Researcher // Developer

Rishav Banerjee

PhD candidate blending HCI research, virtual reality, and robotics to build the next generation of wearable and immersive interfaces. I design, prototype, and evaluate interactive systems at the intersection of human capability and machine intelligence.

Boids

Flocking birds. Three Rules, Emergent Order.

01 // About

I'm a PhD candidate in Computer Science at UBC Okanagan, working in the Okanagan Visualization & Interaction Lab. My research sits at the intersection of HCI, VR, and wearable computing: designing one-handed gestural input techniques for smart glasses and head-mounted displays.

I love tinkering with technology, getting it to shape and form to my will. Just the slightest bit crazy about custom editors like Emacs and Neovim (yes, I like both).

Primarily a Unity and Python developer, although I am well versed with a number of other languages and frameworks across the stack.

02 // Experience

Jan 2024 – Present

Kelowna, BC

  • >Conducted HCI research on one-handed gestural input for smart glasses, focusing on hand-tracking interaction design, usability, and input translation pipelines for wearable computing.
  • >Designed and implemented virtual reality applications in Unity to capture, reconstruct, and evaluate real-time hand gesture interactions for adaptive interface experimentation.
  • >Built a real-time motion-capture pipeline using Vicon, Python WebSockets, and Unity to stream user hand-pose data into a VR environment on Meta Quest 3 for dynamic, on-hand and around-hand user interfaces.
UnityC#PythonOpenXRMeta SDKVicon

Honda Research Institute

Robotics Engineer

Feb 2026 – Present

Affiliated — Remote

  • >Engineered AI sensemaking workflows for conversational robots designed for child interaction, supporting context-aware dialogue and multimodal human-robot interaction research.
  • >Implemented a fully local, privacy-preserving speech-to-text pipeline and conversational agent on consumer-grade hardware, improving deployability and removing reliance on cloud services.
  • >Deployed in a private middle school for investigating child-robot interactions and conversations with 20+ successful sessions.
PythonLLMsSpeech-to-TextROSDockerPyTorch
Jan 2024 – Dec 2025

Kelowna, BC

  • >Supported instruction for undergraduate and graduate courses including AR/VR Development for Immersive Storytelling, Introduction to Game Development with Unity, and Immersive Technology Design Studio using the VEMS display environment.
  • >Taught and mentored cohorts ranging from 15 graduate students across disciplines to 150 undergraduate students, providing technical guidance in immersive technology, Unity development, and interactive system design.
UnityC#AR/VRTeachingMentoring

03 // Publications

04 // Skills

VR Development

Unity · C# · OpenXR · Meta Quest · Microsoft Hololens · Meta XR SDK · MRTK

Research

Quant/Qual Analysis · Literature Review · Human Studies · Experiment Design

Data & AI

Python · Pandas · Seaborn · Statistics (R) · Deep Learning · LLMs · PyTorch · CV

Tools & DevOps

Git · Docker · Unix · Bash · WSL · Vim · Neovim · Emacs · ROS

Languages

C · C++ · Go · Lua · Java · JavaScript · TypeScript · Clojure · ELisp

Soft Skills

Leadership · Public Speaking · Project Management · Team Collaboration

05 // Education

Jan 2024 – May 2027 (expected)CGPA: 3.7 / 4.0

B.Tech — Computer Science

SRM Institute of Science and Technology

Jun 2019 – May 2023CGPA: 9.3 / 10.0

06 // Get in Touch

I'm always open to discussing research collaborations, VR/HCI projects, or interesting ideas at the intersection of humans and technology. Feel free to reach out.

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