Publications & Manuscripts

• CoordAuth: Hands-Free Two-Factor Authentication in Virtual Reality Leveraging Head-Eye Coordination
  • Sheng Zhao*, Junrui Zhu*, Shuning Zhang, Xueyang Wang, Hongyi Li, Fang Yi, Xin Yi, Hewu Li. (*Equal Contribution)
  • Co-1st Author, accepted, IEEE VR’25.
• Raise Your Eyebrows Higher: Facilitating Emotional Communication in Social Virtual Reality Through Region-specific Facial Expression Scaling
  • Xueyang Wang, Sheng Zhao, Yihe Wang, Ziyu Han, Xinge Liu, Xin Tong, Xin Yi.
  • Accepted, ACM CHI’25.
• Exploring Collaborative GenAI Agents in Synchronous Group Settings: Eliciting Team Perceptions and Design Considerations for the Future of Work
  • Janet Johnson, Macarena Peralta, Mansanjam Kaur, Sophia Huang, Sheng Zhao, Hannah Guan, Shwetha Rajaram, Michael Nebeling.
  • Accepted, ACM CSCW’25.
• LowPowAR: Power-Constrained Tone Mapping for Augmented Reality
  • Weikai Lin, Sheng Zhao, Ian Ross, Carl Marshall, Sushant Kondguli, Yuhao Zhu.
  • Accepted, IEEE TVCG’26 (ISMAR Journal Track).

Research Experiences

HCI Group, Tsinghua University, China

• Research Assistant, Advisor: Xin Yi , Yuanchun Shi
• Raise Your Eyebrows Higher: Facilitating Emotional Communication in Social Virtual Reality Through Region-specific Facial Expression Scaling
• My work include:
  • Implementing VR face2face chat using TCP-based socket and Oculus SDK.
  • Designing both qualitative and quantitative research methods based on interviews and questionnaires.
  • Conducting user research experiments and conducting data analysis.
  • Proposing an improved camera2blendshape method to mitigate the uncanny valley effect and enhance the emotional experience.
• Accepted to ACM CHI’25. Code here.

HCI Group, Tsinghua University, China

• Research Assistant, Advisor: Xin Yi
• CoordAuth: Hands-Free Two-Factor Authentication in Virtual Reality Leveraging Head-Eye Coordination
• My work include:
  • Project leader, proposing the current two-factor authentication framework based on unlock pattern and the behaviour biometrics.
  • Using Unity to build the 3*3 unlock UI in VR.
  • Designing the biometric classifier by machine learning, using RF etc. to implement the classification of behavior biometrics during saccades and fixations of eye movements.
  • Conducting user studies, validating framework robustness against password collision, contextual factors and shoulder surfing attacks.
• Accepted to IEEE VR’25. Code here.

Horizon Lab, University of Rochester, USA

• Ph.D. Student, Advisor: Yuhao Zhu
• LowPowAR: Power-Constrained Tone Mapping for Augmented Reality
• Co-authored a power-constrained tone-mapping framework for AR displays, accepted to IEEE TVCG’26 (ISMAR Journal Track).

C3I Lab, Tsinghua University, China

• Visiting Student, Advisor: Bowen Zhou
• Research about high fidelity avatar generation by 2D-trained diffusion model
• My works include:
  • Finding existing models do not perform well in generating objects worn by people with complex 3D structures.
  • Conducting experiments to validate some basic ideas.
• The project is currently in progress.

Bear Lab, University of Rochester, USA

• Remote Research Intern, Advisor: Yukang Yan , Yuntao Wang
• Research about EventCamera: empowering autonomous driving assistance
• My work include:
  • Developing a virtual environment for simulating autonomous driving by Unity.
• The project is currently in progress.

IVI Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

• Remote research intern, Advisor: Yalong Yang
• Research about taxonomic of human data interaction in VR
• My work include:
  • Collecting relevant papers presented at VR, VIS, ISMAR, TVCG etc.
  • Developing mini demos in VR by Unity.
• The project is currently in progress.