Hi! I'm Panda. I design.
I work at the intersection of design, engineering, and research to study the future of collaborative work, with a specific focus on tools for thought using GenAI and spatial computing technologies.

As a Design Engineering Researcher, I lead artefact-led research in the Tools for Thought team at Microsoft Research. I disseminate to both academic and general audiences. My work has been awarded patents, best paper awards, and gotten shout-outs from Microsoft Research senior leadership.

Here's my resume, updated October 2024. I can provide a full PDF CV upon request, but scroll down for an interactive CV with project and paper list, with some writeups and external links. Feel free to get in touch for more details about specific projects and tenures.

---

• Here's a pretty comprehensive list of projects I've worked on, stuff I've taught, some that's just for fun. Use the filters above to narrow it down to specific types of output, if desired. Some projects have additional information in their own project pages, but not all. Please feel free to get in touch for more details.
• Broadly, my research so far has focused on collaboration and knowledge work, with specific focus on using emerging technologies like VR and GenAI. While many recent projects have an associated HCI paper, several of my older projects do not. I think it's still worth sharing those, so they're included here as well.
• Through grad school, I was fortunate to gain experience with several forms of teaching: I've TA'd for design studios, offered my own advanced graduate seminar, taught independent study classes, and developed and ran several workshops in the Raleigh area.
• I've always been interested in the intersection of art and technology. These projects are a mix of personal explorations and collaborations with artists, some of which have been exhibited at museums in Raleigh, NC.
• Tinkering with tech is one of my favorite ways of learning. Often, ideas and projects emerge from tinkering, and tinkering in and of itself can be a fruitful methodology as well.
• In the course of my work in the industry, I have applied for several patents. Two have been granted, four have been submitted to USPTO, and I have another six applications under review.
• What have I been up to? A list of invited talks, conferences, seminars, internships, new jobs, awards.

Grinding the paper mill... (aka under prep or review)

• 📄 Simple and lo-fidelity sketching tool for rapid ideation in VR.
• 📄 Design space for GenAI-driven experiences for meeting intentionality.
• 📄 Novel GenAI-driven meeting interfaces for staying on track.
• 📄 Effects of meeting goal elicitation with GenAI.

2025

• 📄 (to appear) Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing. CSCW 25.
• 📖 On Program Committee for ACM Creativity and Cognition 2025 (C&C 25).

2024

• 📖 Invited talk at NYU Tandon HCI Seminar Talk Series (topic TBD). (November '24)
  🔗Seminar series page
• 🦥 Attended CSCW in Costa Rica! I presented Hybridge, a cross-lab project (between MSR Cambridge and MSR Redmond) that I led and concluded. (November '24)
• 📄 Hybridge: Bridging Spatiality for Inclusive and Equitable Hybrid Meetings. CSCW 24.
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 AvatarPilot: Decoupling One-to-One Motions from their Semantics with Weighted Interpolations. ISMAR 24 (poster).
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf
• 📄 MRTransformer: Transforming Avatar Non-verbal Behavior for Remote MR Collaboration in Incongruent Spaces. ISMAR 24 (poster).
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf
• 🧜‍♀️ Attended DIS in Copenhagen. My intern Warren Park is presenting our work from summer 2023 (Coexplorer). (July '24)
• 📄 CoExplorer Technology Probe: A Generative AI-Powered Adaptive Interface to Support Intentionality in Planning and Running Video Meetings. DIS 24.
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 🏖️ Attended CHI in Hawaii! I have several things being presented here. (May '24)
• 📄 Comparing the Agency of Hybrid Meeting Remote Users in 2D and 3D Interfaces of the Hybridge System. CHI 24.
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 CoExplorer Generative AI Powered 2D and 3D Adaptive Interfaces to Support Intentionality in Video Meetings. CHI 24.
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 An Equal Seat at the Table: Exploring Videoconferencing with Shared Spatial Context combined with 3D Video Representations. CHI 24.
  📰MSR Portal 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 Virtual Games, Real Interactions: A Look at Cross-reality Asymmetrical Co-located Social Games. CHI 24.
  📄pdf 🔗doi

2023

• 🏆 Beyond Audio: Towards a design space of headphones as a site for interaction and sensing. DIS 23, best paper.
  📰MSR Blog 📄pdf 🏆doi
• ©️ Patent (granted): Headset virtual presence
  🔗US11792364B2
• ©️ Patent (granted): Computing device headset input
  🔗US11669294B2
• 📖 Attended the Dagstuhl seminar on Social XR: The Future of Communication and Collaboration. (November)
  🔗Seminar page
• 📖 Invited talk at Virginia Tech on "Technology at the Intersection of Design and Research". (October)
  ▶️Video (YouTube)
• 🔧 Led a workshop on tech tinkering and AI for the undergrad and graduate design programmes at Virginia Tech and NC State University. (October)
  🔗First presentation 🔗Second presentation

2022

• 📄 RemoteLab: A VR remote study toolkit. UIST 22.
  🔗GitHub 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 AllTogether: Avatars in mixed-modality conferencing. CHIWORK 22.
  🔩Project page 📄pdf 🔗doi

2021

• 🎓 Received my PhD in Design! (December)
• 💼 Started at Microsoft Research Cambridge as Design Engineering Researcher in the BREW team @ Collaborative Intelligence! (November)
  ☕BREW team page
• 📄 Morphaces: Exploring morphable surfaces for tangible sketching in VR. C&C 21.
  🔩Project page 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 Immersive Analytics: A user-centered perspective. VRST 21.
  📄pdf 🔗doi

2020

• 📄 MoveBox: MoCap for RocketBox Avatars. AIVR 2020.
  🔗GitHub 📄pdf 🔗doi
• 📄 MR in Edu: Hybrid SVEs as Collaborative Learning Spaces for Design Education.
  📄pdf (unpublished)
• 📖 Fall: I'm teaching an advanced graduate seminar on Virtual Reality and tech tinkering to masters and PhD students. This class covered the theoretical foundations of designing 3D UI and virtual environments for head-worn VR displays. Topics included the history of VR, design and implementation of interaction techniques, with some discussion of human factors, psychology, security, privacy, ethics. In addition to the theoretical foundation, we also explored some simple making activities—creating a VR environment, and modeling 3D objects for 3D printing and use within VR. For the class, I invited Jaron Lanier and Jody Medich as guest speakers at different points in the semester. Jaron's visit was particularly sought after, and we opened it up to the whole university instead of my class.
  📖Syllabus
• 📖 Fall: I led an Independent Study for a Masters in Industrial Design student on tangible VR interactions. Every week had assigned readings (academic HCI papers), which we would discuss, and apply to a project. Through this independent study, we collaborated on and co-authored a pictorial for morphable surfaces for sketching in VR.
  📖Morphaces paper
• 📖 March: Gave an invited lecture at Meredith College to introduce Interior Design students to Graphic Design.
  📖Lecture

2019

• ⚙️ MXR Lab: Pop'n'Play. Low-fidelity prototyping for immersive VR experiences. Pop'n'Play is a cardboard-based prototype system that involves "popping" out a cutout and playing in VR. It is also an educational tool to inspire K-12 students to be creators, engineers, and designers. I mentored Zoë Hausmann, a Graphic Design undergrad, on this project.
  🔗Project page on Zoë's website
• 💼 Summer. I interned at Google Brain Robotics, working on a VR interface for remotely controlling industrial robotic arms.
• 📄 Multisensory Reality-Virtuality Continuum in VR.
• ⚙️ Valdese Weavers: AR factory tour application.
• 🎨 From Teosinte to Tomorrow: VR corn maze @Gregg and @NCMA.

2018

• 💼 Summer. I interned with the Google Editors team, working on autocorrect suggestions for Docs and Gmail, and building a unified editor for Docs x Sheets.
• 🔧 Moogfest 2018, May: Developed and led a workshop on "Coding 3D Landscapes of Sound".
  🔗Workshop

2017

• 🔧 Running a "Learnathon" workshop on Creative Coding through NC State University Libraries. I developed this in Fall 2017. This became rather popular, and we ran it multiple times through 2017-19, usually with a waitlist each time.
  🔗Creative coding learnathon
• 🔧 Running a two-part workshop on D3.js, including web fundamentals and intro to data viz design, through NC State University Libraries. I developed this in fall 2017, when I led the sessions. The University has continued offering this workshop post my tenure.
  🔗(1) Web dev fundamentals 🔗(2) Data viz w/ D3.js
• ⚙️ Panoform: Democratizing VR creation with a low-fidelity, hands-on making tool.
• 🎨 Aestheticizing Audio: Creating audio visualizations to convey the feeling behind music.
• ⚙️ InnovateNC: Data visualizations for government policy.

2016

• 🎨 Play-Play: Play-for-the-sake-of-Play.
• 🎓 Received my Masters in Graphic Design!
  📄Thesis document (pdf)
• ⚙️ Helping Designers Understand Code: My graduate research thesis focused on devising multidimensional visualizations of programming constructs to help designers and visual thinkers understand programming concepts.
• ⚙️ VR Function Generator: Mapping hand motion in VR to a mathematical function and rendering it in 3D.
• 📖 (Spring) I'm TAing for Derek Ham's class (GD592): an introduction to computational thinking for masters and PhD students.

2015

• 🔧 Taught a workshop on data viz and Tableau through NC State University Libraries. I iterated on an existing workshop curriculum and led the sessions in fall 2015.
• ⚙️ Institute for Emerging Issues: Thinkerspace: A space to facilitate community-led collaborative thinking and idea-generation to effect policy changes via the Institute for Emerging Issues (IEI). In our proposed strategy to increase user engagement in the Emerging Issues Commons, we position the Commons space as a “Thinkerspace”, where individuals can create and build collaboratively — with each other as well as with IEI.
• ⚙️ Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
• ⚙️ Demonstrating Augmented Reality: A physical demonstration of Augmented Reality for library patrons.

2014

• 🎨 Digital Art Explorations: My way to design-land was through exploring digital art.

2013

• 🏆 My team, SoLoMo, placed first in Designathon 2013, a design hackathon hosted at the national level by the Times group. More than 200 teams participated. (October)
  🔗Winner announcement