(10/2019) New batteryless computing article in XRDS.
(5/2019) I was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award and spent the 2019-20 academic year in Botswana.
(10/2018) Auracle project gets more funding from NSF.
(9/2018) Auracle paper accepted to IMWUT/Ubicomp 2018.
(9/2017) Three papers accepted to ACM SenSys 2017.
(4/2017) Josiah Hester (my student) joined the EECS faculty at Northwestern as an Assistant Professor in 2017. Congrats, Josiah.
(10/2016) Auracle project funded by NSF.
(10/2016) Amulet project funding extended by NSF for two more years.
(7/2016) Amulet paper accepted to ACM SenSys 2016.
(2/2016) Josiah Hester received the School of Computing's Outstanding CS PhD Student Award.
I'm a Professor in the School of Computing at Clemson University where I teach Computer Science and lead the PERSIST Research Lab.
I am always looking for smart, motivated students, but
please
read this first.
[My CV] [My Academic Geneology]
[YouTube] — Where I post videos, many of which are related to my classes and research.
My work makes embedded systems, mobile sensors, wearables, and other small computational things smaller, more efficient, lower cost, longer-lasting, and easier to deploy. My students and I develop and deploy new hardware and software technologies, tools, and abstractions that help embedded devices adapt to changing conditions, recover from frequent power failures, and operate maintenance-free for decades.
Projects: System Support for Batteryless Sensors (federated energy storage, Ekho, and Mementos), wearable security and privacy (Amulet), Perpetual Systems (Tula, Eon), and Hierarchical Power Management (Turducken, Triage).
Greentooth: Robust and Energy Efficient Wireless Networking for Batteryless Devices
S. Babatunde, A. Alsughi, J. Hester, J. Sorber
ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol. 20, Iss. 3, Num. 3 (2024) [PDF]
Stash: Flexible Energy Storage for Intermittent Sensors
A. Alsubhi, S. Babatunde, N. Tobias, J. Sorber
ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, Vol. 23, Num. 2 (2024) [PDF]
The Internet of Batteryless Things
S. Ahmed, B. Islam, K. S. Yildirim, M. Zimmerling, P. Pawełczak, M. H. Alizai, B. Lucia, L. Mottola, J. Sorber, J. Hester
Communications of the ACM, Volume 67, Issue 3 (2024) [PDF]
User-Centered Perspectives on the Design of Batteryless Wearables
A. Alsubhi, R. G. Anaraky, S. Babatunde, A. Bakar, T. Cohen, J. Hester, B. Knijnenburg, J. Sorber
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (2023) [PDF]
Old Dog, New Tricks: Seeking Metrics for Energy Harvesters as Sensors
N. Tobias, J. Sorber
10th International Workshop on Energy Harvesting & Energy-Neutral Sensing Systems (ENSSys 2022) [PDF]
Measuring Children's Eating Behavior with a Wearable Device
S. Bi, Y. Lu, N. Tobias, E. Ryan, T. Masterson, S. Sen, R. Halter, J. Sorber, D. Gilbert-Diamond, D. Kotz
2020 IEEE International Conference on Healthcare Informatics (ICHI) [PDF]
Time-sensitive Intermittent Computing Meets Legacy Software
V. Kortbeek, K. S. Yildirim, A. Bakar, J. Sorber, J. Hester, P. Pawełczak
ASPLOS 2020 [PDF]
Batteries Not Included
J. Hester, J. Sorber
XRDS: Crossroads, Vol. 26 Iss. 1, 2019 [PDF]
Application Memory Isolation on Ultra-Low-Power MCUs
T. Hardin, R. Scott, P. Proctor, J. Hester, J. Sorber, D. Kotz
USENIX ATC 2018 [PDF]
Auracle: Detecting eating episodes with an ear-mounted sensor
S.Bi, T. Wang, N. Tobias, J. Nordrum, S. Wang, G. Halvorsen, S. Sen, R. Peterson, K. Odame, K.
Caine, R. Halter, J. Sorber, D. Kotz
IMWUT/Ubicomp, Vol 2, Issue 3, September 2018 [PDF]
Flicker: Rapid Prototyping for the Batteryless Internet-of-Things
J. Hester, J. Sorber
SenSys 2017 [PDF]
Timely Execution on Intermittently Powered Batteryless Sensors
J. Hester, K. Storer, J. Sorber
SenSys 2017 [PDF]
The Future of Sensing is Batteryless, Intermittent, and Awesome
J. Hester, J. Sorber
SenSys 2017 (New Directions Paper) [PDF]
Toward a Wearable Sensor for Eating Detection
S. Bi, T. Wang, E. Davenport, R. Peterson, R. Halter, J. Sorber, D. Kotz
WearSys 2017 [PDF]
Sustainable Leakage Monitoring Systems for Water Distribution Pipeline Networks
S. Yazdekhasti, K. R. Piratla, J. Sorber
2017 ASCE Pipelines Conferences, Phoenix, AZ
Realistic and Repeatable Emulation of Energy Harvesting Environments
J. Hester, L. Sitanayah, T. Scott, J. Sorber
ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Vol. 13, Issue 2, Apr. 2017 [PDF]
Shoulder Angel: An Open Platform for Reprogramming Wayward Wireless Sensors
N. Tobias, C. Bolton, J. Hester, L. Sitanayah, J. Sorber
IEEE Embedded Systems Letters, Vol. 8, Issue 4, Dec. 2016 [PDF]
Amulet: An Energy-Efficient, Multi-Application Wearable Platform
J. Hester, T. Peters, T. Yun, R. Peterson, J. Skinner, B. Golla, K. Storer, S. Hearndon, K. Freeman, S. Lord, R. Halter, D. Kotz, J. Sorber
SenSys 2016 [PDF]
Realistic Simulation for Tiny Batteryless Sensors
M. Furlong, J. Hester, K. Storer, J. Sorber
ENSSys 2016 [PDF]
Towards A Language and Runtime for Intermittently Powered Devices
J. Hester, K. Storer, L Sitanayah, J. Sorber
Workshop on Hilariously Low-Power Computing (HLPC 2016)
Persistent Clocks for Batteryless Sensing Devices
J. Hester, N. Tobias, A. Rahmati, L. Sitanayah, D. Holcomb, K. Fu, W. P. Burleson, J. Sorber
Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Vol. 15, Issue 4, August 2016 [PDF]
Tragedy of the Coulombs: Federating Energy Storage for Tiny, Intermittently-Powered Sensors
J. Hester, L. Sitanayah, J. Sorber
SenSys 2015 [PDF]
Ekho: Realistic and Repeatable Experimentation for Tiny Energy-Harvesting Sensors
J. Hester, T. Scott, J. Sorber
SenSys 2014, Best Paper Award [PDF]
Hide-n-Sense: Preserving Privacy Efficiently in Wireless mHealth
S. Mare, J. Sorber, M. Shin, C. Cornelius, D. Kotz
Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET), Special issue of Wireless Technology for Pervasive Healthcare, Volume 19, Issue 3, pp 331–344, June 2014, © 2014 Springer-Verlag
Current Events: Identifying Webpages by Tapping the Electrical Outlet
S. Clark, H. Mustafa, B. Ransford, J. Sorber, K. Fu, W. Xu
ESORICS 2013
WattsUpDoc: Power Side Channels to Nonintrusively Discover Untargeted Malware on Embedded Medical Devices
S. Clark, B. Ransford, A. Rahmati, S. Guineau, J. Sorber, W. Xu, K. Fu
HealthTech 2013
Tula: Balancing Energy for Sensing and Communication in a Perpetual Mobile System
J. Sorber, A. Balasubramanian, M. D. Corner, J. Ennen, C. Qualls
IEEE TMC, Vol. 12, Issue 4, April 2013 [PDF]
Provenance framework for mHealth
A. Prasad, R. Peterson, S. Mare, J. Sorber, K. Paul, D. Kotz
NetHealth 2013
TARDIS: Time and Remanence Decay in SRAM to Implement Secure Protocols on Embeded Devices without Clocks.
A. Rahmati, M. Salajegheh, D. Holcomb, J. Sorber, W. P. Burleson, K. Fu
USENIX Security Symposium 2012
Plug-n-Trust: Practical trusted sensing for mHealth
J. Sorber, M. Shin, R. Peterson, D. Kotz
MobiSys 2012
An Amulet for trustworthy wearable mHealth
J. Sorber, M. Shin, R. Peterson, C. Cornelius, S. Mare, A. Prasad, Z. Marois, E. Smithayer, D. Kotz
HotMobile 2012 [PDF]
Ekho: Bridging the Gap Between Simulation and Reality in Tiny Energy-Harvesting Sensors
H. Zhang, M. Salajegheh, K. Fu, J. Sorber
HotPower 2011 [PDF]
Adaptive security and privacy for mHealth sensing
S. Mare, J. Sorber, M. Shin, C. Cornelius, D. Kotz
HealthSec 2011, Short paper
Exposing privacy concerns in mHealth
A. Prasad, J. Sorber, T. Stablein, D. Anthony, D. Kotz
HealthSec 2011, Position paper
Mementos: System Support for Long-Running Computation on RFID-Scale Devices
B. Ransford, J. Sorber, K. Fu.
ASPLOS 2011, https://github.com/ransford/mementos [PDF]
Eon: A Language and Runtime System for Perpetual Systems.
J. Sorber, A. Kostadinov, M. Garber, M. Brennan, M. D. Corner, E.D. Berger
SenSys 2007 [PDF] [Slides]
Triage: Balancing Energy Consumption and Quality of Service in Tiered Microservers
N. Banerjee, J. Sorber, M. D. Corner, S. Rollins, D. Ganesan
MobiSys 2007 [PDF]
Turducken: Hierarchical Power Management for Mobile Devices
J. Sorber, N. Banerjee, M. D. Corner, S. Rollins
MobiSys 2005 [PDF] [Slides]
Parallel search for LTL violations
M. D. Jones, J. Sorber
STTT, Vol. 7, Issue 1, Feb 2005 [PDF]
CPSC/ECE 3220: Operating Systems. Fall 2014–Fall 2024
CPSC 4820/6820: Embedded Systems Prototyping. 2016–2024
CPSC 9500-007: New Ph.D. Student Seminar. Spring 2021–Fall 2022.
CPSC 8550: Embedded Networked Systems (Graduate). Fall 2018
CPSC 3600: Networks and Networked Programming. Spring 2014.
CPSC 2150: Software Development Foundations. Spring, Fall 2013.
CPSC 8810: Mobile Computing Systems. Fall 2012.
CS 37: Computer Architecture. Summer 2011. (Dartmouth)
Fulbright Scholar to Botswana, US State Department, 2019–20
Dean's Professor of Computer Science, Clemson University, 2016
Best Poster, SenSys 2015, Seoul, Korea.
NSF CAREER Award, 2015.
Best Paper, SenSys 2014, Memphis, TN.
Best Poster, Secon 2013, New Orleans, LA.
Best Presentation, Ph.D. Forum, MobiSys 2008, Breckenridge, CO.
R. C. Edwards Middle School
In recent years, I have taught an embedded electronics and programming mini-course to 7th and 8th-grade students, who don't yet “know” that embedded computing is supposed to be hard. So far, my young friends
and I have created rhythmic light shows, smart flashlights, heart-rate monitoring programs, and
galvanic skin response (GSR)-based "lie detectors" (and they learn that lie detectors don't actually detect lying).