Alanson Sample

Alanson joined the University of Michigan in 2018 as an Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, where he leads the Interactive Sensing and Computing Lab. His research interests lie broadly in the areas of Human Computer Interaction, Cyber-Physical Systems, and wireless technology.

He has spent the majority of his career working in academic minded industry research labs. Most recently he was the Executive Lab Director of Disney Research in Los Angeles where he led a research lab focused on delivering scientific & technological innovation to The Walt Disney Company through advances in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision and Human Computer Interaction. Before that he was a Principle Research Scientist at Disney Research in Pittsburgh where he led the Wireless Systems Group, which created new interactive experiences by applying novel approaches to electromagnetics, RF and analog circuits, and embedded systems.

Prior to Disney, he was a Research Scientist at Intel Labs in Hillsboro working on energy harvesting for wearable and Internet of Things applications. He also held a postdoctoral research position in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. There, he worked with doctors from the Yale School of Medicine to develop wirelessly powered and fully implantable heart pumps. Alanson received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 2011 from the University of Washington. Throughout his graduate studies, he worked full-time at Intel Research Seattle on projects related to wireless power delivery using magnetically coupled resonance, energy harvesting as well as ubiquitous sensing and computing.