Anup Sathya

Anup is a PhD student at the University of Chicago, advised by Dr. Ken Nakagaki. His research explores how to protect the home from the encroachment of addictive platforms in the attention economy. Believing that learning to calmly coexist with smartphones is one of the defining challenges of the next century, he designs, builds, and studies physical devices that shield us from the constant digital onslaught.

He is the recipient of the 2025 Linda Tischler Award recognizing emerging design talent. His work has received multiple honors, including Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award and Core77's Lifestyle Accessories Award, and has been featured by 404 Media, CBC Radio, IEEE Spectrum, Hackster.io, the Indian Express, and more.

News

Nov 25

Attention Receipts is a finalist in The Wired Japan's Creative Hack Award!

 Sep 25

I was given the 2025 Linda Tischler Award recognizing emerging design talent!

 Sep 25

Attention Receipts received the Fast Company Innovation by Design Award!

 Sep 25

I appeared on the Luddites Unite podcast.

 Jun 25

Attention Receipts received the Core77 Lifestyle Accessories Award!

Publications

[13] Full Paper ACM UIST '25 DOI   PDF Shape n' Swarm: Hands-on, Shape-aware Generative Authoring with Swarm UI and LLMs Matthew Jeung, Anup Sathya, Wanli Qian, Steven Arellano, Luke Jimenez, Ken Nakagaki Best Demo Award [12] Workshop ACM UIST '25 Facilitating Longitudinal Interaction Studies of AI Systems Tianyi Long, Sihan Wang, Émilie Fabre, Tingying Wang, Anup Sathya, Jing Wu, Savvas D. Petridis, Danqing Li, others [11] Full Paper ACM DIS '25 Cybernetic Marionette: Channeling Collective Agency Through a Wearable Robot in a Live Dancer-Robot Duet Anup Sathya, Jiasheng Li, Zeyu Yan, Amy Fang, Bill Kules, Jonathan Martin, Huaishu Peng [10] Full Paper ACM UIST '24 SHAPE-IT: Exploring Text-to-Shape-Display for Generative Shape-Changing Behaviors with LLMs Wanli Qian, Chen Gao, Anup Sathya, Ryo Suzuki, Ken Nakagaki [9] Full Paper ACM UIST '24 CARDinality: Interactive Card-shaped Robots with Locomotion and Haptics using Vibration Aditya Retnanto, Emilio Faracci, Anup Sathya, Yu Kai Hung, Ken Nakagaki [8] Full Paper ACM CHI '24 Attention Receipts: Utilizing the Materiality of Receipts to Improve Screen-time Reflection on YouTube Anup Sathya, Ken Nakagaki FastCompany Innovation by Design Award, Core77 Lifestyle Accessories Award [7] Poster ACM UIST '24 Game Jam with CARDinality: A Case Study of Exploring Play-based Interactive Applications Emilio Faracci, Aditya Retnanto, Anup Sathya, Ashlyn Sparrow, Ken Nakagaki [6] Full Paper ACM UIST '22 Fibercuit: Prototyping High-Resolution Flexible and Kirigami Circuits with a Fiber Laser Engraver Zeyu Yan, Anup Sathya, Sarah Yusuf, Jyh-Ming Lien, Huaishu Peng Best Demo Award (People's Choice), Core77 Tools Award - Notable [5] Full Paper ACM IMWUT (UbiComp) '22 Calico: Relocatable On-cloth Wearables with Fast, Reliable, and Precise Locomotion Anup Sathya, Jiasheng Li, Tauhidur Rahman, Ge Gao, Huaishu Peng [4] Demo ACM UIST '22 Demonstration of Fibercuit: Techniques to Prototype High-Resolution Flexible and Kirigami Circuits with a Fiber Laser Engraver Zeyu Yan, Anup Sathya, Saadat Yusuf, Jyh-Ming Lien, Huaishu Peng [3] Poster ACM CHI EA '21 Towards On-the-wall Tangible Interaction: Using Walls as Interactive, Dynamic, and Responsive User Interface Zeyu Yan, Anup Sathya, Pedro Jorge Carvalho, Yongquan Owen Hu, Ang Li, Huaishu Peng [2] Short Paper IEEE ICACCI '18 Realtime On-chip Wireless Waveform Monitoring Anup Sathya, S. Balaji, Abhinav Gupta, S. Padmanabhan [1] Short Paper IEEE TENCON '17 Visual positioning system for automated indoor/outdoor navigation Anup Sathya, Abhinav Goel, S. Padmanabhan