Hemant Surale, PhD

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Hemant is an AI researcher focused on understanding and modeling human behavior. He applies machine learning, computer vision, and sensor fusion to build intelligent systems people interact with through gaze, gesture, and wearable devices.

He has held research roles at Meta, Huawei, Snap, Microsoft Research, and Google/North, working on problems ranging from gaze-based interaction and haptic feedback to real-time sensing with wearable devices.

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, advised by Daniel Vogel, Mark Hancock, and Edward Lank. He received the Snap Research Fellowship, the David R. Cheriton Graduate Scholarship (three times), and Best Paper Honorable Mentions at CHI and ISS. He holds multiple patents and publishes at CHI, UIST, and ISMAR.

news

Oct 5, 2026	Our paper on quantifying 3D pointing, characterizing what happens during pointing selection in VR, is out at ICMI’26 in Naples!
Feb 23, 2026	Our paper TRuST-M, evaluating user trust and explainability in LLM-based web moderation systems, is out at WSDM’26!
Aug 5, 2025	Happy to announce that Ruei-Che’s paper on exploring visual-audio modality transitions for mobile contexts has been accepted at UIST’25!!
Jan 18, 2025	Happy to announce that Shwetha’s paper on multimodal voice and gesture interaction techniques has been conditionally accepted at CHI’25!!

selected publications

Quantifying 3D Pointing: Characterizing What Happens During Pointing Selection in Virtual Reality

Junhan Kong, Jacqui Fashimpaur, Michael J. Proulx, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, 2026

Bib HTML PDF Blog

@inproceedings{kong2026quantifying,
  title = {Quantifying 3D Pointing: Characterizing What Happens During Pointing Selection in Virtual Reality},
  author = {Kong, Junhan and Fashimpaur, Jacqui and Proulx, Michael J. and Surale, Hemant Bhaskar and Wobbrock, Jacob O. and Karlson, Amy},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Multimodal Interaction},
  pages = {273--289},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3776574.3831138},
}

TRuST-M: Evaluating User Trust and Explainability in LLM-Based Web Moderation Systems 🏆

Kamalakkannan Ravi, Hemant Surale, and Jiann-Shiun Yuan

In Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, 2026

Workshop paper, WEB&GRAPH 2026 Workshop at WSDM 2026

Bib HTML PDF Blog

@inproceedings{ravi2026trustm,
  title = {TRuST-M: Evaluating User Trust and Explainability in LLM-Based Web Moderation Systems 🏆},
  author = {Ravi, Kamalakkannan and Surale, Hemant and Yuan, Jiann-Shiun},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Nineteenth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining},
  series = {WSDM Companion '26},
  pages = {73--83},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {ACM},
  note = {Workshop paper, WEB\&GRAPH 2026 Workshop at WSDM 2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3779211.3793172},
  award_name = {Best Paper Award},
}

Viago: Exploring Visual-Audio Modality Transitions for Social Media Consumption on the Go

Ruei-Che Chang, Tovi Grossman, Carine Rognon, and 4 more authors

In Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, 2025

Bib HTML PDF Blog

@inproceedings{ruei2025viago,
  title = {Viago: Exploring Visual-Audio Modality Transitions for Social Media Consumption on the Go},
  author = {Chang, Ruei-Che and Grossman, Tovi and Rognon, Carine and Glueck, Michael and Collins, Christopher and Karlson, Amy and Surale, Hemant Bhaskar},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology},
  pages = {1--20},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1145/3746059.3747761},
}

Gesture and Audio-Haptic Guidance Techniques to Direct Conversations with Intelligent Voice Interfaces

Shwetha Rajaram, Hemant Bhaskar Surale, Codie McConkey, and 4 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025

Bib HTML PDF Blog

@inproceedings{rajaram2025gesturellm,
  title = {Gesture and Audio-Haptic Guidance Techniques to Direct Conversations with Intelligent Voice Interfaces},
  author = {Rajaram, Shwetha and Surale, Hemant Bhaskar and McConkey, Codie and Rognon, Carine and Mehta, Hrim and Glueck, Michael and Collins, Christopher},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  pages = {1--20},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1145/3706598.3714310},
}