Nakul Garg is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland College Park, advised by Prof. Nirupam Roy. His research focuses on developing sustainable and intelligent systems optimized for resource-constrained environments, involving innovations in low-power sensing, wireless communication, and embedded AI. His work on ultra-low-power spatial sensing has received the best paper and demo award at ACM MobiSys, and was selected as the ACM SIGMOBILE research highlight of the year 2023. He is also a recipient of the Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, Future Faculty Fellowship and UMD's Dean Fellowship.
The rapid expansion of the IoT has the potential to transform various domains, from healthcare and environmental monitoring to smart homes and industrial automation. However, a significant gap exists between the energy efficiency and sustainability of existing systems and their ability to execute advanced, intelligent functions, as current IoT devices are often constrained by limited battery life, computational power, and scalability. My research focuses on bridging this gap by developing systems that integrate energy-efficient hardware, embedded AI, and signal processing techniques. By exploring the limits of resource-constrained environments, I aim to create sustainable systems capable of performing complex and intelligent tasks. A key contribution of my work is the development of novel spatial sensing and depth imaging sensors that achieve a 100-fold reduction in energy consumption compared to traditional power-intensive sensor arrays, while maintaining high resolution perception. This enables the deployment of low-power and miniaturized sensors in insect scale robots, making them intelligent and open to a wide range of applications, such as climate monitoring and precision agriculture. Furthermore, I have developed a peer-to-peer 3D localization framework that connects city-scale IoT networks with no infrastructure requirements, as well as an ultra-low-power tag for geolocation using ambient cellular signals, achieving global localization and a 4-year battery life on a single cell. My vision is to create a world where intelligent, sustainable devices seamlessly integrate into our lives, enhancing our experiences while minimizing environmental impact.