Kevin Desai

Dr. Kevin Desai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), affiliated with the College of Sciences. He leads the Vision & Immersive Realities Lab (VIRLab), part of the School of Data Science. His research focuses on collaborative virtual environments, computer vision, and immersive technologies for healthcare and telehealth applications.

Dr. Desai holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Dallas, and a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from Nirma University. His work bridges computer science with human-centered design, emphasizing real-world applications like tele-rehabilitation and autism support systems.

His research interests include virtual/augmented/mixed reality systems, 3D pose estimation, and AI-driven health monitoring. Notable contributions include the HR-STAN framework (Best Paper Award, CVPR 2022), which predicts cybersickness using multimodal sensor fusion, and the Virtepex tele-physical exam system.

Dr. Desai advises students such as Mushfiq Riaz, Ayda, and Omar Medjaouri in projects spanning VR/AR applications, neural radiance fields, and low-latency DNN frameworks. He actively collaborates with industry partners like Alienware and Lambda Labs, as evidenced by VIRLab's equipment and conference presentations at CVPR 2024.

His lab explores cutting-edge technologies including 3D human modeling (TE-NeRF), energy-efficient AI (EncodeNet), and personalized cybersickness prediction algorithms. Recent work addresses exergames for post-stroke rehabilitation and multimodal healthcare streaming systems.