Rawan Alghofaili

Office: ECSS 4.704 · University of Texas at Dallas · rawan(at)utdallas(dot)edu
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I graduated in August 2022 with a PhD from the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University where I received the Distinguished Academic Achievement Award. During my PhD, I worked under the mentorship of Professor Lap-Fai (Craig) Yu, exploring the design of context-aware AR/VR/MR system interactions.

In the Summer of 2020, I interned at Adobe’s Creative Intelligence Lab under the mentorship of Cuong Nguyen, Vojtěch Krs, Nathan Carr and Radomír Měch. I was also a research intern in the Summer and Fall of 2021 at Meta Reality Labs working under the mentorship of Ben Lafreniere.

Prior to venturing into the world of PhD life, I received an MEng. (Master's of Engineering) in Computer Science from Cornell University and an MS (Master's of Science) from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

Research interests: Computational Design, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Graphics, Vision, Machine Learning and HCI.

I joined CS@UT Dallas as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Fall 2023!

I'm looking for well-motivated students who are excited about research in AR/VR/MR and HCI. If you're interested, please e-mail me your C.V. and transcripts.

Publications

Left: a curve wrapping around a real tree. Right: the tree decorated with ornaments along the curve.

Rawan Alghofaili, Cuong Nguyen, Vojtěch Krs, Nathan Carr, Radomír Měch, Lap-Fai Yu

Warpy: Contextual and Multi-view Indirect 3D Curve Sketching in Augmented Reality.

IEEE Virtual Reality (VR 2023)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex
    • A virtual store populated with products.

    Wei Liang, Luhui Wang, Xinzhe Yu, Changyang Li, Rawan Alghofaili, Yining Lang, Lap-Fai Yu

    Optimizing Product Placement for Virtual Stores.

    IEEE Virtual Reality (VR 2023)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex
    • Left: a line drawing of a cartoon character. Middle: the line drawing colored in four different styles. Right: the user selected one of the colored line drawings.

    Rawan Alghofaili, Matthew Fisher, Richard Zhang, Michal Lukáč, Lap-Fai Yu

    Exploring Sketch-based Character Design Guided by Automatic Colorization.

    Proceedings of Graphics Interface (GI 2021)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex
    • Logo of Frontiers in VR

    Biao Xie, Huimin Liu, Rawan Alghofaili, Yongqi Zhang, Yeling Jiang, Flavio Destri Lobo, Changyang Li, Wanwan Li, Haikun Huang, Mesut Akdere, Christos Mousas, Lap-Fai Yu

    A Review on Virtual Reality Skill Training Applications.

    Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2021

  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to BibTex
    • A user interacting with an AR pet using glasses.

    Wei Liang, Xinzhe Yu, Rawan Alghofaili, Yining Lang, Lap-Fai Yu

    Scene-Aware Behavior Synthesis for Virtual Pets in Mixed Reality.

    Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2021)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex
    • a moving image showing navigation in VR using our adaptive aid

    Rawan Alghofaili, Michael Solah, Haikun Huang, Yasuhito Sawahata, Marc Pomplun, Lap-Fai Yu

    Optimizing Visual Element Placement via Visual Attention Analysis.

    IEEE Virtual Reality (VR 2019)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex
    • a moving image showing navigation in VR using our adaptive aid

    Rawan Alghofaili, Yasuhito Sawahata, Haikun Huang, Hsueh-Cheng Wang, Takaaki Shiratori, Lap-Fai Yu

    Lost in Style: Gaze-driven Adaptive Aid for VR Navigation.

    Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2019)

  • Link to project webpage
  • Link to paper pdf
  • Link to video
  • Link to BibTex

    • Academic Services

    • Program Committee:
      • ACM SIGGRAPH / Eurographics Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) (2023)
      • IEEE MetaCom (2023)
      • CHI Late-Breaking Work (LBW) (2023)
      • ETRA short papers (2023)
      • IEEE MetaCom (2023)
      • ACHI (2020)
    • Associate Chair:
      • CHI PLAY Work-In-Progress (WiP) (2022)
      • ETRA short papers (2021)
    • Reviewer:
      • CHI (2020-2023)
      • UIST (2023)
      • IEEE VR journal track (2020-2023)
      • IEEE VR conference track (2020, 2022)
      • VRST (2020-2021)
      • TOG (2023)
      • TVCG (2023)
      • CHI PLAY (2020)
      • CASA (2019)
      • CAVW journal (2019)
    • Student Volunteer: SIGGRAPH (2020)
    • Workshops: TraingingXR@IEEE VR: Workshop on 3D Content Creation for Simulated Training in eXtended Reality (2020)
    • Invited Talks:
      • MAGFest (2023)
      • T-Mobile Advanced and Emerging Technologies (2022)
      • NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories (2019)

    Interests

    Apart from doing research. In my spare time I enjoy: hiking, yoga, cooking, knitting and exploring the local rock scene.

    When at home, I like to pester my cat Ada Lovelace.