Yi Ding

Current Institution: University of Minnesota

Email: dingx447@umn.edu

Bio: Yi Ding is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Minnesota. Advised by Prof. Tian He, Yi’s research interests broadly lie in human-centered cyber-physical systems (CPS), from multi-source data collection and mining to human behavior learning and interference. Yi’s technical contributions have led to 13 papers in premium venues and journals, including SIGCOMM, NSDI, MobiCom, UbiComp, and RTSS. Yi was the recipient of the 2021 RTSS Outstanding Paper Award. Yi also serves as an external reviewer for ACM IMWUT. Working as a research intern in Alibaba Group, Yi led a team to design, build, deploy, and operate a nationwide Bluetooth-based sensing system, serving 1 million couriers, 3.3 million merchants, and 150 million customers. More information can be found on his webpage https://yi-ding.me/.

Abstract: Human-Centered Cyber-Physical System: with Applications in Gig Delivery

In some emerging CPS that interact directly and deeply with human beings (e.g., smart health, intelligent transportation, gig delivery), human behavior (e.g., mobility, activity) can be utilized as an additional signal to help us understand human beings and the physical world. However, the inherent uncertainty in human behavior introduces challenges to achieving the vision. To address this fundamental challenge and build better systems, our work is focused on the human behavior in “Human-Centered CPS” to understand and construct the synergy between systems and human beings. Specifically, we work on three problems in gig delivery (e.g., DoorDash, Uber Eats) (1) Why do we need to study human behavior in CPS. (2) How to sense and predict human behavior under its uncertainty in the wild. (3) How the system and human beings impact each other in a real-world system. I will also share some lessons learned and insights we had.