His technology start-up company on energy sensing, Zensi, was acquired by Belkin International, Inc. in 2010.

He was named the recipient of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health.

Patel's research is broadly in the areas of ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction, and user interface software and technology.

[3] Patel focuses on developing easy-to-deploy sensing technologies, activity recognition, and applications for energy monitoring.

Patel co-founded a company called Zensi, Inc., while he was a graduate student at Georgia Tech.