Abraham Joseph

PhD Candidate in Computer Science · Singapore Management University

I build real-time sensing systems that measure how people move, train, and recover — shaped by years of coaching elite athletes and competing on the mats myself.

Advised by Prof. Rajesh Balan

Email me Google Scholar LinkedIn GitHub

Published atWACV · IJHCI · SIGCSE

Featured onChannel 8 · SMU Newsroom · Singapore Aquatics

PreviouslyGoogle · Fitbit · Florida Gators Athletics

01 — Research

Deploying Practical Systems

Coaches and clinicians make fast decisions with imperfect data. I study how they actually use sports-science technology, and build camera- and drone-based systems that track movement in real time, with the long-term goal of helping older adults stay active and independent.

PhD thesis · in progress

Towards Practical Real-time Sensing Systems for Fine-Grained Exercise Analysis

Brings together sports-HCI studies of how coaches use sports-science tools and real-time camera-based systems for fine-grained exercise tracking.

Qualifying exam passed · 21 Oct 2026
Committee: Rajesh Balan (chair), Thivya Kandappu, Dongyao Chen

Abraham presenting his research focus at his qualifying exam, with the slides on two screens

Selected work

Four overhead drone frames of swimmers with pose keypoints drawn on them (Figure 1 of the Dronaquatics paper)

WACV 2026

Dronaquatics: Real-time Swimming Analytics Using Drone Captured Imagery

Real-time analytics from drone-captured video of swimmers, now used by Singapore Aquatics in national-team training.

Paper ↗ Singapore Aquatics story ↗

Pipeline from the paper: the strength coach or sports scientist manually cleans data, manually aggregates it, then visualizes it

IJHCI 2026

Elite Strength and Conditioning Coaches as First-Line Users of Sports-Science Technology

Elite strength and conditioning coaches are the first-line users of sports-science technology. This paper looks at how they use, and work around, dashboards when decisions are time-constrained.

Paper ↗

Publications

Google Scholar ↗

2027

Instructor-Calibrated LLM Coding of Weekly Student Reflections for Formative Course Insight

Harold Abraham Joseph, Shaikh Ismail Sathakuthamby, Camellia Zakaria, Rajesh Krishna Balan

ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium 2027Accepted

2026

Elite Strength and Conditioning Coaches as First-Line Users of Sports-Science Technology: Dashboard Workarounds in Time-Constrained Decision-Making
Harold Abraham Joseph, Anusha Withana, JeongGil Ko, Rajesh Balan

International Journal of Human–Computer InteractionPaper ↗
Dronaquatics: Real-time Swimming Analytics Using Drone Captured Imagery
Thu Tran, Harold Abraham Joseph, Kichang Lee, Kenny Choo, Dong Ma, Shaohui Foong, Thivya Kandappu, Jeonggil Ko, Rajesh Balan

IEEE/CVF WACV 2026Paper ↗

2019

Antibiotic Resistance in Biofilms
Sahana Vasudevan, Harold Abraham Joseph, Shogan Sugumar Swamy, Adline Princy Solomon

Book chapter · Introduction to Biofilm Engineering (ACS)Chapter ↗

In the news

Abraham Joseph and the lab demoing research at the World Ageing Festival 2026

Apr 2026 · World Ageing Festival Demoed our health-sensing research at the World Ageing Festival

Channel 8 Singapore feature on our real-time gym analytics system

Mar 2026 · Channel 8 Real-time exercise tracking featured on Channel 8 news

Jan 2026 · GYSS Hosted a fireside chat with Prof. Jack Dongarra and Sir Tim Hunt

Real-time athlete tracking with commodity phones demo

Jan 2026 · Lab demo Mobile vision-based training analysis for elite athletes

Singapore Aquatics adopts drone and AI analytics

Mar 2025 · Singapore Aquatics Singapore Aquatics adopts our drone technology in training

Drone view of a swimmer doing backstroke

Mar 2025 · SMU Newsroom Our lab deploys drone and AI-driven analytics for national swimmers

02 — Coaching

I come from the gym floor

At Florida I coached Division I football players and worked as a sports scientist, and I still coach today. That's where my research focus comes from. I am building low-cost systems that can actually be deployed, and that tell people something useful about how they move.

A coaching session with interns in the Florida Gators weight room — In the weight room at Florida.

Abraham giving his intern presentation, with the title slide on screen — My intern presentation at Florida.

2025 – Now

PhD Candidate, Computer Science

Singapore Management University

Sensing systems for health and human performance, aimed at better support for ageing populations.
2025

Research Engineer

Singapore Management University

Built real-time athlete tracking and performance systems that coaches and teams could actually use.
2023 – 2024

Associate Research Scientist

Google · Fitbit

Research connected to the Pixel Watch: how sensing moves from a research idea to a product people wear every day.
2021 – 2023

Fitness Manager

24 Hour Fitness

Ran a commercial gym for two years, led customer growth, and learned the psychology of why people commit to change.
2019 – 2021

Strength Coach & Sports Scientist

University of Florida Athletics

Coached Division I football athletes. MS in Applied Physiology & Kinesiology (Human Performance) at UF alongside.
2014 – 2019

MS, Bioengineering & Medical Nanotechnology

SASTRA Deemed University

03 — On the mats

Still an athlete.

I train and compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and I recently got my purple belt. The mats keep me close to discipline, repetition, and performance under pressure. Those are the things my research tries to measure.