Yasha Iravantchi receives Meta PhD Fellowship

CSE PhD candidate Yasha Iravantchi is the recipient of a 2022 Meta PhD Research Fellowship, in the area of AR/VR Human Computer Interaction. The program recognizes PhD candidates conducting cutting-edge research across a number of computing fields, and awards tuition coverage and a $42,000 stipend.

Advised by Prof. Alanson Sample, Iravantchi’s research focuses on developing novel and privacy-preserving sensing hardware that can improve the immersiveness of AR and VR environments, such as detecting hand gestures and understanding user context through acoustic activity recognition.

Among Iravantchi’s recent projects is PrivacyMic, a hardware system that can enable household smart speakers to collect information needed for their applications without recording any human speech. The system uses ultrasonic information in its surroundings to identify different household devices and activities while filtering out all audible sound. His other work includes a technique for allowing smart speakers to render their sound onto other everyday objects to create a more immersive listening experience, and self-powered radio tags that enable building-wide activity detection without charging.

Through projects like these, Iravantchi hopes to enable virtual and augmented environments that are simultaneously deeper and more immersive while protecting the privacy of users.