Karan Ahuja Wins ACM SIGCHI Special Recognition Award

An industry-academia collaboration team including Northwestern Engineering’s Karan Ahuja earned a 2025 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Special Recognition Award.

The team was acknowledged for a series of projects aimed at developing various aspects of extended-reality (XR) interaction for the Android XR operating system, including text input mechanisms, eye tracking calibration, cross-device interactions, and input arbitration systems. They were cited “for pioneering the interaction framework of Android XR through exemplary industry-academia collaboration, establishing foundational input methods and interaction guidelines for XR operating systems.”

The Google Android XR interaction team includes Ahuja, the Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Assistant Professor of Computer Science and (by courtesy) assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the McCormick School of Engineering; Andrea Colaco, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, and Eric Gonzalez (Google); Massimiliano Di Luca (University of Birmingham); Hans Gellersen (Lancaster University); Ken Pfeuffer (Aarhus University); and Hasti Seifi (Arizona State University).

"This recognition from ACM SIGCHI is deeply meaningful as it validates our team's vision of bridging academic innovation with practical implementation in consumer products,” Ahuja said. “Contributing to the input methods for an OS such as Android XR that will potentially transform how millions interact with digital worlds represents what the HCI community does best — connecting research and practice."

Ahuja leveraged his expertise in machine learning and sensing technologies to create responsive, low-latency, and seamless input methods that feel natural and intuitive. He explained that XR demands entirely new interaction paradigms as users engage with digital and immersive content in three-dimensional space overlayed into the real world.

“Unlike phones or computers where interactions are constrained to touchscreens or pointing devices, XR requires understanding complex spatial gestures, hand movements, gaze direction, and body position as users interact with virtual objects,” Ahuja said. “Our project established these foundational interaction methods for Android XR that work across applications.”

Prior to joining Northwestern Engineering last fall and launching the Sensing, Perception, Interactive Computing & Experiences (SPICE) Lab, Ahuja was a visiting faculty researcher at Google.

“I am proud to be connected to both Northwestern and Google, as this affiliation has created unique opportunities for knowledge transfer and collaboration,” Ahuja said. “My talented PhD students at the SPICE Lab, particularly Vasco Xu and Chenfeng (Jesse) Gao, have made valuable contributions to this research direction as well.”

Ahuja earned a PhD in human-computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023, co-advised by Chris Harrison and Mayank Goel. He won a 2024 ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award for advancing the state of the art in high-fidelity user tracking and digitization and opening new paradigms in augmented and virtual reality, health sensing, and natural user interfaces.

ACM SIGCHI is the leading international community of students and professionals interested in research, education, and practical applications of human-computer interaction. The interdisciplinary group includes anthropologists, computer scientists, information scientists, multi-media designers, psychologists, sociologists, and software engineers united in a shared understanding that designing useful and usable technology has the power to transform lives.