Praneeth Chakravarthula, UNC (original) (raw)

Biography

I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UNC Chapel Hill. My research interests lie at the intersection of optics, perception, graphics, optimization, and machine learning. I am a Senior Member of Optica, recipient of IEEE VR Best Dissertation Award, Timothy L. Quigg Inventor of the Year at UNC, and several Best Paper and Demo Awards. I completed my postdoctoral research at Princeton University, obtained my PhD from UNC Chapel Hill, and my B.Tech and M.Tech degrees in Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Signal Processing, all from IIT Madras. I have previously held research internship positions at Facebook Reality Labs, Microsoft Research Cambridge, NVIDIA Researchand I was also a visiting researcher at the Fluid Interfaces Group of MIT Media Lab and CoSMIC lab of NUS,Singapore.

If you are interested in a PhD, postdoc, internship or a visiting position, please contact me with your resume.

Best Paper and Demo Awards

1. Disruptive Idea Award, From Road to Code: Neuro-Symbolic Program Synthesis for Autonomous Driving Scene Translation and Analysis, Neuro-symbolic Systems 2025.
2. Highlight Paper, Event fields: Capturing light fields at high speed, resolution, and dynamic range, CVPR 2025.
3. Best Paper Honorable Mention, Multimodal Neural Acoustic Fields for Immersive Virtual Reality and Telepresence, IEEE VR 2025.
4. Best Paper Award, FlatTrack: Eye-tracking with ultra-thin lensless cameras, GMCV, WACV 2025.
5. Best Paper Award, Cross-Domain Synthetic-to-Real In-the-Wild Depth and Normal Estimation for 3D Scene Understanding , OmniCV, CVPR 2024.
6. Best Dissertation Award, Towards Everyday-use Augmented Reality Eyeglasses, IEEE VGTC 2023.
7. Best Paper Award, Image Features Influence Reaction Time: A Learned Probabilistic Perceptual Model for Saccade Latency, ACM SIGGRAPH 2022.
8. Best Paper Honorable Mention, Joint Neural Phase Retrieval and Compression for Energy- and Computation-Efficient Holography on the Edge, ACM SIGGRAPH 2022.
9. Best Paper Award, FoV-NeRF: Foveated Neural Radiance Fields for Virtual Reality, IEEE ISMAR 2022.
10. Best Paper Award, DeepCGH: 3D Computer-Generated Holography Using Deep Learning, OSA Biophotonics Congress 2020.
11. Best Optical Design Award, Wirtinger Holography for Near-Eye Displays, SPIE Photonics West 2020.
12. Best Paper Award, focusAR: Auto-focus Augmented Reality Eyeglasses for both Real World and Virtual Imagery, IEEE ISMAR 2018.
13. Best in Show Award, Steerable Application-Adaptive Near-Eye Displays, ACM SIGGRAPH 2018.
14. Best Optical Design Award, Mitigating vergence-accommodation conflict for near-eye displays via deformable beamsplitters, SPIE Digital Optics for Immersive Displays 2018.

Publications

Please see my Google scholar for a complete publication list.

(* equal contribution)

	Beating bandwidth limits for large aperture broadband nano-optics Johannes E Fröch*, Praneeth Chakravarthula*, Jipeng Sun, Ethan Tseng, Shane Colburn, Alan Zhan, Forrest Miller, Anna Wirth-Singh, Quentin AA Tanguy, Zheyi Han, Karl F Böhringer, Felix Heide, Arka Majumdar[ Nature Communications 2025 ]
	From Road to Code: Neuro-Symbolic Program Synthesis for Autonomous Driving Scene Translation and AnalysisJohnathan Leung, Guansen Tong, Sridhar Duggirala, Praneeth Chakravarthula [ Disruptive Idea Award ] [ Neurosymbolic Systems 2025 ]
	Present and Future of Everyday-use Augmented Reality Eyeglasses Praneeth Chakravarthula [ IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 2025 ]
	DOF-GS: Adjustable Depth-of-Field 3D Gaussian Splatting for Post-Capture Refocusing, Defocus Rendering and Blur RemovalYujie Wang, Baoquan Chen*, _Praneeth Chakravarthula*_[ CVPR 2025 ]
	Event fields: Capturing light fields at high speed, resolution, and dynamic rangeZiyuan Qu, Zihao Zou, Vivek Boominathan, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Adithya Pediredla[ Highlight ] [ CVPR 2025 ]
	Multimodal Neural Acoustic Fields for Immersive Virtual Reality and TelepresenceGuansen Tong, Jonathan Leung, Haosheng Shi, Liujie Zheng, Shengze Wang, Xi Peng, Grace Fei, Praneeth Chakravarthula [ Best Paper Honorable Mention ] [ IEEE VR (TVCG) 2025 ]
	Perceptually-Guided Acoustic FoveationXi Peng, Kenneth Chen, Iran Roman, Juan Pablo Bello, Qi Sun*, _Praneeth Chakravarthula*_[ IEEE VR 2025 ]
	Novel View Synthesis for 3D Computer-Generated Holograms Using Deep Neural FieldsKenneth Chen, Anzhou Wen, Yunxiang Zhang, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qi Sun [ Optics Express 2025 ]
	FlatTrack: Eye-tracking with ultra-thin lensless camerasPurvam Jain, Althaf M. Nazar, Salman S. Khan, Kaushik Mitra, Praneeth Chakravarthula [ Best Paper Award ] [ GMCV, WACV 2025 ]
	Spatially Varying Nanophotonic Neural NetworksKaixuan Wei*, Xiao Li*, Johannes Froech*, Praneeth Chakravarthula, James Whitehead, Ethan Tseng, Arka Majumdar, Felix Heide [ Science Advances 2024 ]
	End-to-End Hybrid Refractive-Diffractive Lens Design with Differentiable Ray-Wave ModelXinge Yang, Matheus Souza, Kunyi Wang, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qiang Fu, Wolfgang Heidrich [ SIGGRAPH Asia 2024 ]
	Cross-Domain Synthetic-to-Real In-the-Wild Depth and Normal Estimation for 3D Scene Understanding Jay Bhanushali, Manivannan Muniyandi, Praneeth Chakravarthula [ Best Paper Award ] [ OmniCV, CVPR 2024 ]
	Neural Etendue Expander for Ultra-Wide-Angle High-Fidelity Holographic DisplayEthan Tseng, Seung-Hwan Baek, Grace Kuo, Nathan Matsuda, Andrew Maimone, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qiang Fu, Wolfgang Heidrich, Douglas Lanman, Felix Heide [ Nature Communications 2024 ]
	Point Spread Function-inspired Deformable Convolutional Network for Holographic Displays Mi Zhou, Shuming Jiao, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Yang Yue, Ping Su, Ercan Engin Kuruoglu, Zihan Geng [ SPIE 2024 ]
	Thin On-Sensor Nanophotonic Array Cameras Praneeth Chakravarthula, Jipeng Sun, Xiao Li, Chenyang Lei, Gene Chou, Mario Bijelic, Johannes Froesch, Arka Majumdar, Felix Heide[ SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 ]
	Seeing with Sound: Long-Range Acoustic Beamforming for Automotive Scene Understanding Praneeth Chakravarthula, Jim Aldon D'Souza, Ethan Tseng, Joe Bartusek, Felix Heide[ CVPR 2023 ]
	Stochastic Light Field HolographyFlorian Schiffers, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Nathan Matsuda, Grace Kuo, Ethan Tseng, Douglas Lanman, Felix Heide, Oliver Cossairt [ ICCP 2023 ]
	End-to-End Compression-Aware Computer-Generated HolographyMi Zhou, Hao Zhang, Shuming Jiao, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Zihan Geng[ Optics Express 2023 ]
	Hexagonal Diffractive Optical ElementsYidan Zheng, Qiang Fu, Hadi Amata, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Felix Heide, Wolfgang Heidrich[ Optics Express 2023 ]
	ChromaCorrect: Prescription Correction in Virtual Reality Headsets through Perceptual GuidanceAhmet Guzel, Jeanne Beyazian, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kaan Aksit [ Biomedical Optics Express 2023 ]
	Visual perception of noise in a simulated holographic display – a user study Andreas Georgiou, Joel Kollin, Charlie Hewitt, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Brian Guenter[ Elsevier Displays 2022 ]
	Pupil-aware Holography Praneeth Chakravarthula, Seung-Hwan Baek, Florian Schiffers, Ethan Tseng, Grace Kuo, Andrew Maimone, Nathan Matsuda, Oliver Cossairt, Douglas Lanman, Felix Heide [ Spotlight Poster ICCP 2022 ] [ SIGGRAPH Asia 2022 ]
	FoV-NeRF: Foveated Neural Radiance Fields for Virtual Reality Nianchen Deng, Zhenyi He, Jiannan Ye, Budmonde Duinkharjav, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Xubo Yang, Qi Sun [ Best Paper Award ] [ IEEE TVCG 2022 ]
	Neural 3D Gaze: 3D Pupil Localization and Gaze Tracking based on Anatomical Eye Model and Neural Refraction CorrectionConny Lu, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kaihao Liu, Xixiang Liu, Siyuan Li, Henry Fuchs [ ISMAR 2022 ]
	Image Features Influence Reaction Time: A Learned Probabilistic Perceptual Model for Saccade LatencyBudmonde Duinkharjav, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Rachel Albert, Anjul Patney, Qi Sun [ Best Paper Award ] [ SIGGRAPH 2022 ]
	Hogel-free Holography Praneeth Chakravarthula, Ethan Tseng, Henry Fuchs, Felix Heide[ SIGGRAPH 2022 ]
	Joint Neural Phase Retrieval and Compression for Energy- and Computation-Efficient Holography on the EdgeYujie Wang*, Praneeth Chakravarthula*, Qi Sun, Baoquan Chen[ Best Paper Honorable Mention ] [ SIGGRAPH 2022 ]
	Seeing Through Obstructions with Diffractive CloakingZheng Shi, Yuval Bahat, Seung-Hwan Baek, Qiang Fu, Hadi Amata, Xiao Li, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Wolfgang Heidrich, Felix Heide [ SIGGRAPH 2022 ]
	Towards Everyday-use Augmented Reality Eyeglasses _Praneeth Chakravarthula_[ IEEE VR Best Dissertation Award ][ Ph.D. Dissertation, 2021 ]
	Gaze-contingent Retinal Speckle Suppression for Perceptually-Matched Foveated Holographic Displays Praneeth Chakravarthula, Zhan Zhang, Okan Tursun, Piotr Didyk, Qi Sun, Henry Fuchs[ IEEE TVCG 2021 ]
	Learned Hardware-in-the-loop Phase Retrieval for Holographic Near-Eye Displays Praneeth Chakravarthula, Ethan Tseng, Tarun Srivastava, Henry Fuchs, Felix Heide[ SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 ]
	DeepCGH: 3D Computer-Generated Holography Using Deep LearningM. Hossein Eybposh, Nicholas W. Caira, Mathew Atisa, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Nicolas C. Pégard[ Best Paper Award ][ Optics Express 2020 ]
	Improved vergence and accommodation via Purkinje Image tracking with multiple cameras for AR eyeglasses Xinran Lu, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Yujie Tao, Steven Chen, Henry Fuchs [ ISMAR 2020 ]
	Towards Eyeglasses-style Holographic Near-eye Displays with Statically Expanded Eyebox Xinxing Xia, Yunqing Guan, Andrei State, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Tat-Jen Cham, Henry Fuchs[ ISMAR 2020 ]
	Computing high-quality phase-only holograms for holographic displays Praneeth Chakravarthula, Yifan Peng, Joel Kollin, Felix Heide, Henry Fuchs[ Optical Design Award ][ SPIE Photonics West 2020 ]
	Wirtinger Holography for Near-Eye Displays Praneeth Chakravarthula, Yifan Peng, Joel Kollin, Henry Fuchs, Felix Heide[ SIGGRAPH Asia 2019 ]
	Towards a Switchable AR/VR Near-eye Display with Accommodation-Vergence and Eyeglass Prescription SupportXinxing Xia, Yunqing Guan, Andrei State, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kishore Rathinavel, Tat-Jen Cham, Henry Fuchs[ IEEE TVCG (presented at ISMAR 2019 ]
	Manufacturing Application Driven Near-Eye DisplaysKaan Aksit, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kishore Rathinavel, Youngmo Jeong, Rachel Albert, Henry Fuchs, David Luebke[ Best Paper Nominee ] [ IEEE TVCG (presented at IEEE VR 2019) ]
	focusAR: Auto-focus Augmented Reality Eyeglasses for both Real World and Virtual Imagery Praneeth Chakravarthula, David Dunn, Kaan Aksit, Henry Fuchs[ Best Paper Award ] [ Talk ] [ IEEE TVCG (presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2018, ISMAR 2018) ]
	Steerable Application-Adaptive Near-Eye DisplaysKishore Rathinavel, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Kaan Aksit, Josef Spjut, Ben Boudaoud, Turner Whitted, David Luebke, Henry Fuchs[ Best in Show Award ] [ SIGGRAPH 2018 Emerging Technologies ]
	Mitigating vergence-accommodation conflict for near-eye displays via deformable beamsplittersDavid Dunn, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qian Dong, Henry Fuchs[ Best Optical Design Award ] [ SPIE Digital Optics for Immersive Displays 2018 ]
	Towards Varifocal Augmented Reality Displays using Deformable Beamsplitter MembranesDavid Dunn, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qian Dong, Kaan Aksit, Henry Fuchs[ SID Display Week 2018 ]
	Penetra3D: A penetrable, interactive, 360-degree viewable display Praneeth Chakravarthula, Pattie Maes[ IEEE 3DUI 2015 ]
	Single access point based indoor localization technique for augmented reality gaming for children Praneeth Chakravarthula, Ravi Poovaiah, Ajanta Sen, Priya Ganadas[ IEEE TechSym 2014 ]