Akane Sano, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Rice, has been awarded the 2021-22 Young Faculty Research Award

The award is given annually to an assistant or associate professor whose published work, program development results, software and other research contributions are judged outstanding.

Sano works on developing tools, algorithms and systems to measure physiological, biological and behavioral data. The data is collected from mobile and wearable sensors, devices that can be used in daily life and in clinical assessments. The goal is to provide a way to measure, predict and improve clinical outcomes in areas related to stress, mental health, sleep and performance.

Akane’s research focuses on developing data-science methods and tools, and human-centered computing technologies for health and wellbeing. This is considered the next research frontier in health sciences and engineering, and requires a bold multi-disciplinary approach. Akane has emerged a leader in defining and pushing that frontier, said Ashutosh Sabharwal, professor and chair of ECE.

Sano joined the Rice faculty in 2018. She earned her B.S. and M.S. at Keio University in Japan and her Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining Rice, she served as a research scientist in the Affective Computing Group at MIT Media Lab, and as visiting scientist and lecturer at People-Aware Computing Lab at Cornell University.

Before her move to the U.S., Sano was a researcher and engineer at Sony Corporation, where she was awarded the 2020 Sony Faculty Innovation Award. Sano directs the Computational Wellbeing Group and is a member of Scalable Health Labs.

Author: XAYMARA GARZA

Link: https://eceweb.rice.edu/news/akane-sano-awarded-2021-22-young-faculty-research-award