Qi Sun

Qi Sun is an Assistant Professor at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering, jointly affiliated with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Center for Urban Science + Progress (CUSP). He leads the Immersive Computing Lab, where his research focuses on advancing virtual and augmented reality through perception-aware computing, neural rendering, and energy-efficient XR displays.

Research Interests: His work lies at the intersection of computer graphics, computer vision, and computational perception. He investigates how human perception can guide the design of immersive technologies, with research directions including foveated rendering, generative models for VR/AR, bio-physically inspired wearable displays, and multimodal interaction. His lab collaborates with industry leaders such as Meta to develop next-generation XR systems.

The recent publications reflect a strong trend in perception-driven optimization for XR, focusing on reducing computational and energy costs while preserving visual quality. Key themes include gaze-contingent rendering, saliency modeling, holographic compression, and AI-assisted AR guidance. These works are published in top venues like ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE ISMAR, IEEE VR, and IEEE VIS, often earning best paper awards.

Scientific Awards:

• IEEE Virtual Reality Best Dissertation Award
• Best Paper Award, ACM SAP 2024
• Best Paper Honorable Mention, ACM SIGGRAPH 2024
• Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VR 2024
• Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VIS 2023
• Best Paper Award, IEEE ISMAR 2022
• Best Paper Honorable Mention, ACM SIGGRAPH 2022
• Best Paper Award, ACM SIGGRAPH 2022

Advising and Grants: Dr. Sun actively recruits PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and interns, particularly those with backgrounds in neural rendering and generative models. He encourages pre-application collaborations and advises through the Tandon CSE PhD program. His research is supported by academic-industry partnerships, including recent work with Meta on XR display optimization. He promotes interdisciplinary research that bridges urban science, AI, and immersive computing.

Labs and Teams: He directs the Immersive Computing Lab at NYU Tandon, which conducts cutting-edge research on human-aligned wearable displays and generative AI algorithms for XR. The lab focuses on making XR devices more efficient, immersive, and accessible for real-world applications in urban environments, healthcare, and education.