Columbia University Sep 2021 – Dec 2026 (expected)
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering · GPA 4.03/4.00 · M.S. in Electrical Engineering (Feb 2023)
Kaiyuan Hou (侯凯元)
I am a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University, advised by Prof. Xiaofan (Fred) Jiang in the Intelligent and Connected Systems Lab (ICSL). I received my B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, summa cum laude with highest honors, with minors in Physics, Economics, and Computer Science.
My research builds intelligent systems that connect foundation models to the physical world. I work across three threads: (1) agentic and embodied AI — agents that perceive, decide, and act through real sensing and actuation; (2) multimodal foundation models — how models reason over non-traditional inputs such as aerial imagery, egocentric video, IMU, and IoT sensor streams, and how to make that reasoning reliable and efficient; and (3) human-centered sensing — deployable systems for health and the built environment.
I expect to graduate in December 2026 and am on the job market for full-time roles starting January 2027. Feel free to reach out at kh3119@columbia.edu.
News
- 2026Pro2Assist (proactive egocentric assistance) accepted to IMWUT 2026.
- 2026EmbodiedFly, the extension of FlexiFly, accepted to ACM TIOT.
- 2026Moth (low-cost autonomous precision drone landing) accepted to ICRA 2026.
- 2026T-Gated (occlusion-resilient passenger analytics) accepted to BuildSys 2026.
- Summer 2026Applied Scientist Intern at Amazon (Applied AI / QuickSight), working on LLM-agent optimization.
- 2026An undergraduate researcher I mentor had their first paper accepted to ACMSE.
- 2025FlexiFly accepted to SenSys 2025.
- 2025DomAIn received the Best Paper Award at ACM HumanSys 2025.
- Summer 2025Software Engineer Intern at Ambarella, working on VLM training and efficient inference.
- 2024EmbodiedRDA received the Best Demo Runner-Up award at ACM MobiCom 2024.
Education
University of Colorado Boulder Sep 2017 – May 2021
B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering · GPA 3.98/4.00 · summa cum laude with highest honors
Experience
Amazon Summer 2026
Applied Scientist Intern · Applied AI (now QuickSight)
Ambarella Summer 2025
Software Engineer Intern
Columbia University Sep 2021 – Present
Graduate Research Assistant · Intelligent and Connected Systems Lab (ICSL)
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Jan 2024 – Jun 2024
Research Assistant · AIoT Lab
Awards & Service
- Best Paper Award, ACM HumanSys, 2025
- Best Demo Runner-Up, ACM MobiCom, 2024
- Technical Program Committee: ACM IASA, 2025
- Reviewer: ACL; ACM TIOT / TOSN / Health; IEEE TMC / Pervasive Computing
Beyond research
I’m passionate about credit cards and frequent-traveler programs — I keep a thick stack of cards and a pile of reward points. I also love board games; my most-played are Terra Mystica, Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova, and Agricola.