Dhaval Parmar
I am a Virtual Reality researcher and Unity programmer. My research is focused on human centered computing, and I'm interested in utilizing the power and novelty of immersive virtual reality in increasing interest for important topics, such as STEM education and broadening participation among under-represented minorities. Most recently, I have conducted novel research in the healthcare domain with applications in heath education and health behavior training, utilizing the power of relational virtual agents within virtual reality. I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science with a specialization in Virtual Reality from Clemson University in South Carolina, USA, and my Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Engineering from the University of Mumbai, India.
Skills
- C#
- C
- C++
- Java
- Python
- Unity
- Maya
- Blender
- Photoshop
- Premiere
- After Effects
- Nuke
- OpenGL
- OpenSceneGraph
- SDL
- Vuforia
- Django
- Flask
- REST
- JSP
- PHP
- HTML5
- CSS3
- JavaScript
- Wordpress
- Bootstrap
- MySQL/MariaDB
- SQLite
- MS-SQL
- Airtable
- Git/SVN
- Visual Studio
- Intellij IDEA
- Eclipse
- Slack
- Trello
- Jira
- Linux
- LaTeX
Projects
VEnvI
Virtual Environment Interactions
Virtual Environment Interactions (VEnvI) teaches middle-school students computational thinking with dance and VR!
VR Unity C# Motion Capture CS Education
Making it Personal
Addressing Individual Audience Members in Oral Presentations Using Augmented Reality
Enhancing presentations by using the Microsoft HoloLens AR HMD to show real-time audience feedback to the presenter.
AR Unity Hololens Vuforia C# PHP
Experience
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Unity lead developer on NSF and NIH funded projects. Trained and managed colleagues in Unity development for research. Conducted human-factors research on topics of virtual agents, AR/VR, and machine learning. Mentored graduate students and published 12 peer-reviewed papers.
Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant
Lead VR developer and researcher on NSF funded projects. Conducted human-factors research on topics of VR/AR and CS education, resulting in 10 peer-reviewed publications. Mentored graduate and undergraduate students. Performed teaching and curriculum development duties for multiple courses and labs such as Human-Computer Interaction, Foundations of Software Development, and Introduction to Programming in C.
Director of Technology
Handled development and maintenance of the graduate student government website and the professional enrichment grant application system using PHP, Python, HTML/CSS and JavaScript.
Associate Software Engineer
Developed desktop applications, websites, and performed database level programming and scripting using the Microsoft .Net framework.
Education
Clemson University
University of Mumbai
Services
Clemson Indian Students Association, Clemson University
IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality (IEEE VR), Los Angeles, CA, USA.
IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality (IEEE VR), Greenville, SC, USA.
IT Student Advisory Board, Clemson University
Graduate Student Government, Clemson University
IEEE International Conference on Virtual Reality (IEEE VR), Arles, Provence, France.
Awards & Certifications
- Outstanding Ph.D. Student in Computer Science — Clemson University, 2017
- Presenter's Choice Award — NSF 2016 Video Showcase: Advancing STEM for All, 2016
- Human Factors Institute Travel Grant recipient — Clemson University, 2016
Publications
- Bickmore, T., Parmar, D., Kimani, E., Olafsson, S. (2021). "Diversity Informatics: Reducing Racial and Gender Bias with Virtual Agents", in Proceedings of the 21st ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, p. 25–32, September 2021.
- Bickmore, T., Kimani, E., Shamekhi, A., Murali, P., Parmar, D., Trinh, H. (2021). "Virtual agents as supporting media for scientific presentations", in Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, p. 131–146, June 2021.
- Olafsson, S., Parmar, D., Kimani, E., Oleary, T. K., Bickmore, T. (2021). "'More like a person than reading text in a machine': Characterizing User Choice of Embodied Agents vs. Conventional GUIs on Smartphones", in Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, p. 1–6, May 2021.
- Kimani, E., Parmar, D., Murali, P., Bickmore, T. (2021). "Sharing the Load Online: Virtual Presentations with Virtual Co-Presenter Agents", in Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, p. 1–7, May 2021.
- Kimani, E., Murali, P., Shamekhi, A., Parmar, D., Munikoti, S., Bickmore, T. (2020). "Multimodal Assessment of Oral Presentations using HMMs", in Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Multimodal Interaction, p. 650–654, October 2020.
- O'Leary, T. K., Stowell, E., Kimani, E., Parmar, D., Olafsson, S., Hoffman, J., Parker, A. G., Paasche-Orlow, M. K., Bickmore, T. (2020). "Community-Based Cultural Tailoring of Virtual Agents", in Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, p. 1–8, October 2020.
- Parmar, D., Bickmore, T. (2020). "Making It Personal: Addressing Individual Audience Members in Oral Presentations Using Augmented Reality", in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, p. 1–22, June 2020.
- Parmar, D., Olafsson, S., Utami, D., Murali, P., Bickmore, T. (2020). "Navigating the Combinatorics of Virtual Agent Design Space to Maximize Persuasion", in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, p. 1010–1018, May 2020.
- Murali, P., Shamekhi, A., Parmar, D., Bickmore, T. (2020). "Argumentation is More Important than Appearance for Designing Culturally Tailored Virtual Agents", in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, p. 1940–1942, May 2020.
- Kimani, E., Shamekhi, A., Murali, P., Parmar, D., Bickmore, T. (2019). "Stagecraft for Scientists: Exploring Novel Interaction Formats for Virtual Co-Presenter Agents", in Proceedings of the 19th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, p. 10–12, July 2019.
- Parmar, D., Olafsson, S., Utami, D., Bickmore, T. (2018). "Looking the Part: The Effect of Attire and Setting on Perceptions of a Virtual Health Counselor", in Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, p. 301–306, November 2018.