A picture of me

Tom Martin

Associate Professor

The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Virginia Tech

Teaching:

Spring 2012:

ECE 2500, Computer Organization and Architecture

Fall 2011:

ECE 5564, Wearable and Ubiquitous Computing

ECE 4974: Interdisciplinary Design of Pervasive Computing Products (with Ed Dorsa and Ron Kemnitzer from Industrial Design, Eloise Coupey from Marketing, and Lisa McNair from Engineering Education)

This course, along with several of my other undergraduate independent study projects, was featured in the Virginia Tech ECE Annual Report in 2010. A description of the class with more detail on our design process and past projects is available in this paper from the Third Workshop on Pervasive Computing Education at UbiComp 2010, and in this paper from the 2011 International Symposium on Wearable Computers, which was nominated for best paper. One of the student teams from Fall 2010 won in the medical category of the VT $5K, an annual competition to produce executive summaries. Lisa Cox (Marketing), Cole Hasson (ECE), and Zack Filbert (ID) worked on a project to provide a data distribution service for children with diabetes.

Spring 2011:

ECE 2504, Introduction to Computer Engineering

Research:

My areas of research include electronic textiles, wearable and pervasive computing, and interdisciplinary design . Here's my CV in PDF, reasonably up to date as of January 2012. I am the co-director, with Mark Jones, of the Virginia Tech Electronic Textiles Lab.

Current funded projects:

SHB: Small: Collaborative Research: Electronic Textiles for Ambulatory Health Monitoring (Funded by the National Science Foundation. This is a collaborative project with Dr. Lucy Dunne at the University of Minnesota.)
Device and Display Ecologies (Funded by the National Science Foundation under the Computing Research Infrastructure program. The PI is Francis Quek of Virginia Tech's Computer Science department.)
Building New Engineering Education Theory and Practice for Interdisciplinary Pervasive Computing Design (Funded by the National Science Foundation. The PI is Lisa McNair of Virginia Tech's Engineering Education department.)
CSR-EHCS(EHS), SM:Investigating a Novel Embedded Processor Architecture for Electonic Textiles in Wearable and Pervasive Computing (Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Selected past funded projects:

CAREER: E-textile-based Wearable Computing for Sensing User Motions (Funded by the National Science Foundation)
I was selected for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for this grant in 2006, one of 20 NSF researchers selected that year. Here's a video of one of our early tests of using the jumpsuit from this project for motion capture.
Computing Research Infrastructure: Electronic Textiles for Wearable and Pervasive Computing (Funded by the National Science Foundation)
Tailor-Made: Design of E-textile Architectures for Wearable Computing (Funded by the National Science Foundation)
Architecture for Surviving Denial-of-Service Attacks on Battery-Powered Mobile Computers (Funded by the National Science Foundation)

I organized a workshop at ISWC 2007 on the Role of Design in Wearable Computing. In September 2009, Lucy Dunne, Tricia Wilson and I organized the Symposium on Smart E-textile Solutions at the IFAI Expo.

In the spring of 2011, Lisa McNair and I organized a workshop at PerCom on Interdisciplinary Approaches to Pervasive Computing Design, which was held as a special session within the PervasivE Learning, Life, and Leisure (PerEL) workshop.

If you are archeologically minded (i.e., you would like to see some really old information about me), please see my old page at Carnegie Mellon. For my Ph.D. work at Carnegie Mellon, I integrated models of battery behavior and models of system performance in order to increase the amount of computing that can be performed in a battery life. The group I worked loosely with is the Wearable Computing Group in the Institute for Complex Engineered Systems (ICES).

Honors and Awards:

2011: Lisa McNair and I were selected to attend the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering Education for the interdisciplinary design course.
2011: Virginia Tech Diggs Teaching Scholar
2006: National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE)
2006: College of Engineering Dean's Faculty Fellow
2004: College of Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (for innovation in creating the course ECE 5564, Wearable and Ubiquitous Computing)
2004: College of Engineering Certificate of Teaching Excellence

Service:

Current:

Vice chair, IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Wearable Information Systems (TCWIS), 3/2011-present
ECE Faculty Advisory Committee. Member, 1/2009 - present. Chair, 12/2009-12/2010.
Virginia Tech Faculty Senate. Member, 8/2007 - present.
ECE Graduate Committee, 8/2005 - present.

Past:

General chair, IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (ISWC), 2004. Program co-chair, 2001 and 2006.
ECE computer engineering graduate admissions officer, 8/2005-8/2008. As graduate admissions officer, I was responsible for handling about 500 applications per year.
Chair, faculty search committee for a position in cyber-physical systems, academic year 2009-2010.
Virginia Tech Commission on Graduate Studies and Policies, 8/2008 - 8/2011.

Some ECE humor:

Folk music for computer engineers: This NAND Is Your NAND (and the original extended dance play version)
An April Fools course proposal: ECE 0401, Introduction to Humor for Electrical and Computer Engineering Students

Contact info:

Mailing address:

Tom Martin
The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech
302 Whittemore Hall (0111)
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Office: Torgersen Hall, room 2040-D
Work Phone: (540) 231-1739

Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Send me mail at

tlmartin@vt.edu

(Last updated on 5 January 2012)