Karan Ahuja

Karan Ahuja is the Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Northwestern University and the director of the Sensing, Perception, Interactive Computing & Experiences (SPICE) lab. His work focuses on developing cutting-edge computational technologies capable of sensing, tracking, and understanding human behavior, aimed at enhancing human interactions and providing assistance in everyday life through applications such as mobile health sensing, extended reality, embodied sensing, and natural user interfaces. Ahuja earned his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023. His research has received significant recognition, winning the 2024 ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award, and he was featured in the “Forbes Asia 30 Under 30” and MIT Technology Review's “Innovators Under 35 Asia-Pacific” lists in 2024. He is currently also a Visiting Scholar at Google, where he leads research and development efforts in Google XR.

• 2024–Present·Northwestern University·Assistant Professor
  • Holds the Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Assistant Professorship, researching computational sensing, natural user interfaces, and human-computer interaction.
• 2023–2024·Google·Visiting Scholar
  • Led research and development in Google XR, focusing on extended reality technology and human-computer interaction design.

• 2018–2023·Carnegie Mellon University·PhD
  • Field: Human-Computer Interaction, advised by Chris Harrison and Mayank Goel.
• 2013–2017·Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.)
  • Field: Computer Science