Snapchat

I was a researcher within the Computational Imaging Research Lab at Snapchat from 2018-2024. My role (Senior Research Engineer) consisted of the ideation, justification, and execution of research projects in the fields of computational imaging, human-computer interaction, and hardware engineering. My role also included mentorship of researchers and assistants, lab management, user study management, and support (engineering, prototyping, fixturing, etc.) for all other hardware or human inclusive projects.

Given the joint hardware/physics/software focus of the lab, I was involved in most projects, either as a principal researcher, or at a supporting or advisory level. That said, the list below represents a small subset of my work.

Under-Display Camera:

Best Paper Award J. Wang, S. Ma, K. Bayer, Y. Zhang, P. Wang, B. Zhou, S.K. Nayar, and G. Krishnan, Proc. of SIGGRAPH Asia, 2024 Link to PDF | Full Supporting Video

The Under-Display Camera was one of the bigger projects I worked on at Snap, involving major hardware integration with the rest of the systems. Because of the high precision nature of the system, and the way the camera looks through the display, minor changes to hardware design had far-reaching consequenses into the system design down the line, and mis-steps could have been catastrophic. For public presentation of a research project where success is never guaranteed, the stakes were extremely high for our team. I consider the success of this project to be a major milestone, and learning experience, during my time at Snap.

Vidgets

“Vidgets: Modular Mechanical Widgets for Mobile Devices,” C. Xiao, K. Bayer, C. Zheng, Changxi, and S.K. Nayar, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Vol. 38, No. 4, pp. 1-12, Jul. 2019 Link to PDF | Project Page

Backtrack:

“BackTrack: 2D Back-of-Device Interaction Through Front Touchscreen,” C. Xiao, K. Bayer, C. Zheng, and S.K. Nayar, CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-8, May. 2021 Link to PDF

LightCodes:

“Light Codes for Fast Two-Way Human-Centric Visual Communication,” M. Gupta, J. Wang, K. Bayer, and S.K. Nayar, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), 2023 [Link to PDF]

Emoji-First Messaging:

“When Emoji Speak Louder than Words: Personalized Emoji-first Messaging for Enhanced Communication between Partners and Close Friends,” P. Chikersal, K. Bayer, S.K. Nayar, B.A. Smith 2023 [Link to PDF]

All Patents and Publications; A much bigger list:

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