Karan Ahuja Named to MIT Technology Review “Innovators Under 35 Asia Pacific”

Karan Ahuja was named to the MIT Technology Review “Innovators Under 35 Asia Pacific” list in the “Computer and Electronics Hardware” category. The honor recognizes early-career researchers whose superb technical work promises to change the world.

Ahuja joined Northwestern Engineering's Department of Computer Science as a Lisa Wissner-Slivka and Benjamin Slivka Assistant Professor in Computer Science in August. Director of the Sensing, Perception, Interactive Computing & Experiences (SPICE) Lab, Ahuja and his team create cutting-edge computing technologies that sense, track, and understand humans to augment their interactions and assist them in daily life through applications including mobile health sensing, extended reality, embodied perception and natural user interfaces.

Ahuja was also named to Forbes '30 Under 30 Asia 2024.' He won a 2024 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Outstanding Dissertation Award, which recognizes excellent dissertation research in human-computer interaction (HCI). Ahuja earned a PhD in HCI from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023, co-advised by Chris Harrison and Mayank Goel.