Ambuj VARSHNEY
Postdoctoral Researcher
Lab 11 (Led by Prof. Prabal Dutta )
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
Email address: ambujv@berkeley.edu


Research

I am a postdoctoral scholar working under the mentorship of Prof. Prabal Dutta at Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California, Berkeley. Over the past decade, my research has been focussed around designing and tackling challenges of embedded -- sensing, communication and computation -- systems. I take an interdisciplinary approach of combining the concepts in communication, computer science and electronics to design novel embedded systems and applications. I enjoy working at the intersection of these areas.

In the recent few years, the focus of my research has been around designing sensing and communication systems that can operate at very low power which makes it possible to operate these systems on tiny batteries, or even without batteries on minuscle amounts ofenergy harvested from the ambient environment. E.g., As part of my postdoctoral work, I am designing sensor platforms in a sticker form factor using backscatter communication (ABB produced video)

Before joining UC Berkeley, I spent several years at Uppsala University, Sweden, where I also obtained my Ph.D degree. During my time at Uppsala University, I shephereded the move of the research group from classical wireless sensor networks towards emerging communication areas (Backscatter, LiFi, Tunnel Diodes).

Before joining Uppsala, I worked as a software engineer at NXP Semiconductors, where I was responsible to design low-power wireless networking stack. I obtained a Bachelors degree in Information and Communication Technology, and during my studies, I primarily worked with Prof. Prabhat Ranjan, and I studied and developed interest in electronics, computer science, and communications.

Even before: My first computer was a IBM PC XT back in 1992. I have been supporter and follower of FOSS movement and GNU/Linux since 1998. I contributed to IndLinux project and traslated many applications to Hindi back in 2000-2001. From 2006, I was maintaining a blog called Linux on Desktop where I discussed the use of GNU/Linux on desktops. It was ranked as Top-10 blog in the genre and I use the blog to fund my undegraduate education. In 2010, I briefly worked with PlayPower project, and developed games for 6502 microcontroller.

News

Academic Service

You can read more about my involvement in academic community here .

Talks

You can find some of my talks and coverage of my work in the media here .

Students

Selected Publications

Dissertation

Awards and Grants


Teaching

You can read more about my teaching activities here.