Mo Li (李默)

Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)

Office: Rm 3534 (life 25/26), Academic Building
Phone: +852 2358 7107
Fax: +65 2358 1477
Email: lim@cse.ust.hk

Hiring: I'm constantly looking for prospective PhD students/RAs, expected to work on AIoT (AI+IoT) systems and applications.

Biography

Mo Li is currently a professor in Department of Computer Science and Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is also affiliated (on leave) with School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University. He received his BS degree in Department of Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University, and the PhD degree from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is heading Wireless And Networked Distributed Sensing (WANDS) system group. Dr. Li is in executive committee of ACM SIGMOBILE. He is currently on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Internet of Things and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He is a Distinguished Member of the ACM and a Fellow of the IEEE.

Research Interests

Wireless and mobile computing, Internet of Things (IoT) and AIoT, smart city and urban computing

The long term goal of my research is to deepen and broaden the way we instrument the physical world, with which we can generate artificial intelligence, perform insightful data analytics, and provide human centered services AI to facilitate people's smarter lifestyle. See People of ACM Interview for a brief introduction of my research aspiration on AIoT.

Atheros CSI tool (our open source CSI tool maintenance page) - Precise Power Delay Profiling with Commodity WiFi, ACM MobiCom'15

Antenna array extension to the CSI tool - SWAN: Stitched Wi-Fi ANtennas, ACM MobiCom'18, [Demo video]

Wi-Fi tracking and localization with the CSI tool - mD-Track: Leveraging Multi-Dimensionality in Passive Indoor Wi-Fi Tracking, ACM MobiCom'19

Our recent measurement study on LoRa: Known and Unkown Facts of LoRa: Experiences from a Large Scale Measurement Study, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol 15, Issue 2, Article 16, February 2019

CSMA for LoRa (our open source project to equip LoRa with CSMA) LMAC: Efficient Carrier-Sense Multiple Access for LoRa, ACM MobiCom'20

This work led to a recent LoRaWAN Technical Recommendation TR013 Enabling CSMA for LoRaWAN by LoRa Alliance

LoRa Alliance Webinar on this TR

Our recent study ST4ML (fully open-sourced at http://github.com/Panrong/st4ml) - a distributed computation engine for large-scale processing of spatio-temporal (ST) data for machine learning (ML) application:

ST4ML: Machine Learning Oriented Spatio-Temporal Data Processing at Scale, ACM SIGMOD'23

Our pioneering efforts to build large language model (LLMs) enabled IoT/CPS sensing, an endeavor we call Penetrative AI

Penetrative AI: Making LLMs Comprehend the Physical World, ACM HotMobile'24

Teaching

Fall '23: COMP4531 IoT and Smart Sensing
Spring '24: COMP3511 Operating Systems

Selected Publications (Full list)

Wireless & IoT:

[LoRa Alliance] "TR013: Enabling CSMA for LoRaWAN", LoRaWAN Technical Recommendation, September 2023
Amalinda Gamage, Geofforoy de Guillebon, Mo Li, Miguel Luis, Olivier Seller

[MobiCom'23] "XCopy: Boosting Weak Links for Reliable LoRa Communication", In ACM MobiCom, Madrid, Spain, October 2023
Xianjin Xia, Qianwu Chen, Ningning Hou, Yuanqing Zheng, Mo Li

[NSDI'22] "Passive DSSS: Empowering the Downlink Communication for Backscatter Systems", In USENIX NSDI, Renton, WA, USA, April 2022
Songfan Li, Hui Zheng, Chong Zhang, Yihang Song, Shen Yang, Minghua Chen, Li Lu, Mo Li

[MobiCom'20] "LMAC:Efficient Carrier-Sense Multiple Access for LoRa", In ACM MobiCom, London, UK, September 2020
Amalinda Gamage, Jansen Christian Liando, Chaojie Gu, Rui Tan, Mo Li
Extended version in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol. 19, Issue 2, Article 44, September 2022
[CSMA for LoRa]

[MobiCom'20] "Internet-of-Microchips: Direct Radio-to-Bus Communication with SPI Backscatter", In ACM MobiCom, London, UK, September 2020
Songfan Li, Chong Zhang, Yihang Song, Hui Zheng, Lu Liu, Li Lu, Mo Li

[TOSN'19] "Known and Unkown Facts of LoRa: Experiences from a Large Scale Measurement Study", ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol. 15, Issue 2, Article 16, February 2019
Jansen C.Liando, Amalinda Gamage, Agustinus W. Tengourtius, Mo Li

[MobiCom'19] "mD-Track: Leveraging Multi-Dimensionality in Passive Indoor Wi-Fi Tracking", In ACM MobiCom, Los Cabos, Mexico, October 2019
Yaxiong Xie, Jie Xiong, Mo Li, Kyle Jamieson
[Atheros CSI Tool]

[MobiCom'18] "SWAN: Stitched Wi-Fi ANtennas", In ACM MobiCom, New Delhi, India, October 2018
Yaxiong Xie, Yanbo Zhang, Jansen Christian Liando, Mo Li
[Demo video] [Atheros CSI Tool]

[MobiCom'15] "Precise Power Delay Profiling with Commodity WiFi", In ACM MobiCom, Paris, France, September 2015
Yaxiong Xie, Zhenjiang Li, Mo Li
[Project video] [Atheros CSI Tool]

[MobiCom'14] "Tagoram: Real-Time Tracking of Mobile RFID Tags to High Precision Using COTS Devices", In ACM MobiCom, Maui, Hawaii, USA, September 2014
Lei Yang, Yekui Chen, Xiang-Yang Li, Chaowei Xiao, Mo Li, Yunhao Liu
This paper received MobiCom'14 Best Paper Award

[HotMobile'24] "Penetrative AI: Making LLMs Comprehend the Physical World", In ACM HotMobile, San Diego, USA, Feb 2024
Huatao Xu, Liying Han, Qirui Yang, Mo Li, Mani Srivastava

[MobiCom'23] "Practically Adopting Human Activity Recognition", In ACM MobiCom, Madrid, Spain, October 2023
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan, Mo Li

[SenSys'22] "SiFall: Practical Online Fall Detection with RF Sensing", In ACM SenSys'22, Boston, USA, November 2022
Sijie Ji, Yaxiong Xie, Mo Li

[MobiCom'22] "Experience: Adopting Indoor Outdoor Detection in On-demand Food Delivery Business", In ACM MobiCom, Sydney, Australia, October 2022
Pengfei Zhou, Yi Ding, Yang Li, Mo Li, Guobin Shen, Tian He

[SenSys'21] "LIMU-BERT: Unleashing the Potential of Unlabeled Data for IMU Sensing Applications", In ACM SenSys, Coimbra, Portugal, November 2021
Huatao Xu, Pengfei Zhou, Rui Tan, Mo Li, Guobin Shen
This paper received SenSys'21 Best Paper Runner-up Award
[Project video]

[UbiComp'19] "Amateur: Augmented Reality based Vehicle Navigation System", Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), Vol. 2, No. 4, Article 155, 2018
Chu Cao, Zhenjiang Li, Pengfei Zhou, Mo Li

[SenSys'15] "When Pipelines Meet Fountain: Fast Data Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks", In ACM SenSys, Seoul, South Korea, November 2015
Wan Du, Jansen Christian Liando, Huanle Zhang, Mo Li
This paper received SenSys'15 Best Paper Award

[SenSys'12] "IODetector: A Generic Service for Indoor Outdoor Detection", In ACM SenSys Pages 113-126, Toronto, Canada, November 2012
Pengfei Zhou, Yuanqing Zheng, Zhenjiang Li, Mo Li, Guobin (Jacky) Shen
Extended version in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, Vol. 11, Issue 2, Article 28, September 2014
This paper received SenSys Test of Time Award
[Demo app]

[SIGMOD'23] "ST4ML: Machine Learning Oriented Spatio-Temporal Data Processing at Scale", In Proceedings of the ACM on Management of Data, Vol. 1, Issue 1, Article 87, May 2023
Kaiqi Liu, Panrong Tong, Mo Li, Yue Wu, Jianqiang Huang
[ST4ML Tool]

[KDD'21] "Generating Mobility Trajectories with Retained Data Utility", In ACM KDD, Singapore, August 2021
Chu Cao, Mo Li

[ICDE'21] "Predicting the Impact of Disruptions to Urban Rail Transit Systems", Short, In IEEE ICDE, Chania, Crete, Greece, April 2021
Xiaoyun Mo, Chu Cao, Mo Li, David Z. W. Wang

[ICDE'21] "CrowdAtlas: Estimating Crowd Distribution within the Urban Rail Transit System", Short, In IEEE ICDE, Chania, Crete, Greece, April 2021
Jinlong E, Mo Li, Jianqiang Huang

[MobiCom'21] "Large-Scale Vehicle Trajectory Reconstruction with Camera Sensing Network", In ACM MobiCom, New Orleans, USA, October 2021
Panrong Tong, Mingqian Li, Mo Li, Zhongming Jin, Xian-Sheng Hua

[AAAI'21] "Traffic Flow Prediction with Vehicle Trajectories", In AAAI, Vancouver, Canada, February 2021
Mingqian Li, Panrong Tong, Mo Li, Zhongming Jin, Jianqiang Huang, Xian-Sheng Hua

[Network'18] "Urban Traffic Prediction from Mobility Data Using Deep Learning", IEEE Network, Vol. 32, Issue 4, Pages 40-46, 2018
Zhidan Liu, Zhenjiang Li, Kaishun Wu, Mo Li

[IPSN'18] "Walkway Discovery from Large Scale Crowdsensing", In ACM/IEEE IPSN, Pages 13-24, Porto, Portugal, April 2018
Chu Cao, Zhidan Liu, Mo Li, Wenqiang Wang, Zheng Qin

Professional Services

Journal Editorship
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (2015-)
ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (2018-)
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (2016-2020)
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2015-2020)

Recent TPC activities
2024 - INFOCOM, MobiCom, MobiSys, SenSys
2023 - INFOCOM, WWW
2022 - INFOCOM, MobiCom, SenSys, IPSN
2021 - INFOCOM, MobiCom, SIGMETRICS, IPSN
2020 - INFOCOM, MobiCom, IoTDI

Societal activities
Executive Committee Member, ACM SIGMOBILE
Selection Committee, ACM Heidelberg Laureate Forum
TPC Track Chair (Mobile & Wireless Network Computing), IEEE ICDCS'20
General co-Chair, IEEE ICPADS'18
TPC co-Chair, IEEE SECON'18
General co-Chair, IEEE SmartCity'16
TPC Vice Chair, IEEE ICPADS'14
Vice Chair, ACM APSYS'13
TPC co-chair, ICST MobiQuitous'12

Honors and Awards

ACM SenSys Test of Time Award, 2022
IEEE Communication Society Distinguished Lecturer, 2022
Best Paper Runner-up Award, ACM SenSys, 2021
Nanyang Research Award, 2017
IoT OpenInnov Challenge Winner, by ENGIE and SIGFOX, 2016
IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Best Young Researcher Award, IEEE Communications Society, 2015
Best Paper Award, ACM SenSys, 2015
Best Paper Award, ACM MobiCom, 2014
Best Demo Award, IEEE SECON, 2014
Best Demo Award, ACM MobiCom, 2012
Second Class State Natural Science Award conferred by the State Council of the People's Republic of China, 2011
with Prof. Yunhao Liu, Prof. Lionel Ni, and Dr. Zheng Yang

Group members

Kaiqi Liu (PhD student, NTU, 2020-)
Ya Nan (PhD student, NTU, 2020-)
Gaole Dai (PhD student, NTU, 2022-)
Andreas Kuster (PhD student, NTU, 2022-)
Songfan Li (Research fellow, HKUST, 2023-)
Huatao Xu (Research fellow and former PhD student, HKUST, 2024-)
Chu Cao (Research fellow and former PhD student, HKUST, 2024-)
Jingcan Chen (PhD student, HKUST, 2023-)
Qirui Yang (PhD student, HKUST, 2023-)

Alumni

Yuanqing Zheng (Doctorate in 2014, now associate professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Pengfei Zhou (Doctorate in 2016, now assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh)
Zhenjiang Li (Visiting PhD student 2010-2012, research fellow 2012-2015, now associate professor at the City University of Hong Kong)
Jiajue Ou (Doctorate in 2016, now research scientist at Institute of High Performance Computing, A*STAR)
Huanle Zhang (Research assistant 2014-2016, now associate professor at Shandong University)
Yuxiao Hou (Doctorate in 2017, now postdoc fellow at Hong Kong Polytechnic University)
Zhidan Liu (Research fellow 2015-2017, now associate professor at Shenzhen University, Shenzhen Talent Peacock Plan)
Wan Du (Research fellow, 2012-2017, now assistant professor at University of California, Merced)
Shiqi Jiang (Doctorate in 2018, now senior researcher at Microsoft Research Asia)
Shuyu Shi (Research fellow, 2016-2018, now associate research professor at Nanjing University)
Yaxiong Xie (Doctorate in 2017, now assistant professor at the University at Buffalo, SUNY)
Jinlong E (Research fellow, 2018-2019, now postdoc researcher at Tsinghua University)
Weiping Sun (Research fellow, 2018-2020, now researcher at Samsung Research)
Panrong Tong (Doctorate in 2020, now research staff at Alibaba Group)
Xiaoyun Mo (Doctorate in 2022, now research engineer at OPPO)
Jansen C. Liando (Research associate, 2016-2023, now co-founder of BITS)
Sijie Ji (Doctorate in 2023, now postdoc researcher at Hong Kong University)
Amalinda Gamage (Doctorate in 2023, now co-founder of BITS)
Yanbo Zhang (Doctorate in 2023, now co-founder of BITS)
Mingqian Li (Doctorate in 2023, now researcher at Zhejiang Lab)

Invited Talks

"Building Intelligence into Sensing, Networking, and Data Analytics of IoT", invited talk, Ohio State University, March 2024
"Building Intelligence into Sensing, Networking, and Data Analytics of IoT", invited talk, HKUST-GZ, January 2024
"Building Intelligence into Sensing, Networking, and Data Analytics of IoT", invited talk, Peking University, December 2023
"Building Intelligence into Sensing, Networking, and Data Analytics of IoT", invited talk, KAIST, Korea, November 2023
"Building Intelligence into Sensing, Networking, and Data Analytics of IoT", invited talk, CUHK AI for IoT, Hong Kong, July 2023
"LoRa (Long Range) for Building Low Power Wide Area Networks", invited talk, UNSW, Sydney, Australia, June 2023
"Our deployment and measurement experience with LoRa", Keynote, IEEE SECON, September 2022
"Our deployment and measurement experience with LoRa", Keynote, IEEE/IFIP WONS, March 2020
"Sensing with WiFi - theory, practice, challenges, and limits", Keynote, WearSys, June 2020
"5G and Beyond - the research excitement and challenges", invited talk, Alibaba Group, Hangzhou, China, January 2020
"Smart Mobility: A Data and Sensing Point of View", invited talk, 26th ITS World Congress, Singapore, October 2019
"Sensing with WiFi - theory, practice, challenges, and limits", invited talk, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, June 2019
"Smart Mobility: A Data and Sensing Point of View", invited talk, School of Information Technology, Monash University, Australia, March 2019
"Sensing with WiFi - theory, practice, challenges, and limits", invited talk, Michigan State University, USA, October 2018
"Sensing with WiFi - theory, practice, challenges, and limits", invited talk, CCF Advanced Discipline Lectures, Beijing, China, July 2018
"Ambient Intelligence: A Data and Sensing Point of View", invited talk, Alibaba Group, Hangzhou, China, January 2018
"Smart Mobility: A Data and Sensing Point of View", invited talk, Tsinghua University, China, December 2017
"Smart Mobility: A Data and Sensing Point of View", invited talk, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, June 2017
"Smart City: Research Experiences in Smart Traffic Monitoring", invited talk, Computer Science Department, Princeton University, USA, September 2016
"Smart City: Research Experiences in Smart Traffic Monitoring", invited talk, Yale Institute for Network Science, Yale University, USA, September 2016
"Data Driven Study on Smart Transportation", invited talk, Future Network Theory Lab, Huawei, Hong Kong, June 2016
"Data Driven Study on Smart Transportation", invited talk, College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China, June 2016
"Data Driven Study on Smart Transportation", invited talk, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, June 2016
"Ambient Sensing and Intelligence", invited talk, School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, China, November 2015
"Ambient Sensing and Intelligence", invited talk, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, USA, December 2014
"Ambient Sensing and Intelligence", invited talk, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH, Zurich, Switzerland, September 2014
"Ambient Sensing and Intelligence", Keynote, The 2014 IEEE Ninth International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP), Singapore, April 2014
"Ambient Sensing and Intelligence", invited talk, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany, April 2014
"Smart Transportation with Participatory Sensing", guest lecture, ECE 695 Mobile Computing Systems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, USA, February 2014
"Computing in the Ambient", invited talk, School of Software, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, November 2013
"RF beyond ID", invited talk, National RFID Centre, SIMTech, A*STAR, Singapore, July 2013
"Computing in the Ambient", invited talk, School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, May 2013
"Computing in the Ambient", invited talk, UMichigan-SJTU Joint Institute, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, May 2013
"Ambient Sensing Applications with Smart Phones", invited talk, Interactive Digital Media Institute (IDMI), National University of Singapore, Singapore, August 2012
"Everest", invited talk, IOT Center of Tsinghua National Laboratory of Information Science and Technology (TNLIST), Wuxi, China, December 2011
"Efficient RFID Estimation and Searching", invited talk, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA, November 2011
"Integrated Environment Sensing", invited talk, ETH CREATE Future City Laboratory, Singapore, September 2011
"Human Centric Computing in Wireless Sensor Networks", invited talk, School of Computer Science and Engineering, UESTC, Chengdu, China, August 2011
"Ubiquitous Computing", invited talk, Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, July 2011
"Human Centric Computing in Wireless Sensor Networks", invited talk, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, July 2011
"Human Centric Computing in Wireless Sensor Networks", invited talk, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Integration Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Science, Shenzhen, China, July 2011
"On the Applicability of Sensor Network Systems", invited talk, Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, December 2009
"On the Applicability of Sensor Network Systems", invited talk, Microsoft Research Asia, Beijing, China, July, 2009