Chen Chen

Interactive Experience Design (IXD) Lab 🔬
Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences 💻
College of Engineering and Computing 🛠
Florida International University 🌴


I am an Assistant Professor 🤓 at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences 💻, part of the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University 🐅 in Miami 🌴. I am the founder and director of the Interactive Experience Design (IXD) Lab at FIU. I serve as a faculty mentor for the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI).

I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science 💻 from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and The Design Lab at UC San Diego 🔱. I was a former researcher at Microsoft Research , Adobe Research and Carnegie Mellon University 🐕. My research has been recognized with a Distinguished Paper Award from ACM IMWUT, an Honorable Mention Award from ACM CHI, a Best Poster Runner-Up Award from ACM SenSys, the BP Scholarship, and has been selected as a finalist for the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and the Adobe Research Fellowship. I received my M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University , and a B.Eng. (First Class, Hons.) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Nottingham .

I work on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, with primary focus on eXtended Reality (XR), Human-AI interaction (HAI), Creativity Support Tools, as well as Accessibility, Aging and Health.

💬 I am always excited to chat or collaborate around topics like HCI, XR/3D, HAX and the design of creativity supports tools. Feel free to reach out by email or LinkedIn!

I am actively seeking one Ph.D. student to join and help establish my new HCI lab at FIU, starting tentatively in Fall 2026. Please find more in work with me if you are interested!

If you are a current undergraduate or master's student at FIU and are interested in HCI research, please fill out this form.

I will be teaching COP 4813 - Web App Programming in Spring 2026. A tentative plan and syllabus can be referred to this page.

Updated on December 6, 2025

🔬 Research

Rooted in a user-centered design approach, my research seeks to understand how XR and AI can seamlessly extend our thoughts, behaviors, and activities by augmenting today's information interaction experiences. I focus on both general-purpose tasks and those oriented toward the needs of specific or marginalized users. Ultimately, I envision future information interaction experiences as intuitive, seamless and context-aware. Grounded in specific real-world tasks, my research involves designing, developing and evaluating interactive systems, with a focus on three key themes shown below:

📝 Selected Publications CHI | UIST | ISMAR | DIS | ASSETS | IMWUT


SweeperBot: Making 3D Browsing Accessible through View Analysis and Visual Question Answering

Chen Chen, Cuong Nguyen, Alexa Siu, Dingzeyu Li, Nadir Weibel
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI 2025) (Journal IF = 4.9, Acceptance Rate = 18%, 2024)

 Preprint  Preview  Teaser


Understanding the Challenges and Design Opportunities of Using Voice Assistants to Support Postpartum Mothers in Brazil

Jessica de Souza, Chen Chen, Tanya Punater, Ariana Talai, Bárbara Tideman Sartorio Camargo, Ana Carolina Lavio Rocha, Kelly Pereira Coca, Edward Jay Wang
Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI 2025), Waterloo, Canada (Acceptance Rate = 34%)



MemoVis: A GenAI-Powered Tool for Creating Companion Reference Images for 3D Design Feedback

Chen Chen, Cuong Nguyen, Thibault Groueix, Vladimir G. Kim, Nadir Weibel
ACM Journal of Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI 2024) (Journal IF = 4.8, 2023)
Presented at the 2024 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2024), Pittsburgh, PA, USA

 Preview  Teaser  Poster  Slide


Enhancing Accuracy, Time Spent, and Ubiquity in Critical Healthcare Delineation via Cross-Device Contouring

Matin Yarmand, Chen Chen, Michael V. Sherer, Yash N. Shah, Peter Liu, Borui Wang, Larry Hernandez, James D. Murphy, Nadir Weibel
Proceedings of the 2024 ACM International Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '24), Copenhagen, Denmark (Acceptance Rate = 27%)

 Project Page


“I’d be watching him contour till 10 o’clock at night”: Understanding Tensions between Teaching Methods and Learning Needs in Healthcare Apprenticeship

Matin Yarmand, Chen Chen, Kexin Cheng, James D. Murphy, Nadir Weibel
Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24), Honolulu, HI, USA (Acceptance Rate = 26.3%)
🏆 Honorable Mentioned by ACM CHI 2024

 Project Page


PaperToPlace: Transforming Instruction Documents into Spatialized and Context-Aware Mixed Reality Experiences

Chen Chen, Cuong Nguyen, Jane Hoffswell, Jennifer Healey, Trung Bui, Nadir Weibel
Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST '23), San Francisco, CA, USA (Acceptance Rate = 25.1%)

 Preview  Teaser  Slide


Embodied Exploration: Facilitating Remote Accessibility Assessment for Wheelchair Users with Virtual Reality

Siyou Pei, Alexander Chen, Chen Chen, Mingzhe "Franklin" Li, Megan Fozzard, Hao-Yun Chi, Nadir Weibel, Patrick Carrington, Yang Zhang
Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '23), New York, NY, USA (Acceptance Rate = 27%)

 Teaser


Screen or No Screen? Lessons Learnt from a Real-World Deployment Study of Using Voice Assistants With and Without Touchscreen for Older Adults

Chen Chen, Ella T. Lifset, Yichen Han, Arkajyoti Roy, Michael Hogarth, Alison A. Moore, Emilia Farcas, Nadir Weibel
Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '23), New York, NY, USA (Acceptance Rate = 27%)

 Slide  Project Page


Mites: Design and Deployment of a General-Purpose Sensing Infrastructure for Buildings

Sudershan Boovaraghavan, Chen Chen, Anurag Maravi, Mike Czapik, Yang Zhang, Chris Harrison, Yuvraj Agarwal
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT/UbiComp '23), Cancun, Mexico (Journal IF = 3.6, 2023)
🏆 Distinguished Paper Award in ACM IMWUT Vol. 7 (8 out of 205 accepted papers)

 Project Page


VRContour: Bringing Contour Delineations of Medical Structures Into Virtual Reality

Chen Chen, Matin Yarmand, Varun Singh, Michael V. Sherer, James D. Murphy, Yang Zhang, Nadir Weibel
The 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR '22), Singapore (Acceptance Rate = 21.6%)

 Teaser  Talk  Project Page


Investigating Input Modality and Task Geometry on Precision-first 3D Drawing in Virtual Reality

Chen Chen, Matin Yarmand, Zhuoqun Xu, Varun Singh, Yang Zhang, Nadir Weibel
The 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR '22), Singapore (Acceptance Rate = 21.6%)

 Dataset


Understanding Barriers and Design Opportunities to Improve Healthcare and QOL for Older Adults through Voice Assistants

Chen Chen, Janet G Johnson, Kemeberly Charles, Alice Lee, Ella T Lifset, Michael Hogarth, Alison A Moore, Emilia Farcas, Nadir Weibel
The 2021 ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '21), Virtual Event, USA (Acceptance Rate = 29%)

 Teaser  Project Page  News


ExGsense: Toward facial gesture sensing with a sparse near-eye sensor array

Chen Chen, Ke Sun, Xinyu Zhang
The 2021 ACM International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN '21), Nashville, TN, USA (Acceptance Rate = 24.5%)

 Slide

"Alexa, stop spying on me!" Speech Privacy Protection Against Voice Assistants

Ke Sun, Chen Chen, Xinyu Zhang
The 2020 ACM International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys '20), Virtual Event, Japan (Acceptance Rate = 18%)

🤖 Patent

Cuong Nguyen, Trung Bui, Jennifer Healey, Jane Hoffswell, Chen Chen, "Rendering and Anchoring Instructional Data in Augmented Reality with Context Awareness", 2025 [Link]

Yuvraj Agarwal, Chris Harrison, Gierad Laput, Sudershan Boovaraghavan, Chen Chen, Abhijit Hota, Robert Xiao, Yang Zhang, "Virtual Sensor System", 2019 [Link]

💼 Employment

Research Scientist Intern, Microsoft Research (HCI | EPIC | Transcendence), Redmond, WA, USA, Jun. 2024 - Sep. 2024

Ph.D. Student Collaborator, Adobe Research (HCI | AR, VR, 360 Photography | AI & ML | Audio), Remote, CA, USA, Nov. 2023 - Jun. 2024

Research Scientist Intern, Adobe Research (HCI | AR, VR, 360 Photography), San Francisco, CA, USA, Jun. 2023 - Nov. 2023

Ph.D. Student Collaborator, Adobe Research (HCI | AR, VR, 360 Photography | Document Intelligence | AI & ML), Remote, CA, USA, Sep. 2022 - Apr. 2023

Research Scientist Intern, Adobe Research (HCI | AR, VR, 360 Photography | Document Intelligence | AI & ML), Remote/San Francisco, CA, USA, Jun. 2022 - Sep. 2022

Research Associate, Carnegie Mellon University (S3D | HCII), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Jan. 2018 - Jun. 2018

Research Assistant, Carnegie Mellon University (S3D | HCII), Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Dec. 2016 - Dec. 2017

Research Assistant, The University of Nottingham (PEMC | Energy Institute), Nottingham, UK, May 2015 - Aug. 2015

🏆 Awards

Distinguished Paper Award, ACM IMWUT '24

Best Paper Honorable Mentioned Award, ACM CHI '24

Special Recognition as Useful (or Highly Useful) Review, UIST '23 - '24, CHI '24, DIS '24

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Accessibility (I.D.E.A) Scholarship, IEEE ISMAR '22

Adobe Research Fellowship (Finalist), '21

Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (Abstract Selected) '21 [Abstract]

Best Poster Award, ACM SenSys '20

Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (Abstract Proposal) '20 [Proposal]

Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (Finalist) '19 [Abstract] [Proposal] [Poster]

British Petroleum (BP) Fellowship '15

‍🏫 Teaching

Instructor, COP 4813 Web Application Programming (Spring '26), FIU [Syllabus]

Instructor, CAP 4104 - RVG Human-Computer Interaction (Fall '25), FIU [Syllabus]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, CSE 165 3D User Interaction (Spring '25), UC San Diego, This class was also collaborated with Adobe Research and Mixamo [Syllabus] [Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, WES 237A Introduction to Embedded Computing (Winter '25), UC San Diego [Syllabus] [Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, CSE 118/218 Ubiquitous Computing (Fall '24), UC San Diego [Syllabus] [Undergraduate Student Evaluation] [Graduate Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, CSE 165 3D User Interaction (Spring '24), UC San Diego, This class was also supported by Qualcomm . [Syllabus] [Final Project Video Teasers] [Student Evaluation] [Instructor Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, WES 237A Introduction to Embedded Computing (Winter '24), UC San Diego [Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, CSE 118/218 Ubiquitous Computing (Fall '23), UC San Diego [Undergraduate Student Evaluation] [Graduate Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant and Lab Instructor, CSE 118/218 Ubiquitous Computing (Fall '22), UC San Diego [Undergraduate Student Evaluation] [Graduate Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant, WES 237A Introduction to Embedded Computing (Winter '21), UC San Diego [Student Evaluation] [Instructor Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant, CSE 291H Data Center System (Fall '19), UC San Diego [Student Evaluation] [Instructor Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant, CSE 112 Advanced Software Engineering (Fall '20), UC San Diego [Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant, COGS 118 AI Algorithms (Summer '19), UC San Diego [Student Evaluation]

Teaching Assistant, 08-672 Web Application Development (Fall '17), Carnegie Mellon University

Teaching Assistant, 08-672 Web Application Development (Fall '16), Carnegie Mellon University

🎓 Students

Nishanth Chidambaram, CS Master Student @UCSD, Spring 2025 - Now

Sirui Tao, CS Master Student @UCSD, Fall 2024 - Now

Jacob Lin, Math + CS Undergrad Student @UCSD

Anish Rajeshkumar, Math + CS Undergrad Student @UCSD (now MS Student @USC)

Kexin Cheng, CogSci Undergraduate @UCSD

Borui Wang, HCDE Undergraduate @UW (now CS Ph.D. Student at Cornell)

Yash N. Shah, CogSci Undergraduate @UCSD (now CS Ph.D. Student at Standford)

Zhiwei Ren, CogSci Undergraduate @UCSD

Arkajoyti Roy, Math + CS Undergrad Student @UCSD (now Staff Engineer @Meta), Fall '22 - Summer '23

Varun Singh, CS Undergrad Student @UCSD, Fall '21 - Summer '23 (now Software Engineer @Amex)

Yichen Han CS Undergrad Student @UCSD, Winter '22 - Summer '22 (MS Student @Carnegie Mellon University, now Software Engineer @Symbotic)

Christopher B. Han, Winter '22 - Summer '22

Peng W. Lee, Winter '22 - Summer '22

Ella T. Lifset, Biology Undergrad Student @UCSD, Summer '20 - Summer '21

Robin Z. Xu (now Staff Engineer @Intuitive), Winter '21 - Summer '21

Kemeberley Charles, now Medical Student at UCSD Health

Alice Lee, now UXR at Microsoft

Chenghong Bian, now Ph.D. student at Imperial College London

🙋‍ Services

IMWUT/UbiComp Video Co-Chair ('23)

Program Committee/Associate Chair (AC) for UIST '26, CHI '23 (Late Breaking Work), ISWC '24, CHI '25 (Full Paper Track, User Experience & Usability Subcommittee), CHI '25 (Late Breaking Work), DIS '25 (Provocations and Works in Progress), ISWC '25, and ISMAR '25, UIST '25 (Poster Track)

Conference Reviewers for ACM CHI, UIST, CSCW, IUI, DIS, EICS, ICMI, SUI, VRST ('20 - Now)

Conference Reviewers for IEEE VR, ISMAR ('20 - Now)

Journal Reviewers for IEEE TVCG, ACM TACCESS, ACM IMWUT, IJHCI, PLOS Digital Health ('20 - Now)

Student Volunteer at UIST '24, ASSETS ('21 - '23), DIS '23

UCSD CSE Ph.D. Visit Day Area Lead (HCI) ('22 - '24)

UCSD CSE Ph.D. Admission Committee ('19 - '23')

Co-Host for DLab Research Meeting, UCSD (Fall '22)

Volunteer at the International Humanity Foundation, Banda Aceh, Indonesia , Summer '13


© CHEN CHEN | 2025