Dr. Zilu Liang

Associate ProfessorUbiquitous and Personal Computing LabFaculty of Engineering, Kyoto University of Advanced Science (KUAS), JapanResearch FellowInstitute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo Google Scholar ResearchGate Scopus Web of Science

I received my MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Tokyo in 2011 and 2015 respectively. During my studies, I had the opportunity to pursue exchange programs at the University of Oxford in 2010 and at Imperial College London (working with Prof. John Polak) in 2012. In 2015, I was honored to receive the Australian Government Endeavor Research Fellowship, which supported my postdoctoral research at the University of Melbourne with Prof. James Bailey, Prof. Lars Kulik, and Dr. Bernd Ploderer. From 2016 to 2019, I served as an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo, where I played an active role in several initiatives aimed at internationalizing engineering education. I am a member of multiple research associations and have received several awards for my research contributions.

As an avid supporter of the Quantified Self movement, my research focuses on integrating a variety of sensing, computing, and data mining techniques to address challenges in data collection, analysis, and human-computer interaction, particularly in the context of health and well-being. In 2020, I founded and have since led the Ubiquitous and Personal Computing Lab at KUAS. My research has been supported by the JSPS and AMED. I currently serve as an associate editor for the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine and JMIR mHealth and uHealth, as well as associate chair for ACM CHI. I am also actively involved in international collaborations and look forward to mentoring highly motivated students in several exciting ongoing research projects.

Growing up in a family of teachers, I developed a natural passion for education. I hold a teaching certificate from the University of Melbourne and an English Medium Instruction (EMI) certification from the University of Tokyo. I am also committed to educational research focused on learning design. Since 2018, I have served as a program committee member and reviewer for leading international conferences on engineering and computing education, and I am a member of several educational research societies.

I treasure physical strength and self-discipline. When I'm not researching or teaching, you can find me doing HIIT (Les Mills), barbell training, kick boxing, Pilates, yoga (Bikram) to maintain pro-athlete level metabolic profile. I have trained for 10 years in Taekwondo, Chinese martial art and Shotokan Karate. I follow a Paleo diet with time-restricted feeding and I'm strongly against sugar and artificial sweeteners.

Ubiquitous computing

Wearable computing

Personal informatics

Consumer health informatics

Digital health

mHealth

Human-computer interaction

HCI/UI/UX

Serious Games/Gamification

Sleep/Circadian rhythm

Depression/Anxiety/Stress

Glucose/Nutrition

PMS

NEWS

The following student team from our lab was selected as a Finalist Team of the 2025 IEEE CIS Student Grand Competition on Computational Intelligence in Biomedicine and Healthcare. [30 April 2025]
- Karunarathna TS, Hoang NH, Khurshe S, Beten A, Lococo M. GlucoPatrol: AI-Powered, Non-Invasive Smartwatch System for Continous Glucose Monitoring.
Our lab contributed 1 full paper and 4 workshop papers at the 2025 ACM CHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025), the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction. [28 April 2025]
- Main conference: Liang Z, Hwang D, Chen S, Hoang NH, Khotchasing K, Melcer EF. User Preferences for Interaction Timing in Smartwatch Sleep Hygiene Games. (Acceptance rate = 7.8%)
- HCI+Health Workshop
  - Liang Z. Statistical Lessons Learned in Personal Informatics Research.
  - Liang Z, Hoang NH, Karunarathna T. A Pilot Study on Sensemaking of Consumer Micronutrient Tests: Sufficiencies, Deficiencies, and Barriers to Improvement.
  - Ahmed H, Liang Z. (2025) Wandering as CLOUDS: Designing Soft Nudges for Mood Logging and Reflection on Smartwatches.
- Human-Centered Evaluation and Auditing of Language Models Workshop (HEAL@CHI'25)
  - Yapa HPPP, Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2025) PIFU: A novel framework to evaluate the interpretability of synthetic free-text explanations in digital mental health. (The Most Trending Paper Mention)
Our following paper was accepted by Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence (Q2), indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus. Priyadarshana YHPP, Liang Z, Piumarta I. (2025) ExDoRA: Enhancing transferability of large language models for depression detection using free-text explanations. [28 April 2025]
We will make the following presentation at The 48th Annual Meeting of the Japan Neuroscience Society. Saskovets M, Lohachov M, Liang Z. Towards Personalized Stress Monitoring: Multilevel and Machine Learning Models for Cortisol Prediction. [7 Apr 2025]
Our following paper was published in Frontiers in Digital Health (Q1), indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus. Hoang NH, Liang Z. AI-Driven Sleep Apnea Screening With Overnight Blood Oxygen Saturation: Current Practices and Future Directions. [24 March 2025]
Our following paper was published in Sensors (Q1), indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus. Hoang NH, Liang Z. Detection and Severity Classification of Sleep Apnea Using Continuous Wearable SpO2 Signals: A Multi-Scale Feature Approach. [7 March 2025]
Our following poster received an Honorable Mention for Best Poster Award at the 18th International Conf on Health Informatics, a premier international conference of health informatics. Senanayake A, Liang Z. (2025) Anxiety Detection in Reddit Posts through Emotion Dynamics Analysis. [22 Feb 2025]
Dr. Liang was honored to receive Special Recognition for Outstanding Review for her work at the 2025 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'25), the premier international conference in Human-Computer Interaction. This marks the third time she has received this recognition, following CHI'22 and IMWUT'21. [18 Feb 2025]
Our following paper was published in JMIR Mental Health (Q1), indexed by PubMed, SCI, and Scopus. Saskovets M, Saponkova I, Liang Z. Effects of Sound Interventions on the Mental Stress Response in Adults: A Scoping Review. (Acceptance rate = 25%) [5 Feb 2025]
Our PhD student Ms. Nhung Huyen Hoang won the Best Doctoral Candidate Project Award at the Doctoral Consortium at the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) for the project "Serious Gamification App for Improving Sleep-Wake Cycle and Sleep Education". [9 Jan 2025]
Our master student Mr. Cleber Franca Carvalho received a Best Presentation Award at the 4th International Conference on Big Data and Computational Intelligence (BDCI 2024) for the presentation entitled "Glucose Prediction with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Models". [14 Sep 2024]
Dr. Liang received a Best Presentation Award at the 6th World Symposium on Software Engineering (WSSE 2024) for the presentation entitled "Middleware Solution for Real-Time Physiological Data Streaming from Consumer Smartwatches". [14 Sep 2024]
Our PhD student Mr. Yapa Prasan won an Honorable Mention Award at the 2024 IEEE CIS Student Grand Competition in Computational Intelligence in Biomedicine and Healthcare, with the following project Vishadha: Early Smart Depression Detector . [30 June 2024]

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