Dr. Hui Liu
Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 5
Cartesium, Room 2.14
28359 Bremen
+49(0)421-218-64278
hui.liuprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
I studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin (Dipl.-Ing., 2009) and information and communication systems at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (M.Sc., 2011). Since 2016, I have been a researcher for biosignal processing, human activity recognition, virtual reality, music information retrieval, and multidisciplinary application of AI at the Cognitive Systems Lab of the University of Bremen, where I received my Ph.D. (2021). I am co-responsible for four multipartner projects: Arthrokinemat (intelligent knee bandage), IntEL4CoRo (interactive learning for cognitive robotics), NF-BWB (young talent development), and SEED (reflecting artificial biosignals for human robot interaction). I developed the first smart knee bandage that recognizes users' activities in real-time (Best Student Paper, BIODEVICES 2019) and proposed Motion Units, an activity modeling method with interpretability, generalizability, and expandability, rationalizing kinesiology and speech recognition knowledge into human activity research (2021). Three papers on high-level feature design (co-author), music signal processing (first author), and EMG-based AUR (co-author) were/are the Best Paper Finalists by BIOSIGNALS 2022, SIGMAP 2022, and BIODEVICES 2025, respectively. Eight articles for which I am the single first or/and corresponding author were marked as "Highly Cited Paper" (top 1%) and "Hot paper" (top 0.1%) by World of Science. I collected and released the 19-channel, 22-activity, 20-subject human activity dataset CSL-SHARE (2021). A dataset of ECG acquisition artifacts called sensORder was published under my guidance (2024). I received the following third-party funding and awards: the Erasmus Teaching Mobility Award (2018), the CAMPUSiDEEN Public Choice Award for advanced sensing and recognition technology (2022), and the YERUN Research Mobility Award (2022/2023). I have served as Co-Chair, Co-PC, Co-TPC, AC, or Publicity Chair for over ten important international conferences, including 33rd ICANN, 17th BIOSIGNALS, and 7th ABC. I am an editorial member of several international journals, and was awarded Sensors 2023 Outstanding Reviewer.
Recently, my international collaboration has expanded to AI for energy efficiency and smart building, assistance tool for amateur singers and exoskeletons, among others, for which a considerable number of topics are carried out in parallel. I always eagerly await new interdisciplinary and cross-border cooperation in various fields!
Selected awards for scientific publications
2019 Best Student Paper Award, first author, BIODEVICES (BIOSTEC), with Schultz, : A Wearable Real-Time Human Activity Recognition System using Biosensors Integrated into a Knee Bandage
2022 Best Student Paper Finalist, second author, BIOSIGNALS (BIOSTEC), with Y. Hartmann and T. Schultz: Interpretable High-Level Features for Human Activity Recognition
2022 Best Paper Finalist, first author, SIGMAP, with T. Xue and T. Schultz: Merged Pitch Histogram and Pitch-Duration Histogram
2023 Hot Paper (top 0.1% in Engineering) and Highly Cited Paper (top 1% in Engineering) by World of Science (WoS), corresponding author, IEEE Access, mit M. K. A. Jannat, M. S. Islam, und S-H Yang: Efficient Wi-Fi-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Adaptive Antenna Elimination
2023 Hot Paper and Highly Cited Paper in Biology & Biochemistry by WoS, corresponding author, Front. Physiol., mit L. Cai, S. Yan, C. Ouyang, T. Zhang, J. Zhu, L. Chen, und X. Ma: Muscle Synergies in Joystick Manipulation
2023 Hot Paper and Highly Cited Paper in Biology & Biochemistry by WoS, corresponding author, Front. Physiol., mit J. Li, JW. Li, C. Wang, F. J. Verbeek, and T. Schultz: Outlier detection using iterative adaptive mini-minimum spanning tree generation with applications on medical data
2024 Hot Paper and Highly Cited Paper in Engineering by WoS, first and corresponding author, IEEE Sensors, mit S. Zhang, H. Gamboa, T. Xue, C. Zhou, und T. Schultz: Taxonomy and Real-Time Classification of Artifacts during Biosignal Acquisition: A Starter Study and Dataset of ECG
2024 Hot Paper and Highly Cited Paper in Biology & Biochemistry by WoS, corresponding author, Front. Physiol., mit D. Khan, M. Alonazi, M. Abdelhaq, N. Al Mudawi, A. Algarni, and A. Jalal: Robust human locomotion and localization activity recognition over multisensory
2025 Best Paper Finalist (to be determined), co-author, BIODEVICES (BIOSTEC), with D. Küster, R. A. Rammohan, T. Schultz, and R. Koschke: The Bigger the Better? Towards EMG-Based Single-Trial Action Unit Recognition of Subtle Expressions
Research Interests and Keywords
Job/Thesis Information
Student Assistant/Bachelor-/Master-Thesis: Software Porting on Windows/Android (2024)
Bachelor-/Master-Thesis: Real-time Human Activity Recognition with Virtual Reality (2024)
Bachelor-/Master-Thesis: Comparison of manual, semi-automated, and automatic segmentation of human activity data (2024)
Spontaneously designed thesis/work topics related to my research interests are always highly welcomed!
My best research assistants and students (HiWis/theses/guest)
Research Projects and Fundings
Arthrokinemat
IntETL4Coro
NF-BWB
ETAP (Participation in the planning)
SEED Project: Reflecting Artificial Biosignals for Human Robot Interaction
YERUN (Young European Research Universities Network) Research Mobility Awards (YRMA), 2022
Erasmus Teaching Staff Mobility für Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal), 2018
Academic Activities and Contributions
Editorial Board
Editor
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience
Frontiers in Endocrinology
Guest Editor
Biosensors (Q1, IF5.4)
Your contribution is welcome: Innovative Technologies of Acquiring, Processing, Modeling, or Utilizing Biomedical and Physiological Signals from Biosensing
Your contribution is welcome: Sensors for Human Activity Recognition: 3rd Edition
Sensors (Q2, IF3.9)
Your contribution is welcome: Sensors for Human Activity Recognition: 3rd Edition
Your contribution is welcome: Electroencephalogram/Electromyogram-Based Sensing Technologies for Biomedical Applications: Challenges and Possible Application
General Co-Chair
AIRSA 2025 – International Confer ence on Artificial Intelligence and Remote Sensing Applications (Changsha, China)
IS-ALL 2025 – International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence Innovations (Guiyang, China)
Program Co-Chair
BIOSIGNALS 2024 (in BIOSTEC 2024) – 17th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing (Rome, Italy)
BIOSIGNALS 2026 (in BIOSTEC 2026) – 19th International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing (Marbella, Spain)
Technical Program Co-Chair
ArtInHCI 2024 – 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intellience and Human-Computer Interaction (Kunming, China; Malaysia)
Area Chair
ICANN 2024 – 33rd International Conference on Bio-Inspired Systems and Signal Processing (Lugano, Switzerland)
CEII 2024 – 7th Asia Conference on Cognitive Engineering and Intelligent Interaction (Singapore)
Publicity Chair
Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair
BIOSTEC 2025 – 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (Porto, Portugal)
Session Chair
HEALTHINF 2022 (in BIOSTEC 2022) – 15th International Conference on Health Informatics (Vienna, Austria)
SIGMAP 2022 – 19th International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications (Lisbon, Portugal)
BIOSTEC 2023 – 16th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (Lisbon, Portugal)
Keynote/Invited/Tutorial Speaker
Academics and Art, Verein der CDHAW-Absolventen und Mitglieder der Tongji-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2018
From Offline towards Real-Time, BIOSTEC 2019 — 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, Prague, Czech
Smart Bandage, KIT Adaptive Systems Talks, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2022
Peer Reviewer
For 43 international journals, including Nat. Commun., IEEE Sens. J., Biomed. Signal Process. Control, Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci., Remote Sens., Foods, Front. Plant Sci., Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol., Front. Med., Physiol. Meas., Phys. Scr., Biomimetics, Smart Cities, and Biosensors
For various conferences, including IEEE BSN and BHI; ACM ICMI, ISWC, and AUTOMOTIVEUI; ITG
2023 Outstanding Reviewer Award of Sensors
IOP Trusted Reviewer in recognition of an exceptionally high level of peer review competence
Open-Source Codebanks, datasets, and Tutorial Contributor
Industry-Oriented activities
Bremen.AI 2019
- Demonstration of real-time human activity recognition
- Demonstration of MR game platform for rehabilitation assistance
MindDay 2021 (Bremen)
- Demonstration of an intelligent knee bandage
CAMPUSiDEEN 2022
Golden Panda 2022 Global Competition of Innovation and Entrepreneurship
- Judge
Courses
Hot Topics in Sensors and Human Activity Research
Thursday 14:00 – 16:00
Biosignals and User Interfaces
Tuesday 14:15 – 16:15
Wednesday 16:15 – 17:15
- Scoreboard_2020
Selected Topics of Cognitive Systems
Fundamentals of Machine Learning (Partially: Clustering)
Software Project II
Bachelor Project: RoboARinth (Winter Semester 2020/2021, Summer Semester 2021)
Publications (Inhouse)
In Kürze:
Muscle Synergy and Co-Contraction Effects on Joystick Manipulation (Book Chapter). Ouyang, C., Cai, L.*, Yan, S., Zhang, T., Zhu, J., Chen, L., and Liu, H.* (2024). In Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, Springer Nature Switzerland.
EMG-Based Action Unit Recognition: Feature Engineering, Machine Learning, and Real-Time Classification (Book Chapter). Liu, H.*, Veldanda, A., Koschke, R., Schultz, T., and Küster, D.* (2024). In Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, Springer Nature Switzerland.
| 2025 | |
| [44] | Sensors for Human Activity Recognition II (), (Hui Liu, Hugo Gamboa, Tanja Schultz, eds.), MDPI, 2025. |
| [43] | Evaluating the Potential of Microdroplet Flow in Two-Phase Biocatalysis: A Systematic Study (), In ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, volume 17, 2025. |
| [42] | The Bigger the Better? Towards EMG-Based Single-Trial Action Unit Recognition of Subtle Expressions (), In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2025) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, SciTePress, 2025. |
| [41] | Longitudinal Data Acquisition for AI Services in Long-Term Care Facilities for Older Adults (), In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2025) - Volume 2: HEALTHINF, SciTePress, 2025. |
| 2024 | |
| [40] | Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies – (Volume 1) (), (Maria Pedro Guarino, Hotta Kazuhiro, Malik Yousef, Hui Liu, Giovanni Saggio, Ana Fred, Hugo Gamboa, eds.), INSTICC, 2024. |
| [39] | Really Can't Hold On Anymore? Physiological Indicators Versus Self-Reported Motivation Drop during Jogging (), In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2024. |
| [38] | TPRO-NET: An EEG-Based Emotion Recognition Method Reflecting Subtle Changes in Emotion (), In Scientific Reports, volume 14, 2024. |
| [37] | Examining the Effects of Human-Likeness of Avatars on Emotion Perception and Emotion Elicitation (), In 2024 International Conference on Activity and Behavior Computing (ABC), 2024. |
| [36] | Comfort Assessment Method of EEG-Based Exoskeleton Walking-Assistive Device (), In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2024. |
| [35] | Can Electromyography Alone Reveal Facial Action Units? A Pilot EMG-Based Action Unit Recognition Study with Real-Time Validation (), In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2024. |
| [34] | Human Activity Recognition, Monitoring, and Analysis Facilitated by Novel and Widespread Applications of Sensors (), In Sensors, volume 24, 2024. |
| [33] | LSTM-MorA: Melody-Accompaniment Classification of MIDI Tracks (), In Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2024, Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024. |
| [32] | Taxonomy and Real-Time Classification of Artifacts during Biosignal Acquisition: A Starter Study and Dataset of ECG (), In IEEE Sensors Journal, volume 24, 2024. |
| [31] | Template-based synergy extrapolation analysis for prediction of muscle excitations (), In Physiological Measurement, 2024. |
| [30] | Cardiorespiratory Response to Workload Volume and Ergonomic Risk: Automotive Assembly Line Operators’ Adaptations (), In Applied Sciences, volume 14, 2024. |
| [29] | Integrated Driver Pose Estimation for Autonomous Driving (), In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2024. |
| [28] | Associating Endpoint Accuracy and Similarity of Muscle Synergies (), In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2024) - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2024. |
| [27] | Understanding Naturalistic Facial Expressions with Deep Learning and Multimodal Large Language Models (), In Sensors, volume 24, 2024. |
| 2023 | |
| [26] | Sensors for Human Activity Recognition (), (Hui Liu, Hugo Gamboa, Tanja Schultz, eds.), MDPI, 2023. |
| [25] | Hybrid Modeling on Reconstitution of Continuous Arterial Blood Pressure Using Finger Photoplethysmography (), In Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, volume 85, 2023. |
| [24] | Sensor-Based Human Activity and Behavior Research: Where Advanced Sensing and Recognition Technologies Meet (), In Sensors, volume 23, 2023. |
| [23] | On a Real Real-Time Wearable Human Activity Recognition System (), In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2023) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF: WHC, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2023. |
| [22] | Efficient Wi-Fi-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Adaptive Antenna Elimination (), In IEEE Access, volume 11, 2023. |
| [21] | High-Level Features for Human Activity Recognition and Modeling (), In Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (Ana Cecília A. Roque, Denis Gracanin, Ronny Lorenz, Athanasios Tsanas, Nathalie Bier, Ana Fred, Hugo Gamboa, eds.), Springer Nature Switzerland, 2023. |
| [20] | Muscle Synergies in Joystick Manipulation (), In Frontiers in Physiology, Frontiers Media SA, volume 14, 2023. |
| 2022 | |
| [19] | Hidden Markov Model and Its Application in Human Activity Recognition and Fall Detection: A Review (), In Communications, Signal Processing, and Systems (Qilian Liang, Wei Wang, Xin Liu, Zhenyu Na, Baoju Zhang, eds.), Springer Singapore, 2022. |
| [18] | Feature-Based Information Retrieval of Multimodal Biosignals with a Self-Similarity Matrix: Focus on Automatic Segmentation (), In Biosensors, volume 12, 2022. |
| [17] | Merged Pitch Histograms and Pitch-Duration Histograms (), In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Signal Processing and Multimedia Applications (SIGMAP 2022), SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2022. |
| [16] | A Practical Wearable Sensor-Based Human Activity Recognition Research Pipeline (), In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2022) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF: WHC, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2022. |
| [15] | Bell Shape Embodying Zhongyong: The Pitch Histogram of Traditional Chinese Anhemitonic Pentatonic Folk Songs (), In Applied Sciences, volume 12, 2022. |
| [14] | How Long Are Various Types of Daily Activities? Statistical Analysis of a Multimodal Wearable Sensor-Based Human Activity Dataset (), In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2022) - Volume 5: HEALTHINF, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2022. |
| [13] | Interpretable High-Level Features for Human Activity Recognition (), In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2022) - Volume 4: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2022. |
| [12] | Interactive and Interpretable Online Human Activity Recognition (), In PERCOM 2022 - 20th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops), 2022. |
| [11] | TSSEARCH: Time Series Subsequence Search Library (), In SoftwareX, volume 18, 2022. |
| 2021 | |
| [10] | Biosignal Processing and Activity Modeling for Multimodal Human Activity Recognition (), PhD thesis, University of Bremen, 2021. Supervisors: Tanja Schultz, Hugo Gamboa |
| [9] | Motion Units: Generalized Sequence Modeling of Human Activities for Sensor-Based Activity Recognition (), In 29th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2021), 2021. |
| [8] | CSL-SHARE: A Multimodal Wearable Sensor-Based Human Activity Dataset (), In Frontiers in Computer Science, Frontiers Media SA, volume 3, 2021. |
| [7] | Feature Space Reduction for Human Activity Recognition Based on Multi-channel Biosignals (), In Proceedings of the 14th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2021) - Volume 4: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2021. |
| 2020 | |
| [6] | Feature Space Reduction for Multimodal Human Activity Recognition (), In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2020) - Volume 4: BIOSIGNALS, SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2020. |
| [5] | TSFEL: Time Series Feature Extraction Library (), In SoftwareX, Elsevier, volume 11, 2020. |
| 2019 | |
| [4] | A Wearable Real-time Human Activity Recognition System using Biosensors Integrated into a Knee Bandage (), In Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2019) - Volume 1: BIODEVICES, SciTePress, 2019. |
| 2018 | |
| [3] | ASK: A Framework for Data Acquisition and Activity Recognition (), In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2018) - Volume 3: BIOSIGNALS, SciTePress, 2018. |
| 2017 | |
| [2] | Bremen Big Data Challenge 2017: Predicting University Cafeteria Load (), In KI 2017: Advances in Artificial Intelligence (Gabriele Kern-Isberner, Johannes Fürnkranz, Matthias Thimm, eds.), Springer International Publishing, 2017. |
| 2011 | |
| [1] | Capacity of Cooperative Ad Hoc Networks with Heterogeneous Traffic Patterns (), In 2011 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2011. |