Vision and Immersive Realities Lab CS@UTSA

About Me

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) since Fall 2022. After finishing my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in May 2019, I joined UTSA as a non-tenure track assistant professor of instruction with the CS department.

My research interest and expertise are interdisciplinary with the main focus in the fields of Computer Vision and Immersive (Virtual / Augmented / Mixed) Realities with applications in the domains of healthcare, rehabilitation, virtual training, and serious gaming, with a focus on improving the quality of human life. My research has been supported through various grants. Specifically, I have received the prestigious CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). I am also part of two NSF Medium awards, one NSF Small award, and other local / internal grants.

Research Interests

  • Computer Vision - 3D Human Pose and Shape Estimation, 3D Reconstruction (Depth Es-timation, Neural Rendering)
  • Immersive Realities (Mixed / Virtual / Augmented Reality)
  • Medical Image Analysis - Segmentation, Classification
  • Application Domains - telehealth, tele-rehabilitation, virtual STEM education, virtual train-ing and other serious game applications

Work Experience

  • Assistant Professor, UTSA (Aug 2022 - Present)
  • Assistant Professor of Instruction, UTSA (Sept 2019 - July 2022)
  • Research Scientist, Mobiweb Inc. (Jun 2019 - Aug 2019)
  • Graduate Research Assistant, Multimedia Systems Lab, The University of Texas at Dallas (May 2014 - May 2019)
  • Interaction & Experiences Research Intern, Facebook Reality Labs - Oculus Research (May 2018 - Aug 2018)
  • Visual Experience - Display Engineering Intern, Apple Inc. (Jan 2017 - May 2017)
  • Software Engineer Intern, Samsung India Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (Dec 2012 - May 2013)

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, 2019
  • M.S. in Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, 2015
  • B.T. in Computer Science & Engineering, Nirma University, 2013

Awards

  • Nominated for Service Excellence Award, UTSA University Excellence Faculty Awards, 2025.
  • Outstanding Teaching Award, UTSA Computer Science Department, 2022.
  • Nominated for Teaching Excellence Award, UTSA President’s Distinguished Faculty Awards, 2022.
  • Nominated for Rising Star Award, UTSA University Excellence Staff Awards, 2022.

Service

Institutional

University

  • College of AI, Cyber, and Computing (CAICC) Bylaws Committee - 2025-2026
  • MATRIX Booth at Diwali - 2025

Recent Publications

EgoShift: Bounding the Action-Only Shortcut in Egocentric Spatial Updating for Vision-Language Models
EgoShift: Bounding the Action-Only Shortcut in Egocentric Spatial Updating for Vision-Language Models
Faisal Ahmed, John Quarles, Kevin Desai
WACV 2027  ·  06 Jan 2027  ·  DOI: [No DOI info]
EgoBalanceFormer: Predicting Human Balance from Egocentric Pose and VR-Native Motion
EgoBalanceFormer: Predicting Human Balance from Egocentric Pose and VR-Native Motion
Md Mushfiqur Azam, Nipa Anjum, John Quarles, Kevin Desai
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (ISMAR 2026)  ·  05 Oct 2026  ·  DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2026.3748830
Acceptance Rate: 26.5% H-5 Index (Median): 94 (132) Impact Factor: 6.8
GRCD: Grounded Region Change Detection for Multi-Finding Chest X-Ray Pairs
GRCD: Grounded Region Change Detection for Multi-Finding Chest X-Ray Pairs
OFM Riaz Rahman Aranya, Peyman Najafirad, Kevin Desai
BMVC 2026  ·  18 Aug 2026  ·  DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.02719
Acceptance Rate: 28.04% H-5 Index (Median): 57 (96)

See all publications