Yiwen Dong
Assistant Professor
Industrial & Enterprise Systems Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Abstract:
What if a structure could sense human health? The physical structures around us, traditionally passive and static, are becoming an active, intelligent ally in human health monitoring. In particular, human-induced structural vibrations contain critical health information that allows for disease detection and rehabilitation tracking. For example, when people walk inside buildings, structural vibrations generated by people’s footsteps inform gait health (i.e., how a person walks), which provides critical indicators of an individual’s mobility status and physical wellbeing, enabling early detection and progressive tracking of neuromusculoskeletal diseases such as Alzehiemer’s, Parkinson’s, and Stroke. While existing approaches require frequent in-person visits to clinics that pose barriers to accessing medical services, our research is transforming our everyday physical environment into active partners that sense, understand, and respond to individuals’ health. My prior research has successfully extracted gait health information, including the walker’s identity, balance, risks of gait abnormalities, and lower-limb joint motions, through the development of structural vibration sensing and physics-informed machine learning. My recent studies are expanding towards multimodal health monitoring and intervention by integrating vibration, computer vision, and ambient environmental changes for personalized and preventive healthcare. This research redefines the relationship between humans and the built environment, transforming passive physical structures into active health sensors.
Bio:
Dr. Yiwen Dong is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, directing the Ubiquitous Health Intelligence (UbiHealth) Lab at the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering. Her research aims to empower our physical spaces to sense, infer, and react to human health and well-being through the development of cyber-physical-human systems. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and integrates ubiquitous computing, civil engineering, and human-centered AI. Her research is pioneering the development of human gait health monitoring through footstep-induced floor vibrations. This innovative approach has made a real-world impact by providing accessible tracking of muscular dystrophy progression in children from disadvantaged populations. In addition, Dr. Dong’s research has led to a broader impact through multimodal sensing with cameras and vibration sensors in pig pens. Her work has garnered recognition through publications in top-tier conferences and journals across civil engineering, computer science, and biomedical engineering, earning her multiple best paper and presentation awards. Dr. Dong received her Ph.D. and M.S. from Stanford University and B.Eng. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.