Kenny Chen

Hi! I'm a final year CS PhD at New York University, advised by Prof. Qi Sun. I'm interested in studying how novel graphics, display, and AI systems can be optimized by understanding human perception. I'm currently a student researcher at Google Zurich. During my PhD, I spent a summer at Adobe Research (2026) with Jose Echevarria and Aaron Hertzmann, the University of Cambridge (2025) with Prof. Rafał Mantiuk, and interned twice at Meta RL (2023 & 2024) with Alex Chapiro.

I'm on the academic and research job market! Feel free to contact me at kennychen@nyu.edu if you think my work is relevant!

Email | Google Scholar | CV

Timeline [See All]
2026 09 I started as a student researcher at Google Zürich!
08 I gave a talk about my work at Simon Fraser University!
07 I presented our research on tone mapping quality metrics at SIGGRAPH!
06 We will be holding a workshop on the last day of SIGGRAPH 2026, stop by!
06 A paper on metalens depth imaging was accepted to ECCV 2026.
05 I started an internship at Adobe!
05 I presented our work at Eurograhpics, and gave a short talk at the doctoral consortium!
04 Three papers were conditionally accepted to SIGGRAPH 2026!
03 I helped organize the Asian Americans and STEM conference at NYU!


Publications

(Some papers are highlighted, *=equal contribution, †=equal advising)
2026
Physically Grounded Monocular Depth via Nanophotonic Wavefront Prompting
Bingxuan Li, Jiahao Wu, Yuan Xu, Zezheng Zhu, Yunxiang Zhang, Kenneth Chen, Yanqi Liang, Nanfang Yu, Qi Sun
ECCV 2026
Metric depth prediction from a monocular capture using a metalens.
project page PDF

Adapting Quality Metrics to Tone Mapping
Kenneth Chen, Dongyeon Kim, Yuta Asano, Alexandre Chapiro, Qi Sun, Rafał K. Mantiuk
ACM SIGGRAPH 2026
Image/video quality metrics can be adapted to predict tone mapping quality.
project page PDF code dataset supplement poster

Dichoptic Foveation
Henry Kam, Colin Groth, Jenna Kang, Pratham Saraf, Qi Sun, Kenneth Chen
ACM SIGGRAPH 2026
An eccentricity-dependent model of binocular blur-sharpening is applied to foveated rendering.
project page PDF video supplement

Dynamic Visual Dominance in Stereoscopic Foveation
Daniel Jiménez Navarro, Colin Groth, Kenneth Chen, Qi Sun, Karol Myszkowski, Hans-Peter Seidel, Ana Serrano
ACM SIGGRAPH 2026
Eye dominance varies based on gaze direction. This finding is exploited for foveated rendering.
project page PDF supplement

Cost-Aware Routing for Efficient Text-To-Image Generation
Qinchan Li, Kenneth Chen, Changyue Su, Wittawat Jitkrittum, Qi Sun, Patsorn Sangkloy
TMLR 2026
Routing text prompts to different text-to-image models can save on compute time.
project page PDF

ML-PEA: Machine Learning-Based Perceptual Algorithms for Display Power Optimization
Kenneth Chen, Nathan Matsuda, Thomas Wan, Ajit Ninan, Alexandre Chapiro, Qi Sun
Eurographics 2026
A neural net predicts spatially-varying dimming maps for display power optimization.
project page PDF doi code supplement

Perceptual Impact of Peak Luminance and Contrast in Direct View HDR Display
Kenneth Chen*, Yunxiang Zhang*, Qi Sun, Alexandre Chapiro
IS&T HVEI 2026
A follow-up to our 'What is HDR?' paper, adapted for direct-view displays.
project page PDF doi code poster

Perceptually Guided 3DGS Streaming and Rendering for Virtual Reality
Yunxiang Zhang*, Sai Harsha Mupparaju*, Kenneth Chen, Jenna Kang, Xinyu Zhang, Maito Omori, Kazuyuki Arimatsu, Qi Sun
IEEE/CVF WACV 2026
Efficient 3DGS for wide FOV displays using a perception-guided LOD framework.
project page PDF code video poster

GeneVA: A Dataset of Human Annotations for Generative Text to Video Artifacts
Jenna Kang, Patsorn Sangkloy, Maria Beatriz Silva, Kenneth Chen, Niall L. Williams, Qi Sun
IEEE/CVF WACV 2026
A large-scale dataset of bounding boxes, ratings, descriptions of artifacts in AI videos.
project page PDF dataset (videos) dataset (labels) supplement

2025
What is HDR? Perceptual Impact of Luminance and Contrast in Immersive Displays
Kenneth Chen, Nathan Matsuda, Jon McElvain, Yang Zhao, Thomas Wan, Qi Sun†, Alexandre Chapiro†
ACM SIGGRAPH 2025
A perceptual scale to describe human preference for contrast and luminance when viewing HDR.
project page PDF doi code dataset video supplement poster

Image-GS: Content-Adaptive Image Representation via 2D Gaussians
Yunxiang Zhang*, Bingxuan Li*, Alexandr Kuznetsov, Akshay Jindal, Stavros Diolatzis, Kenneth Chen, Anton Sochenov, Anton Kaplanyan, Qi Sun
ACM SIGGRAPH 2025
2D gaussians can serve as an effective technique for low bit rate image encoding.
project page PDF doi code video

View Synthesis for 3D Computer-Generated Holograms Using Deep Neural Fields
Kenneth Chen, Anzhou Wen, Yunxiang Zhang, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Qi Sun
Optics Express 2025
Neural networks are trained to efficiently infer 3D holograms at novel scene views.
project page PDF doi video supplement

Process Only Where You Look: Hardware and Algorithm Co-optimization for Efficient Gaze-Tracked Image Rendering in Virtual Reality
Haiyu Wang, Wenxuan Liu, Kenneth Chen, Qi Sun, Sai Qian Zhang
ACM/IEEE ISCA 2025
Hardware-software co-optimization of VR eye tracking.
project page PDF doi

Perceptually-Guided Acoustic ``Foveation''
Xi Peng, Kenneth Chen, Iran Roman, Juan Pablo Bello, Qi Sun†, Praneeth Chakravarthula†
IEEE VR 2025
A sound source clustering technique based on a model of minimum audible angle.
project page PDF doi

2024
PEA-PODs: Perceptual Evaluation of Algorithms for Power Optimization in XR Displays
Kenneth Chen, Thomas Wan, Nathan Matsuda, Ajit Ninan, Alexandre Chapiro†, Qi Sun†
ACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Best Paper Award (Honorable Mention)
A subjective evaluation of display power optimization algorithms for wide FOV displays.
project page PDF doi code video supplement poster

Exploiting Human Color Discrimination for Memory- and Energy-Efficient Image Encoding in Virtual Reality
Nisarg Ujjainkar, Ethan Shahan, Kenneth Chen, Budmonde Duinkharjav, Qi Sun, Yuhao Zhu
ACM ASPLOS 2024
A DRAM traffic compression scheme via peripheral color modulation.
project page PDF doi code video

2023
Toward Optimized VR/AR Ergonomics: Modeling and Predicting User Neck Muscle Contraction
Yunxiang Zhang, Kenneth Chen, Qi Sun
ACM SIGGRAPH 2023
A model to predict VR neck muscular workload trained on EMG data.
project page PDF doi code video

2022
Color-Perception-Guided Display Power Reduction for Virtual Reality
Budmonde Duinkharjav*, Kenneth Chen*, Abhishek Tyagi, Jiayi He, Yuhao Zhu†, Qi Sun†
ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2022
VR display power can be reduce by modulating peripheral colors, via a color discrimination model.
project page PDF doi code video

Short Papers, Posters, Demos, etc.
2026
Limits of Visual Saliency Models for AI-Generated Videos
Jenna Kang, Niall L. Williams, Maria Beatriz Silva, Kenneth Chen, Patsorn Sangkloy, Qi Sun
JOV 2026 | Poster at Vision Sciences Society

project page

2025
BlendFusion: Procedural 3D Texturing Assistant with View-Consistent Generative Models
Qinchan Li, Finley Torrens, Kenneth Chen, Qi Sun
ACM I3D 2025 Best Poster Award
Diffusion models can be used to texture 3D models.
project page PDF doi video poster

2023
Towards Learning and Generating Audience Motion from Video
Kenneth Chen, Norman I. Badler
ACM SCA 2023 | Poster
A dataset of audience videos with application to audience synthesis.
project page PDF doi video poster

Imperceptible Color Modulation for Power Saving in VR/AR
Kenneth Chen, Budmonde Duinkharjav, Nisarg Ujjainkar, Ethan Shahan, Abhishek Tyagi, Jiayi He, Yuhao Zhu, Qi Sun
ACM SIGGRAPH 2023 | Emerging Technologies Demo
A demo of the display setup and model from our SIGGRAPH Asia '22 paper.
project page PDF doi video

Experience
Google Zǔrich | Student Researcher, September 2026 - December 2026
,
Adobe | Research Scientist Intern, May 2026 - August 2026
Working on design tools, with Jose Echevarria and Aaron Hertzmann.
University of Cambridge | Visiting Student, June 2025 - August 2025
Worked on quality metrics for tone mapping, mentored by Prof. Rafał Mantiuk.
Meta Reality Labs | Research Scientist Intern, June 2024- January 2025
Studied/modeled contrast and luminance preferences in HDR displays, mentored by Alexandre Chapiro.
Meta Reality Labs | Research Scientist Intern, June 2023 - January 2024
Studied the perceptual impact of display power optimization algorithms, mentored by Alexandre Chapiro.
Cesium | Research Scientist Intern, June 2022 - August 2022
Created an audience video dataset, supervised by Prof. Norman I. Badler.
Teaching
CS-GY 9223: Virtual and Augmented Reality, New York University
Course Assistant | Fall 2024 | Prof. Qi Sun
CS-GY 6313: Data Visualization, New York University
Course Assistant | Spring 2023, 2025 | Prof. Qi Sun
CS-GY 6533 A: Interactive Computer Graphics, New York University
Course Assistant | Fall 2021 | Prof. Claudio Silva
CS 184: Computer Graphics & Imaging, UC Berkeley
Undergraduate Student Instructor | Spring 2021 | Prof. Ren Ng & Prof. Angjoo Kanazawa | [slides]
CS 194-26: Intro to Computer Vision and Computational Photography, UC Berkeley
Group Tutor & Reader | Fall 2020 | Prof. Alexei Efros

Miscellanea