2025

Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities

Zachary Englhardt, Felix Hähnlein, Yuxuan Mei, Tong Lin, Connor Masahiro Sun, Zhihan Zhang, Shwetak Patel, Adriana Schulz, Vikram Iyer
CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) 2025
PDF Video

Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities

@inproceedings{10.1145/3706598.3713299,
author = {Englhardt, Zachary and H\"{a}hnlein, Felix and Mei, Yuxuan and Lin, Tong and Sun, Connor Masahiro and Zhang, Zhihan and Patel, Shwetak and Schulz, Adriana and Iyer, Vikram},
title = {Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities},
year = {2025},
isbn = {9798400713941},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713299},
doi = {10.1145/3706598.3713299},
abstract = {Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for holistically measuring the environmental impact of a product from initial manufacturing to end-of-life disposal. However, the extent to which LCA informs the design of computing devices remains unclear. To understand how this information is collected and applied, we interviewed 17 industry professionals with experience in LCA or electronics design, systematically coded the interviews, and investigated common themes. These themes highlight the challenge of LCA data collection and reveal distributed decision-making processes where responsibility for sustainable design choices—and their associated costs—is often ambiguous. Our analysis identifies opportunities for HCI technologies to support LCA computation and its integration into the design process to facilitate sustainability-oriented decision-making. While this work provides a nuanced discussion about sustainable design in the information and communication technologies (ICT) hardware industry, we hope our insights will also be valuable to other sectors.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
articleno = {1013},
numpages = {17},
keywords = {Environmental Impact, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Sustainability},
location = {
},
series = {CHI '25}
}

Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities

Zachary Englhardt, Felix Hähnlein, Yuxuan Mei, Tong Lin, Connor Masahiro Sun, Zhihan Zhang, Shwetak Patel, Adriana Schulz, and Vikram Iyer. 2025. Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1013, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713299

2024

Computational Design of Dense Servers for Immersion Cooling

Milin Kodnongbua, Zachary Englhardt, Ricardo Bianchini, Rodrigo Fonseca, Alvin Lebeck, Daniel S. Berger, Vikram Iyer, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, Adriana Schulz
ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 43, Issue 6 (SIGGRAPH ASIA)
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Computational Design of Dense Servers for Immersion Cooling

@article{10.1145/3687965,
author = {Kodnongbua, Milin and Englhardt, Zachary and Bianchini, Ricardo and Fonseca, Rodrigo and Lebeck, Alvin and Berger, Daniel S. and Iyer, Vikram and Kazhamiaka, Fiodar  and Schulz, Adriana},
title = {Dense Server Design for Immersion Cooling},
year = {2024},
issue_date = {December 2024},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {43},
number = {6},
issn = {0730-0301},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3687965},
doi = {10.1145/3687965},
abstract = {The growing demands for computational power in cloud computing have led to a significant increase in the deployment of high-performance servers. The growing power consumption of servers and the heat they produce is on track to outpace the capacity of conventional air cooling systems, necessitating more efficient cooling solutions such as liquid immersion cooling. The superior heat exchange capabilities of immersion cooling both eliminates the need for bulky heat sinks, fans, and air flow channels while also unlocking the potential go beyond conventional 2D blade servers to three-dimensional designs. In this work, we present a computational framework to explore designs of servers in three-dimensional space, specifically targeting the maximization of server density within immersion cooling tanks. Our tool is designed to handle a variety of physical and electrical server design constraints. We demonstrate our optimized designs can reduce server volume by 25--52\% compared to traditional flat server designs. This increased density reduces land usage as well as the amount of liquid used for immersion, with significant reduction in the carbon emissions embodied in datacenter buildings. We further create physical prototypes to simulate dense server designs and perform real-world experiments in an immersion cooling tank demonstrating they operate at safe temperatures. This approach marks a critical step forward in sustainable and efficient datacenter management.},
journal = {ACM Trans. Graph.},
month = nov,
articleno = {210},
numpages = {20},
keywords = {server design, fabrication-oriented design, immersion cooling, sustainable design}}

Computational Design of Dense Servers for Immersion Cooling

Milin Kodnongbua, Zachary Englhardt, Ricardo Bianchini, Rodrigo Fonseca, Alvin Lebeck, Daniel S. Berger, Vikram Iyer, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, and Adriana Schulz. 2024. Dense Server Design for Immersion Cooling. ACM Trans. Graph. 43, 6, Article 210 (December 2024), 20 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3687965

Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots

Charles J. Carver, Toma Itagaki, Kechen Liu, Megan G. N. Manik, Zachary Englhardt, Vikram Iyer, Xia Zhou
Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications (DroNet), 2024
PDF

Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots

@inproceedings{10.1145/3661810.3663466,
author = {Carver, Charles J. and Itagaki, Toma and Liu, Kechen and Manik, Megan G. N. and Englhardt, Zachary and Iyer, Vikram and Zhou, Xia},
title = {Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots},
year = {2024},
isbn = {9798400706561},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3661810.3663466},
doi = {10.1145/3661810.3663466},
abstract = {Advances in autonomous robotic networks have allowed for many applications in communication, exploration, and monitoring. However, a major limitation in developing truly autonomous systems with robots is its operation time, often bottlenecked by the mismatch between battery capacity and power demands for motion. This challenge is especially challenging for miniature or microrobots given the limited payload they can shoulder. To combat these shortcomings, we demonstrate an integrated laser power delivery system that tracks and steers ground robots that will be capable of delivering a sufficient amount of power that could support motion, communication, and sensing. Our results independently demonstrate sufficient power delivery from the optical circuit and promising tracking error with our event camera tracking pipeline. However, the integrated system reveals future challenges in realizing a fully integrated power delivery system.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications},
pages = {19–24},
numpages = {6},
location = {, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, },
series = {DroNet '24}
}

Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots

Charles J. Carver, Toma Itagaki, Kechen Liu, Megan G. N. Manik, Zachary Englhardt, Vikram Iyer, and Xia Zhou. 2024. Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots. In Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Micro Aerial Vehicle Networks, Systems, and Applications (DroNet '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1145/3661810.3663466

From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models

Zachary Englhardt*, Jack (Chengqian) Ma*, Margaret E Morris, Chun-Cheng Chang, Xuhai "Orson" Xu, Lianhui Qin, Daniel McDuff, Xin Liu, Shwetak Patel, Vikram Iyer
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2024
PDF Code

From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models

@article{englhardt2024classification,
title={From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models},
author={Englhardt, Zachary and Ma, Chengqian and Morris, Margaret E and Chang, Chun-Cheng and Xu, Xuhai" Orson" and Qin, Lianhui and McDuff, Daniel and Liu, Xin and Patel, Shwetak and Iyer, Vikram},
journal={Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies},
volume={8},
number={2},
pages={1--25},
year={2024},
publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}}

From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models

Zachary Englhardt, Chengqian Ma, Margaret E. Morris, Chun-Cheng Chang, Xuhai “Orson” Xu, Lianhui Qin, Daniel McDuff, Xin Liu, Shwetak Patel, and Vikram Iyer. 2024. From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 8, 2: 56:1-56:25. https://doi.org/10.1145/3659604

Exploring and Characterizing Large Language Models for Embedded System Development and Debugging

Zachary Englhardt, Richard Li, Dilini Nissanka, Zhihan Zhang, Girish Narayanswamy, Joseph Breda, Xin Liu, Shwetak Patel, Vikram Iyer
Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW), 2024
PDF Video Code

Exploring and Characterizing Large Language Models for Embedded System Development and Debugging

@inproceedings{englhardt2024exploring,
title={Exploring and characterizing large language models for embedded system development and debugging},
author={Englhardt, Zachary and Li, Richard and Nissanka, Dilini and Zhang, Zhihan and Narayanswamy, Girish and Breda, Joseph and Liu, Xin and Patel, Shwetak and Iyer, Vikram},
booktitle={Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages={1--9},
year={2024}}

Exploring and Characterizing Large Language Models for Embedded System Development and Debugging

Zachary Englhardt, Richard Li, Dilini Nissanka, Zhihan Zhang, Girish Narayanswamy, Joseph Breda, Xin Liu, Shwetak Patel, and Vikram Iyer. 2024. Exploring and characterizing large language models for embedded system development and debugging. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–9.

DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design

Zhihan Zhang*, Felix Hähnlein*, Yuxuan Mei*, Zachary Englhardt, Shwetak Patel, Adriana Schulz, Vikram Iyer
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT), 2024
PDF

DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design

@article{zhang2024deltalca,
title={DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design},
author={Zhang, Zhihan and H{\"a}hnlein, Felix and Mei, Yuxuan and Englhardt, Zachary and Patel, Shwetak and Schulz, Adriana and Iyer, Vikram},
journal={Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies},
volume={8},
number={1},
pages={1--29},
year={2024},
publisher={ACM New York, NY, USA}}

DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design

Zhihan Zhang, Felix Hähnlein, Yuxuan Mei, Zachary Englhardt, Shwetak Patel, Adriana Schulz, and Vikram Iyer. 2024. DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 8, 1: 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643561

2025

Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities

2024

Computational Design of Dense Servers for Immersion Cooling

Demonstration of Laser Power Delivery for Mobile Microrobots

From Classification to Clinical Insights: Towards Analyzing and Reasoning About Mobile and Behavioral Health Data With Large Language Models

Exploring and Characterizing Large Language Models for Embedded System Development and Debugging

DeltaLCA: Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment for Electronics Design

2023

MilliMobile: An Autonomous Battery-free Wireless Microrobot

2021

FaceBit: Smart Face Masks Platform