About

I am an incoming Wissner Slivka Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Northwestern University (Fall 2024). My research develops novel, practical and deployable sensing systems and interaction technologies that aim to overcome challenges in high-impact application areas of health sensing, extended reality, natural user interfaces, and physical computing.
Prospective students: Please fill out this form if you are interested in working with me.

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.

LemurDx

LemurDx: Using Unconstrained Passive Sensing for an Objective Measurement of Hyperactivity in Children with no Parent Input

Riku Arakawa, Karan Ahuja, Kristie Mak, Gwendolyn Thompson, Sam Shaaban, Oliver Lindhiem, and Mayank Goel UbiComp 2023

IMUPoser

IMUPoser: Full-Body Pose Estimation using IMUs in Phones, Watches, and Earbuds

Vimal Mollyn, Riku Arakawa, Mayank Goel, Chris Harrison, and Karan Ahuja CHI 2023

Samosa

SAMoSA: Sensing Activities with Motion and Subsampled Audio

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

rgbdgaze

RGBDGaze: Gaze Tracking on Smartphones with RGB and Depth Data

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

ContollerPose

ControllerPose: Inside-Out Body Capture with VR Controller Cameras

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

TriboTouch

TriboTouch: Micro-Patterned Surfaces for Low Latency Touchscreens

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

TouchPose

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

Karan Ahuja, Paul Streli, Christian Holz UIST 2021

EyeMU

EyeMU Interactions: Gaze + IMU Gestures on Mobile Devices

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

CoolMoves

Cool Moves: User Motion Accentuation in Virtual Reality

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

Classroom Digital Twin

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

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

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

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

  • 2023 Google (Seattle, USA)
  • 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

  • 2024 Wissner Slivka Chair in CS, Northwestern University
  • 2023 Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%), ACM CHI
  • 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

Selected Press Coverage

Invited Talks and Presentations

  • 2023 Seoul National University, Keynote Speaker
  • 2023 Google Research
  • 2023 University of Pittsburgh
  • 2023 EPFL
  • 2023 MIT
  • 2023 Northwestern
  • 2023 Cornell
  • 2023 UW Madison
  • 2023 UMass Amherst
  • 2023 MBZUAI
  • 2023 ETH Zurich
  • 2022 Stanford, HCI Lunch Seminar
  • 2022 UChicago
  • 2022 UT Austin
  • 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
  • 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

Academic Service

  • 2024 ACM CHI, Program Committee, AC, Papers
  • 2021-23 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 CHI '19, '20, '21, '22, '23
  • ACM UIST '19, '20, '21, '22, '23
  • ACM IMWUT '18, '19, '20, '21, '22
  • 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 conferences, including ACM UbiComp, UIST and CHI. Presented demos of my research to numerous companies, venues and popular press, including: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Samsung, GE, Phillips, PWC, Qualcomm, CONIX, SRC Jump, Butler Technology, Toyota, Honda, 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