About me 👩‍💻
Research Interests
I am a mixed reality researcher with a strong technical background and research interests in:
- 🕹️ Mixed reality technology
- 🥽 Immersive head mounted display
- 🖥️ Immersive radiance field rendering (e.g., NeRF, 3DGS)
- đź‘ľ Embodied intelligent virtual agents
- 🤖 Human–robot interaction
đź’Ľ I am actively exploring opportunities for roles such as Research Scientist, Research Engineer, Mixed/Virtual Reality Developer, or AI developer in both academic and industry settings.
💡 I’m always open to collaborations, expanding my network, and contributing to exciting projects in mixed reality, visual computing, computer graphics, and AI research.
đź“« Contact: keli95566@gmail.com
đź”— GitHub: github.com/keli95566
🎓 Postdoctoral Research (2024–Present)
Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Hamburg
EU Horizon Project PRESENCE
Postdoctoral researcher and technical committee member of the EU-funded PRESENCE project, leading the Intelligent Virtual Human / Agent pillar. My work focuses on multimodal interaction with embodied intelligent agents in immersive XR environments.
🎓 Doctoral Research (2021–2024)
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Hamburg (Grade: 1.0)
Fellow, Helmholtz Graduate School for the Structure of Matter (DASHH). PhD research conducted jointly at DESY and the Human–Computer Interaction Group, University of Hamburg, under the supervision of Prof. Frank Steinicke, Dr. Reinhard Bacher, and Prof. Wim Leemans.
Focus & Contributions
- Mixed reality systems for operating large-scale physics infrastructures
- Video see-through head-mounted display design and development
- Immersive neural rendering and radiance-field–based inspection
- Mobile robot development and immersive teleoperation interfaces
🎓 Master’s Education (2018–2021)
M.Sc. in Photonics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Abbe School of Photonics
Graduate training in theoretical and applied optics, with interdisciplinary research spanning photonics, computer vision, and machine learning. Meanwhile, I worked as a research assistants at: German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Data Science and Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF).
🎓 Bachelor’s Education (2014–2018)
B.Sc. in Physics, Centre College, USA
Undergraduate education in physics and mathematics, complemented by teaching experience as a Physics Teaching Assistant for calculus-based general physics courses.
🏆 Selected Honors
- DESY VFFD PhD Award (2025) – Annual award for outstanding PhD theses at DESY
- DASHH PhD Fellowship (2021–2024) – Competitive Helmholtz fellowship
đź“° Recent News
02.2026-08.2026 Served as an international program committee member at ISMAR 2026.
*08.2026:** Invited as a speaker at the VR Summit (“Real Minds in Virtual Worlds”) in Bochum, Germany, October 12-13, 2026.
08.2026: One research demo accepted at ACM SUI 2026:
- A First Prototype of the MetaMaterialVerse: Immersive Analytics for Porous Materials in Virtual Reality : Youngseo Yu, Ke Li, Frank Steinicke
08.2026: Two contributions accepted at IEEE ISMAR 2026:
- BoredomVRoom: A TOVA-Inspired VR Task for Boredom Induction : Francesco Musolino, Lucie Wittig, Ke Li, Michele Fiorentino, Frank Steinicke (conference paper)
- Realism in Virtual Humans: From Fidelity to Human Responses : Michael Wiesing, Victoria Interrante, Katja Zibrek, Anthony Steed, Ke Li (Hype-XR workshop paper)
06.2026: Invited to and attended the Dagstuhl Seminar 26262 “Virtual Bodies for Real Humans – Avatars, Sensations, Emotions and Brains” at Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany.
06.2026: Our workshop hype-XR was accepted at IEEE ISMAR 2026, co-organized with Shohei Mori, Mana Masuda, and Susanne Schmidt.
06.2026: Gave an invited artist talk “Dreaming in Space with AI” at the Surreality 2.0 MRxAI exhibition in Hong Kong and Guangzhou.
04.2026: Our anthropomorphic AI toolkit was nominated for the Laval Virtual Award 2026 in the Developer and Authoring Toolkits category.