I am a PhD student at the University of Chicago advised by Prof. Hank Hoffmann and Prof. Karan Ahuja. Previously, I earned a B.Phil in Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh where I was fortunate to work with Prof. Daniel Mossé, Prof. Sherif Khattab, and Prof. Amy Babay.

My research interests lie at the intersection of embedded systems, machine learning, and HCI. I'm interested in developing novel systems to better understand, communicate and interact with the world around us.

I grew up in Sintra, a beautiful town in Lisbon (Portugal).

Selected Publications


SurfaceXR: Fusing Smartwatch IMUs and Egocentric Hand Pose for Seamless Surface Interactions Teaser

SurfaceXR: Fusing Smartwatch IMUs and Egocentric Hand Pose for Seamless Surface Interactions

Vasco Xu, Brian Chen, Eric J Gonzalez, Andrea Colaço, Henry Hoffmann, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Karan Ahuja
IEEE VR '26 (TVCG Special Issue)

WatchHAR: Real-time On-device Human Activity Recognition System for Smartwatches Teaser

WatchHAR: Real-time On-device Human Activity Recognition System for Smartwatches

Taeyoung Yeon, Vasco Xu, Henry Hoffmann, Karan Ahuja
ICMI '25

MobilePoser: Real-Time Full-Body Pose Estimation and 3D Human Translation from IMUs in Mobile Consumer Devices Teaser

MobilePoser: Real-Time Full-Body Pose Estimation and 3D Human Translation from IMUs in Mobile Consumer Devices

Vasco Xu, Chenfeng Gao, Henry Hoffmann, Karan Ahuja
UIST '24

Xs: Interactive Scissor Mechanisms as Portable and Customizable Shape-Changing Interfaces Teaser

Xs: Interactive Scissor Mechanisms as Portable and Customizable Shape-Changing Interfaces

Vasco Xu, Ken Nakagaki
TEI '23