Akshay
Gadre
Assistant Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Washington. Director of the NEWT Lab.
I build wireless systems that sense and connect the physical world: from power-starved IoT radios and satellites in low Earth orbit to mmWave radar, underwater acoustics, and sensors in the soil.
About
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle, where I direct the Networking and Emerging Wireless Technologies (NEWT) Lab. My group works across the wireless spectrum, from underwater acoustics and low-power wide-area networks to mmWave radar and laser links between satellites, with a simple bar for success: the systems have to work outside the lab, on a satellite pass, in a field, underwater, or in a moving hand.
Before UW, I received my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Swarun Kumar. My dissertation, Rethinking Low-power Wide-area Networks on Earth and Space, developed new wireless physical layers and phase-synchronization architectures for city-wide LPWAN infrastructure: improving the range, battery life, and throughput of power-starved IoT clients, and adapting the same ideas for LoRa-enabled CubeSats in low Earth orbit. That work was recognized with two Best Paper Awards at ACM/IEEE IPSN and the ACM SIGBED-SIGSOFT Frank Anger Memorial Award.
I hold B.Tech and M.Tech degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. If you are a prospective Ph.D. student, the lab is recruiting, and the contact section explains how to reach me so your email doesn't get lost.
Positions & education
- Assistant Professor, ECE, University of WashingtonDirector, NEWT Lab
- Ph.D., ECE, Carnegie Mellon UniversityAdvisor: Swarun Kumar
- B.Tech & M.Tech, Indian Institute of Technology Madras
The NEWT Lab
Networking and Emerging Wireless Technologies Lab · University of Washington, Seattle
We build wireless systems that sense and connect the physical world.
Radars that read motion and material. Radios that reach satellites and soil. Acoustics that work underwater and on the body.
The lab in three thrusts. Each is a deep dive with its own live, playable demo.
The Internet of
Radar Things
Commodity mmWave radars, networked into one coherent imaging instrument. Phantoms, glints, and how coordination beats both.
The Internet of
Underwater Things
Radio drowns; sound carries. One hydrophone that hears direction, and acoustics for the unconnected ocean.
The Internet of
Bodies
Gloves that feel, gaze that prompts, wearables that know your pose. Interfaces that read the body's own language.
Publications
The complete record. My name in bold; an asterisk marks equal contribution.
2026
TwinFocus: Autofocus for Handheld mmWave SAR Imaging via Physical and Digital Twin References
MulDar: Unleashing the Potential of Distributed COTS mmWave Radar by Exploiting Cross-Device Channels
AMULET: Acoustic Metastructure for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Underwater using a Single Hydrophone
POLySight: Towards Practical Bi-Static Polarimetric Imaging using Commodity mmWave Radars for Material Sensing
WiReSens Toolkit: An Open-Source Platform Towards Accessible Wireless Tactile Sensing
GazeSummary: Exploring Gaze as an Implicit Prompt for Personalization in Text-based LLM Tasks
Acoustic Signature Management Engine in an Object Integrity Sensing System
Towards Practical mmWave Sensing: A Distributed and Coherent Radar Approach
Towards Mobile High-Resolution mmWave SAR Imaging via Prior-Guided Autofocus
Poster: TwinFocus: Autofocus for Handheld mmWave SAR Imaging via Physical and Digital Twin References
Poster: Towards Practical Bi-Static Polarimetric Imaging using Commodity mmWave Radars for Material Sensing
Demo: AMULET: Acoustic Metastructure for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Underwater using a Single Hydrophone
Demo: Unleashing the Potential of Distributed COTS mmWave Radar by Exploiting Cross-Device Channels
Demo: WiReSens Toolkit: An Open-Source Platform Towards Accessible Wireless Tactile Sensing
Poster: Unknown Word Detection for ESL Learners Using Gaze and Pre-trained Language Models
2025
UltraPoser: Pushing the Limits of IMU-based Full-Body Pose Estimation with Ultrasound Sensing on Consumer Wearables
Demo: ToMoBrush: Exploring Dental Health Sensing using a Sonic Toothbrush
2024
On the Feasibility of Laser Inter-satellite Links for Low-latency High Frequency Trading
ToMoBrush: Exploring Dental Health Sensing using a Sonic Toothbrush
Adapting LoRa Ground Stations for Low-latency Imaging and Inference from LoRa-enabled CubeSats
Demo: Synthetic Data for Data-Driven Wireless
Demo: “My WiFi is not working!” Augmenting Wireless Awareness in Consumers via XR
2022
MiLTOn: Sensing Product Integrity without Opening the Box using Non-Invasive Acoustic Vibrometry
Poster: Exploring Time-series Telemetry from CubeSats
Rethinking Low-power Wide-area Networks on Earth and Space
2020
Full Duplex Radios: Are We There Yet?
Joltik: Enabling Energy-Efficient “Future-Proof” Analytics on Low-Power Wide-Area Networks
Millimeter-Wave Full Duplex Radios
Quick (and Dirty) Aggregate Queries on Low-Power WANs
Frequency Configuration for Low-Power Wide-Area Networks in a Heartbeat
Low-Power Wide-Area Networks: Connect, Sense and Secure
Poster: Designing a PHY-layer for Machine Learning on Low-Power Sensors
Designing an ML-Friendly Wireless Physical Layer for Low-Power IoT
2019
Poster: Wireless Network Functions in the Era of Low-Power IoT
Towards Enabling City-Scale Internet of Things: Challenges and Opportunities
Joint Decoding of Packets in Wireless Networks using Chirp Spread-Spectrum Modulation
2018
A Deep Learning Approach to IoT Authentication
Charm: Exploiting Geographical Diversity in Low-Power WANs
Centralized Approaches for Virtual Network Function Placement in SDN-enabled Networks
Poster: Maintaining UAV Stability using Low-Power WANs
2017
A Customizable Agile Approach to Network Function Placement
Centralized Approaches for Static and Dynamic Network Function Placement in SDN-enabled Networks
Awards & funding
If you are interested in supporting or collaborating with the lab, write to [email protected].
Grants
General Motors2026–2027
SkyHaul: A Comparative Measurement Study of LEO Broadband and Direct-to-Cell Satellite Backhaul for Connected-Vehicle Applications
PI: Akshay Gadre
JCATI2026–2027
mmWave Polarimetric Imaging and Interferometry for Detecting Defects in Aerospace Parts
PI: Akshay Gadre. Joint Center for Aerospace Technology Innovation
NSF IUCRC2023–2024
SoilCam: Enhancing Soil Nutrient Sensors via NIR-Vis Polarimetry and RF Sensor Fusion
PI: Akshay Gadre
Awards
- Best Demo Award, ACM SenSys 2026, for AMULET.
- Outstanding TPC Member Award, ACM SenSys 2026.
- Best Demonstration Award, AFRL SDR Challenge 2026, awarded to team Husky Satellite Monitor, led by my student Andrew Bergey.
- Best Demo Honorable Mention, Jury's Choice, ACM TEI 2026, for the WiReSens Toolkit.
- ACM MobiSys Rising Star, awarded to my students Xinghua Sun and Yadong Li.
- Best PhD Forum Paper Award, ACM SenSys 2026, awarded to my student Andrew Bergey.
- Best Demo Award, ACM MobiSys 2025, for ToMoBrush.
- Best Demo Award (sponsored by Apple), UW ECE Research Showcase, awarded to Xinghua Sun.
- Most Engaging Presentation Award, T-Mobile T-Challenge: AI for Telecommunications, for RayTrack. The team was also a top-12 finalist.
- ACM SIGBED-SIGSOFT Frank Anger Memorial Award.
- CyLab Presidential Fellowship, Carnegie Mellon University.
- Best Paper Award, ACM/IEEE IPSN 2020, for QuAiL. Best Presentation Award, ACM/IEEE IPSN PhD Forum 2020.
- Best Paper Award, ACM/IEEE IPSN 2018, for Charm. Best Poster Runner-up, ACM MobiCom 2018.
Students
Photos and full bios are on the lab website.
- Xinghua SunPh.D. candidate. Distributed & coherent mmWave radar. MobiSys Rising Star 2026
- Yadong LiPh.D. student. mmWave & non-line-of-sight imaging, wearable sensing. MobiSys Rising Star 2026
- Jiexin DingPh.D. student. Multimodal sensing, gaze & applied AI. Co-advised with Shwetak Patel
- Qiancheng LiPh.D. student. Radio digital twins, LoRa localization & radar systems
- Andrew BergeyPh.D. student. Underwater acoustics & acoustic metastructures
- Devin MurphyPh.D. student. Wireless tactile sensing & fabrication. Co-advised with Yiyue Luo
M.S. alumni: Karen Aguilar (2025, visible-light polarimetry for soil moisture), Matthew Pana (2025, Pearl: a more reliable LoRaWAN), and Vaibhav Singh (2023, laser inter-satellite links for satellite constellations).
News
- RayTrack (accurate outdoor LoRa localization with a single off-the-shelf base station) is accepted to ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. Congratulations, Qiancheng!
- Our MiLTOn acoustic product-integrity sensing patent is granted: US Patent 12,650,409.
- MulDar and TwinFocus are presented at ACM MobiSys 2026 in Cambridge, UK, where I give an invited talk on the Internet of Radar Things at IoT Day.
- AMULET wins the Best Demo Award at ACM SenSys 2026, and Andrew wins the Best PhD Forum Paper Award at SenSys. I also receive the SenSys Outstanding TPC Member Award.
- Team Husky Satellite Monitor, led by Andrew, wins the Best Demonstration Award at the AFRL SDR Challenge 2026.
- Xinghua and Yadong are both selected as ACM MobiSys Rising Stars 2026.
- WiReSens Toolkit receives the Best Demo Honorable Mention, Jury's Choice, at ACM TEI 2026. Congratulations, Devin!
- GazeSummary and a poster on gaze-based unknown-word detection for ESL learners appear at ACM HotMobile 2026. Congratulations, Jiexin!
- POLySight is accepted to ACM SenSys 2026.
- UltraPoser is accepted to ACM UIST 2025.
- ToMoBrush wins the Best Demo Award at ACM MobiSys 2025. Karen and Matthew complete their M.S. theses on visible-light soil-moisture sensing and reliable LoRaWAN. Congratulations!
- Xinghua wins the Best Demo Award (sponsored by Apple) at the UW ECE Research Showcase.
- The lab presents the RayTrack XR demo and an S3 workshop paper at ACM MobiCom 2024 in Washington, D.C.
- RayTrack wins the Most Engaging Presentation Award at the T-Mobile T-Challenge, presented at T-Mobile headquarters in Bonn.
- I join UW ECE as an Assistant Professor and found the NEWT Lab.
Contact
The NEWT Lab is looking for hardworking and persevering Ph.D. students who want their systems to work outside the lab.
Prospective Ph.D. students: apply to the UW ECE graduate program and mention the NEWT Lab, then send me a short email: who you are, what you have built, and which band of the spectrum above you want to live in. Current UW undergraduate and master's students interested in research are welcome to reach out any time.
For everything else (collaborations, talks, media, or industry partnerships), email is the fastest way to reach me.
Reach me
[email protected]Prof. Akshay Gadre
EE 430, Campus Box 352500
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195