Karan Ahuja

PhD Student
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
CV/Resume . Google Scholar. Fun Projects

About Karan

I'm a sixth year Ph.D. student at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Dr. Chris Harrison and Dr. Mayank Goel. I use my background in computer vision, signal processing, and applied machine learning to create novel sensing and interaction technologies. This enables a broad range of applications spanning various domains, including augmented & virtual reality, health monitoring, activity recognition, and context-aware computing. I am a Siebel Scholar and the Editor-in-Chief of XRDS (formerly Crossroads), a flagship magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Selected Research

I publish my research at premiere venues in computer science. Click on the details button to open the project-specific webpage to access supporting materials. For a full list of my patents and publications, please download my CV.

SAMoSA: Sensing Activities with Motion and Subsampled Audio

Vimal Mollyn, Karan Ahuja, Dhruv Verma, Chris Harrison, and Mayank Goel UbiComp 2022

RGBDGaze: Gaze Tracking on Smartphones with RGB and Depth Data

Riku Arakawa, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison and Karan Ahuja ICMI 2022

ControllerPose: Inside-Out Body Capture with VR Controller Cameras

Karan Ahuja, Vivian Shen, Cathy Fang, Nathan Riopelle, Andy Kong, Chris Harrison CHI 2022

TriboTouch: Micro-Patterned Surfaces for Low Latency Touchscreens

Craig Shultz, Daewha Kim, Karan Ahuja, Chris Harrison CHI 2022

TouchPose: Hand Pose Prediction, Depth Estimation, and Touch Classification from Capacitive Images

Karan Ahuja, Paul Streli, Christian Holz UIST 2021

EyeMU Interactions: Gaze + IMU Gestures on Mobile Devices

Andy Kong, Karan Ahuja, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison ICMI 2021

Cool Moves: User Motion Accentuation in Virtual Reality

Karan Ahuja, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christian Holz, Andrew Wilson UbiComp 2021

Classroom Digital Twins with Instrumentation-Free Gaze Tracking

Karan Ahuja, Deval Shah, Sujeath Pareddy, Franceska Xhakaj, Amy Ogan, Yuvraj Agarwal, Chris Harrison CHI 2021

Pose-on-the-Go: Approximating Partial User Pose with Smartphone Sensor Fusion and Inverse Kinematics

Karan Ahuja, Sven Mayer, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison CHI 2021

Vid2Doppler: Synthesizing Doppler Radar Data from Videos for Training Privacy-Preserving Activity Recognition

Karan Ahuja, Yue Jiang, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison CHI 2021

Direction-of-Voice (DoV) Estimation for Intuitive Speech Interaction with Smart Devices Ecosystems

Karan Ahuja, Andy Kong, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison UIST 2020

BodySLAM: Opportunistic User Digitization in Multi-User AR/VR Experiences

Karan Ahuja, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison SUI 2020

MeCap: Whole-Body Digitization for Low-Cost VR/AR Headsets

Karan Ahuja, Robert Xiao, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison UIST 2019

LightAnchors: Appropriating Point Lights for Spatially-Anchored Augmented Reality Interfaces

Karan Ahuja, Sujeath Pareddy, Robert Xiao, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison UIST 2019

EduSense: Practical Classroom Sensing at Scale

Karan Ahuja, Dohyun Kim, Franceska Xhakaj, Virag Varga, Anne Xie, Stanley Zhang, Jay Eric Townsend, Chris Harrison, Amy Ogan, Yuvraj Agarwal UbiComp 2019

ScratchThat: Supporting Command-Agnostic Speech Repair in Voice-Driven Assistants

Jason Wu, Karan Ahuja, Richard Li, Victor Chen, Jeffrey Bigham. UbiComp 2019

GymCam: Detecting, recognizing, and tracking simultaneous exercises in unconstrained scenes

Rushil Khurana, Karan Ahuja, Zac Yu, Jennifer Mankoff, Chris Harrison, Mayank Goel. UbiComp 2019

Ubicoustics: Plug-and-Play Acoustic Activity Recognition

Gierad Laput, Karan Ahuja, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison. UIST 2018

EyeSpyVR: Interactive Eye Sensing Using Off-the-Shelf Smartphone based VR headsets

Karan Ahuja, Rahul Islam, Varun Parashar, Kuntal Dey, Chris Harrison, Mayank Goel. UbiComp 2018

OptiDwell: Intelligent Adjustment of Dwell Click Time

Anand Nayyar, Utkarsh Dwivedi, Karan Ahuja, Nitendra Rajput, Seema Nagar, Kuntal Dey. IUI 2017

Convolutional Neural Networks for Ocular Smartphone-Based Biometrics

Karan Ahuja, Rahul Islam, Ferdous Barbhuiya, Kuntal Dey. PRL 2017

Eye center localization and detection using radial mapping

Karan Ahuja, Ruchika Banarjee, Seema Nagar, Kuntal Dey, Ferdous Barbhuiya. ICIP 2016

Professional Experience

2022 Apple (Cupertino, USA)
2021 Facebook Reality Labs (Redmond, USA)
2019 Microsoft Research Labs (Redmond, USA)
2016 IBM Research Labs (New Delhi, India)
2015 IBM Research Labs (New Delhi, India)

Awards and Honors

2022 Siebel Fellow
2022 Heidelberg Laureate Forum Young Researcher
2022 Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%), ACM CHI
2021 Fast Company Innovation by Design Finalist
2021 Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%), ACM CHI
2020 Collegiate Inventors Competition Graduate Finalist
2020 Fast Company Innovation by Design Finalist
2019 Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%), ACM UIST
2017 President's Gold Medal India
2017 IBM Blue Scholar

Academic Service

2021-22 Editor-in-Chief, ACM XRDS (Crossroads) Magazine
2022 ACM UIST, Session Chair: XR Interactions
2022 ACM UIST, Program Committee, AC, Papers
2022 ACM MobileHCI, Program Committee, AC, Papers
2021 ACM MobileHCI, Best Paper Selection Committee, Papers
2021 ACM MobileHCI, Session Chair: AR & VR
2021 ACM CHI, Session Chair: Input, Spatial Interaction
2021 ACM CHI, Session Chair: UX, Interaction Design, Research
2021 ACM UIST, Program Committee, AC, Papers
2021 ACM UIST, Organizing Committee, Video Co-Chair
2021 ACM MobileHCI, Program Committee, AC, Papers
2021 ACM CHI, Program Committee, AC, Late-Breaking Work
2020 ACM CHI, Program Committee, AC, Late-Breaking Work
2020 ACM UIST, Organizing Committee, Video Chair

Reviewing (100+ Papers)

ACM IMWUT '18, '19, '20, '21, '22
ACM CHI '19, '20, '21, '22, '23
ACM UIST '19, '20, '21
ACM MobileHCI '19, '21, '22
IEEE/ACM ISMAR '20, '21, '22
ACM ISS '20, '22
ACM TOCHI '22
ACM SIGGRAPH '21
IEEE TBIOM '21
IET Image Processing '18
Elsevier CVIU '17

Demos

Presented live demos to conference attendees at several venues, including:

UbiComp '18, '19
UIST '19
CONIX '18, '19, '22

Presented demos of my research to numerous companies and popular press, including: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung, GE, Phillips, PWC, Qualcomm, Butler Technology and Intel.

Teaching

2022 CMU, Machine Learning and Sensing, Co-Instructor
2022 UCLA, Engineering Interactive System, Guest Lecture
2021 CMU, User-Centered Research and Evaluation, TA
2021 CMU, Building User-Focused Sensing Systems, TA
2020 CMU, Machine Learning and Sensing, Guest Lecture

Invited Talks and Presentations

2022 CMU Summit, Keynote Speaker
2022 New York Augmented Reality Meetup
2021 Semiconductor Research Corporation
2021 Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
2021 CONIX Research Center
2021 Facebook Reality Labs
2020 AREA Research
2020 Carnegie Mellon University, Edge Computing
2020 Microsoft Research AI Breakthroughs
2020 Apple Machine Hearing and Sensing
2020 Semiconductor Research Corporation
2020 Qualcomm
2020 Apple AI and Machine Interaction
2019 AREA Research

Selected Press Coverage

2022 Today Show, Step into the Metaverse..."
2022 NBC Nightly News, Inside the metaverse..."
2022 CNN, These researchers came up with a solution..."
2022 Gizmodo, A Bump-Covered Screen Protector..."
2022 RoadToVR, Researchers Show Full-body VR Tracking..."
2022 VRTimes, Researchers Demonstrate Body Tracking..."
2022 RealVirtual, ControllerPose: full body capture..."
2022 UploadVR, Researchers Demonstrate Body Tracking..."
2022 TechCrunch, Controlling your phone with your eyes..."
2022 TechXplore, Your eyes can control your smartphone..."
2022 TechHive, In the future, we might control..."
2022 BiometricUpdate, Carnegie Mellon research develops..."
2022 Devdiscourse, New gaze-tracking tool lets..."
2022 Daijiworld, New gaze-tracking tool to..."
2022 Android Police, This neat eye-tracking experiment..."
2022 HotHardware, Researchers Develop EyeMU Tech..."
2021 Business Wire, Siebel Scholars Foundation Announces..."
2021 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh researchers can’t..."
2021 TechCrunch, CMU researchers show potential of privacy..."
2021 Cult of Mac, Full-body Animoji?..."
2020 Engadget, AI could tell smart speakers what direction..."
2020 Hackaday, Robots can finally answer are you talking to..."
2020 The Register, Hey, over here, I'm talking. Academics..."
2020 PRNewsWire, 2020 Collegiate Inventors Competition..."
2019 Digital Trends, Think your house is smart now? Here's..."
2019 The Register, LightAnchors array: LEDs in routers..."
2019 Hackaday, Modulated Pilot Lights Anchor AR to real..."
2019 NPR (WESA.FM), CMU Researchers Developing Tech To..."
2019 TechXplore, EduSense: Researchers develop compreh..."
2019 NewAtlas, Computer vision system tracks instructors..."
2019 Display Daily, MeCap Can Add Low Cost Whole-Body..."
2019 LabRoots, GymCam Can Track Exercise Effectively than..."
2019 ScienceDaily, GymCam Tracks Exercises that wearable..."
2019 I-programmer, GymCam Tracks Your Workout"
2019 Medgadget, GymCam Automatically Classifies Counts..."
2019 ZDnet, This camera watches while you work out"
2019 Hackaday, GymCam knows exactly what you've been..."
2019 New Atlas, Computer vision system tracks workouts..."
2018 Engadget, Speculative gadgets at the Future Interfaces..."
2018 TechCrunch, This robot uses lasers to 'listen' to... "
2018 The Register (UK), Alexa knows what you did last..."
2018 Science Daily, Sound, vibration recognition boost..."
2018 Futurity, Sound and vibrations let smart devices know..."

Contact Information

For any inquiries: kahuja@cs.cmu.edu. I am also a member of the Future Interfaces Group and the Smart Sensing for Humans Lab at CMU. Questions regarding my labs can be directed to info@figlab.com and mayankgoel@cmu.edu respectively. For licensing and tech-transfer questions, please contact: Cindy Chepanoski (cchepano@andrew.cmu.edu) who is part of the CMU Intellectual Property team.