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SUMMARY:IC Colloquium: Enabling Practical and Rich User Digitization
DTSTART:20230403T100000
DTEND:20230403T110000
DTSTAMP:20260407T045705Z
UID:6a857720fbb73c014014b394fe7825fe3ab2cca41b0ab4c4c8bd17bf
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By: Karan Ahuja - Carnegie Mellon University\nIC Faculty candi
 date\n\nAbstract\nA long-standing vision in computer science has been to e
 volve computing devices into proactive assistants that enhance our product
 ivity\, health and wellness\, and many other facets of our lives. User dig
 itization is crucial in achieving this vision as it allows computers to in
 timately understand their users\, capturing activity\, pose\, routine\, an
 d behavior. Today’s consumer devices – like smartphones and smartwatch
 es – provide a glimpse of this potential\, offering coarse digital repre
 sentations of users with metrics such as step count\, heart rate\, and a h
 andful of human activities like running and biking. Even these very low-di
 mensional representations are already bringing value to millions of people
 ’s lives\, but there is significant potential for improvement. In my res
 earch\, I develop new algorithms and methods that allow consumer devices t
 o capture rich\, continuous representations of their users. Armed with suc
 h knowledge\, our future devices could offer longitudinal health tracking\
 , more productive work environments\, full-body avatars in extended realit
 y\, and embodied telepresence experiences\, to name just a few domains. Cr
 itically\, these advances cannot come at the expense of user practicality\
 , meaning my work must be strategic in developing new sensors and making u
 se of existing sensors and edge computation.\n\nBio\nKaran is a Ph.D. cand
 idate at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University\, sp
 ecializing in novel sensing and interaction techniques. In his thesis work
 \, Karan focused on increasing the fidelity of user digitization technolog
 ies while retaining or improving user practicality\, opening new paradigms
  in augmented and virtual reality\, health monitoring\, natural user inter
 faces\, and context-aware computing. Many of his research projects have be
 en open-sourced\, deployed in-the-wild\, licensed by tech companies\, and 
 even shipped as a product feature. To date\, Karan has published over 25 p
 apers at top venues. He is a Siebel Fellow and the Editor-in-Chief of ACM 
 Crossroads (XRDS). His research has been widely covered in the media\, inc
 luding NBC Nightly News\, Today Show\, CNN\, TechCrunch\, Engadget\, NPR\,
  Fast Company\, and Gizmodo among others.\n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420 https://epfl.zoom.us/
 j/65119349176
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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