Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech (CHCI@VT) Headliner Seminar

Posted on May 2, 2026 by admin

Possible at Last: Using Large Multimodal Models to Evaluate and Secure Mixed-Reality Experiences – this was the title of the talk I gave as part of the VT Center for Human-Computer Interaction Seminar. Sincere thanks to the organizers for the opportunity to share my perspective: we are finally, finally at the cusp of being able to provide real-time oversight of AR experiences.

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2025 in the Duke I3T Lab: Students, Systems, and Community

Posted on January 5, 2026 by admin

In 2025, two Duke I3T Lab members received their PhDs and moved on to exciting careers in industry: Dr. Sarah Eom joined Exponent as a Biomedical Engineering Consultant; Dr. Lin Duan joined NVIDIA as an XR-AI Engineer. There were several exciting developments in the careers of our alums, too: Dr. Ying Chen joined Penn State University as an Assistant Professor. We enjoyed getting to catch up with her at IEEE VR and ACM VRST 2025.

Duke I3T Lab at IEEE VR 2025. Proud advisor moment: sitting in the audience while my former PhD student presented work from her own research group.

Duke I3T Lab members published across multiple key venues, including IEEE TVCG, IEEE VR, IEEE ISMAR,  ACM VRST, AACL Findings, and IEEE Internet Computing, and received multiple awards. Yanming Xiu received the IEEE ISMAR Best Paper Award, the IEEE ISMAR Doctoral Consortium Best Presentation Award, and Duke ECE Research Retreat Best Presentation Runner-up recognition. Under Yanming’s guidance, lab’s high-school affiliates Joshua Chilukuri and Shunav Sen received the 2025 IEEE Universal Augmented Interaction Workshop Best Paper Award.

This year also brought important new support for our work. The $743K NSF TIP Breaking Low Award will support our work on low-latency multi-user XR for rehabilitation. The $250K DARPA Director’s Fellowship will allow us to expand our effort in runtime oversight of AR experiences.

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Posted in Academia, Achievement, Career and Leadership, Duke University, Funding and Awards, Highlights, Industry, Industry impact, Publications and Demonstrations, Research, Students and Mentorship, Undergraduate research, Undergraduate research | Leave a comment

From Gaming Gear to ICU Rehabilitation: Bringing XR into Clinical Practice

Posted on December 27, 2025 by admin

The November 2025 issue of Duke I/O Magazine includes an article titled “Transforming Reality: How Gaming Gear is Impacting Health Care,” featuring a lovely summary of our ongoing collaboration with the Duke University School of Nursing. Together, we are designing XR rehabilitation platforms for patients receiving long-term care in the ICU.

Excerpt from the Duke I/O article describing our joint work with DUSON

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Edge Computing’s Next Decade: Intelligent Spatial Systems – and a Responsibility to Get Them Right

Posted on December 24, 2025 by admin

It was my genuine pleasure to get to share my thoughts about the past and future of edge computing at the ACM Symposium on Edge Computing 2025 panel, “Looking Back and Moving Forward: 10 Years of Edge Computing.”

My highest-level takeaway: we are entering the era of human-facing, intelligent spatial systems.  Continue reading →

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Invited Talk at Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA 2025

Posted on July 2, 2025 by admin

Speaking at Augmented World Expo (AWE) USA, a premier industry XR for a second time – what a thrill! Last time I presented at AWE was back in 2021, when my talk was about edge- and IoT-supported AR.

This time I gave a talk titled “Possible at Last: Using Vision-Language Models to Evaluate and Secure Mixed Reality Experiences.” The video of my presentation and my slides are available below. Happy to answer any follow-on questions via e-mail, provided on the last slide of the slides PDF below.

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Gorgeous Saint-Malo; Thanks to IEEE VR 2025 for Bringing us There

Posted on April 10, 2025 by admin

I try to go for brief outdoor runs whenever I travel for work. In colder climates, that requires packing the suitcase a bit tighter, but it is generally worth it, as it gives me a fresh perspective on the places I visit.

3.2 miles along the English Channel, as recorded in Polar Flow.

Recently, a run like this was especially delightful in Saint-Malo, the location of IEEE VR 2025. Off-season (early March), Saint-Malo was quiet and surprisingly affordable, allowing for a stay near the beach and runs right along the English Channel, surrounded by dramatic, gorgeous scenery. Cold? Yes. Windy? Also, yes. Worth it? 100% and then some.

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Postdoc in Context-aware Augmented Reality

Posted on July 17, 2023 by admin

Duke University I3T Lab is looking for a postdoc in the area of edge computing-supported context-aware augmented reality. The postdoc will work closely with PI Gorlatova and two very capable and driven ECE and CS PhD students, and will have opportunity to participate in the activities of the NSF AI ATHENA Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next Generation Networks.

The position is best suited to a person who has experience with ML in mobile systems or pervasive sensing contexts, such as real-time human activity recognition, real-time edge video analytics, or ML-based QoS or QoE prediction. Exposure to augmented and virtual reality (e.g., Unity or Unreal, mobile AR SDKs, AR or VR QoS and QoE, V/VI-SLAM) is advantageous but not required.

If you are interested in this position, please e-mail maria.gorlatova@duke.edu with your up to date CV, transcripts, and 2 papers that you believe represent your best work.

This position can start in September 2023, January 2024, or May 2024.

Lab’s previous postdoctoral associate Dr. Guohao Lan has successfully secured an independent Assistant Professor position at a top university.

Duke University is an exceptionally selective private Ivy Plus school, with a beautiful gothic campus located in a lively progressive Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. It is a wonderful place to work and a wonderful place to live.

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Duke VISION Magazine Profile

Posted on July 10, 2023 by admin

Sarah Eom’s research on augmented reality for retinal laser therapy is profiled by the Duke Eye Center VISION Magazine.  This project, done in collaboration with Miroslav Pajic (Duke ECE) and Majda Hadziahmetovic (Duke Ophthalmology), not only demonstrates a new application of augmented reality, but also advances the state of AR support for detail-oriented tasks broadly.

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Posted in AR-assisted surgery, Augmented reality, Augmented Reality For Good, Edge computing, Highlights, Internet of Things, Students and Mentorship, Undergraduate research, Women in technology | Comments Off on Duke VISION Magazine Profile

Spring 2023 Student Successes

Posted on May 18, 2023 by admin

We have had an exciting end of the Spring 2023 semester, with many recognitions of outstanding and cross-disciplinary achievements of group’s students. Neha Vutakuri‘s year-long engagement with the lab culminated with a successful undergraduate dissertation defense and graduation with distinction in Neuroscience. Seijung Kim, who has been with us for almost two years and made important and unique contributions to two different projects, graduated with distinction in Biomedical Engineering and received the Howard G. Clark Award for outstanding undergraduate research. Ritvik Janamsetty, a Pratt Fellow in the ECE Department, received the 3rd place Independent Study Best Poster Award at the ECE undergraduate research showcase. Lin Duan received the 2nd place Best Poster Award at the Athena NSF AI Institute annual showcase. Heartfelt congratulations!

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Appearing at IEEE INFOCOM’23: Edge-Assisted Adaptive SLAM with Resource Constraints

Posted on February 4, 2023 by admin

AdaptSLAM, our recent work led by Ying Chen, explores new approaches for adapting edge computing-supported Visual and Visual-Inertial Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (V- and VI-SLAM) to computation and communication resource constraints.

Adapt SLAM’s system architecture. Our design centers on the two highlighted modules. We optimize our algorithms to run in real time on mobile devices. 

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Posted in Achievement, Augmented reality, Communication networks, Edge computing, Mobile computing, Publications and Demonstrations, Research | Comments Off on Appearing at IEEE INFOCOM’23: Edge-Assisted Adaptive SLAM with Resource Constraints