Saif Mahmud

Hi, there!

I’m Saif Mahmud, a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in Computing and Information Science at Cornell University. I am a member of SciFi Lab and advised by Prof. Cheng Zhang. My research interest lies broadly in the area of ubiquitous computing, machine learning and human computer interaction.

Previously, I worked as a researcher at Center for Computational & Data Sciences (CCDS) where my works were supervised by Prof. Amin Ahsan Ali.

I received my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Dhaka.

Seeking research internship opportunities for Fall 2026 or Spring 2027. If you're hiring and see a fit, feel free to reach out!

News

• [Nov 2025] Passed my Admission to Candidacy (A Exam). Now a Ph.D. Candidate.
• [Oct 2024] "EchoGuide" wins Best Paper Honorable Mention Award at UbiComp 2024.
• [Sep 2024] "ActSonic", "Ring-a-Pose", and "SonicID" accepted in IMWUT/UbiComp 2025.
• [Jul 2024] "MunchSonic" and "EchoGuide" accepted in UbiComp/ISWC 2024.
• [Jul 2024] "SeamPose" accepted in UIST 2024.
• [Jan 2024] "STLGRU" accepted in PAKDD 2024.
• [Nov 2023] "GazeTrak" accepted in MobiCom 2024.
• [Oct 2023] "PoseSonic" covered by: Cornell Chronicle, Endgadget, hackster.io, Live Science, BNN Network, Tech Times, and a few other media outlets.
• [Jul 2023] " PoseSonic" accepted in IMWUT/UbiComp 2023.
• [Aug 2022] Started my Ph.D. at Cornell University.
See More
[Apr 2022] Received scholarship from the Government of Bangladesh for outstanding result in undergraduate studies.
[Feb 2021] Paper “Hierarchical Self Attention Based Autoencoder for Open-Set Human Activity Recognition” accepted in PAKDD 2021.
[Jan 2020] Paper “Human Activity Recognition from Wearable Sensor Data Using Self-Attention” accepted in ECAI 2020.
[Jan 2020] Successfully defended my undergraduate thesis!
[Feb 2020] Started working on ‘Rehabilitation of Post-Stroke Paralysis Using Three-Dimensional Kinect and Wearable Sensors’ project funded by ICT Division, Government of Bangladesh
[Sep 2019] Started working on a collaborative project of University of Dhaka and Ghent University, Belgium for machine learning approach based electoral violence data analysis and visualization funded by IFES.

Research

ActSonic: Recognizing Everyday Activities from Inaudible Acoustic Waves Around the Body

Saif Mahmud, Vineet Parikh, Qikang Liang, Ke Li, Ruidong Zhang, Ashwin Ajit, Vipin Gunda, Devansh Agarwal, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
IMWUT / UbiComp 2025.

Paper Video

Ring-a-Pose: A Ring for Continuous Hand Pose Tracking

Tianhong Catherine Yu, Guilin Hu, Ruidong Zhang, Hyunchul Lim, Saif Mahmud, Chi-Jung Lee, Ke Li, Devansh Agarwal, Shuyang Nie, Jinseok Oh, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
IMWUT / UbiComp 2025.

Paper Video

SonicID: User Identification on Smart Glasses with Acoustic Sensing

Ke Li, Devansh Agarwal, Ruidong Zhang, Vipin Gunda, Tianjun Mo, Saif Mahmud, Boao Chen, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
IMWUT / UbiComp 2025.

Paper

MunchSonic: Tracking Fine-grained Dietary Actions through Active Acoustic Sensing on Eyeglasses

Saif Mahmud, Devansh Agarwal, Ashwin Ajit, Qikang Liang, Thalia Viranda, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
UbiComp / ISWC 2024.

Paper

EchoGuide: Active Acoustic Guidance for LLM-Based Eating Event Analysis from Egocentric Videos

Vineet Parikh, Saif Mahmud, Devansh Agarwal, Ke Li, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
UbiComp / ISWC 2024.
🏆 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

Paper

SeamPose: Repurposing Seams as Capacitive Sensors in a Shirt for Upper-Body Pose Tracking

Tianhong Catherine Yu, Mary Zhang, Peter He, Chi-Jung Lee, Cassidy Cheesman, Saif Mahmud, Ruidong Zhang, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
UIST 2024.

Paper Video

GazeTrak: Exploring Acoustic-based Eye Tracking on a Glass

Ke Li, Ruidong Zhang, Boao Chen, Siyuan Chen, Sicheng Yin, Saif Mahmud, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
MobiCom 2024.

Paper Video

STLGRU: Spatio-Temporal Lightweight Graph GRU for Traffic Flow Prediction

Kishor Kumar Bhaumik, Fahim Faisal Niloy, Saif Mahmud, Simon S. Woo
PAKDD 2024.

Paper

PoseSonic: 3D Upper Body Pose Estimation Through Egocentric Acoustic Sensing on Smartglasses

Saif Mahmud, Ke Li, Guilin Hu, Hao Chen, Richard Jin, Ruidong Zhang, François Guimbretière, Cheng Zhang
IMWUT / UbiComp 2023.

Paper Video

Hierarchical Self Attention Based Autoencoder for Open-Set Human Activity Recognition

M. Tanjid Hasan Tonmoy*, Saif Mahmud*, A K M Mahbubur Rahman, M Ashraful Amin, Amin Ahsan Ali
PAKDD 2021.

Paper Code

Human Activity Recognition from Wearable Sensor Data Using Self-Attention

Saif Mahmud*, M. Tanjid Hasan Tonmoy*, Kishor Kumar Bhaumik, A K M Mahbubur Rahman, M Ashraful Amin, Mohammad Shoyaib, Muhammad Asif Hossain Khan, Amin Ahsan Ali
ECAI 2020.

Paper Code

GRU-based Attention Mechanism for Human Activity Recognition

Md Nazmul Haque, M. Tanjid Hasan Tonmoy, Saif Mahmud, Amin Ahsan Ali, Muhammad Asif Hossain Khan, Mohammad Shoyaib
ICASERT 2019.

Paper

Contact

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