram Iyer, Shwetak Patel

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2024 [PDF]

FeverPhone: Accessible Core-Body Temperature Sensing for Fever Monitoring Using Commodity Smartphones

Joseph Breda, Mastafa M. Springston, Alex Mariakakis, Shwetak Patel

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2023 [PDF]

Won Distinguished Paper Award at Ubicomp 2024

Understanding People's Concerns and Attitudes Towards Smart Cities

Pardis Emami-Naeini, Joseph Breda, Wei Dai, Tadayoshi Kohno, Kim Laine, Shwetak Patel, Franziska Rosener

Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), 2023 [PDF]

Passively Sensing SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Public Transit Buses

Jason Hoffman, Matthew Hirano, Nuttada Panpradist, Joseph Breda, Parker Ruth, Yuanyi Xu, Jonathan Lester, Bichlien H. Nguyen, Luis Ceze, Shwetak Patel

Science of the Total Environment, 2022 [PDF]

Phone-based ambient temperature sensing using opportunistic crowdsensing and machine learning

Amee Trivedi, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, Joseph Breda, Prashant Shenoy, Jay Taneja, David E Irwin

Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, 2021 [PDF]

Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Reframing Urban Agriculture as an Opportunity for Social Engagement

Joseph Breda, Esther Jang, Kurtis Heimerl, Shwetak Patel

Self-Sustainable CHI'20 [PDF]

Hot or Not: Leveraging Mobile Devices for Ubiquitous Temperature Sensing

Joseph Breda, Amee Trivedi, Chulabhaya Wijesundara, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, David E Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, Jay Taneja

BuildSys'19 [PDF]

Staring at the Sun: A Physical Black-box Solar Performance Model

Dong Chen, Joseph Breda, David Irwin