Data Science Talk Series 

Title: System Support for Immersive Computing 

Abstract: Immersive computing, encompassing Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality (VR/AR/MR), promises to seamlessly integrate the physical and virtual worlds, revolutionizing various critical societal applications. However, the escalating resource demands of these applications far exceed the growth in hardware capabilities of immersive mobile devices, due to their physical battery constraints. To bridge the gap, edge computing has emerged as a promising approach. This talk will outline a set of fundamental design challenges in enabling immersive computing via edge computing and will delve into several key software system components designed to tackle these challenges. Specifically, the presentation will discuss how to offload computation of different tasks required by immersive applications (such as object detection and depth and pose estimation) to edge servers over wireless networks, while addressing the competition for limited shared resources in both wireless networks and edge servers. The talk will conclude with an overview of ongoing immersive computing projects being undertaken at the IMEC^2 lab.  

Bio of the speaker: Dr. Jiayi Meng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UT Arlington). He is also the Director of the Immersive Efficient Computing and Communication (IMEC^2) lab at UT Arlington. His main research interests are in Systems and Networking, with a focus on Mobile Systems and Mobile Networking. In particular, his research spans immersive computing (VR/AR/MR), edge computing, and 4G/5G and beyond. His research strives to bridge the gap between the ever-increasing resource demands of mobile applications and limited hardware capability of mobile devices. He has received the Rising STARs award from the University of Texas System. His works have received Best Paper Award of ACM EdgeSys 2022 and Best Paper Runner-Up Award of ACM IMC 2023. He has served as an Artifact Evaluation Committee Co-Chair of ACM SOSP 2023, and a Student Travel Grant Chair/Co-Chair for ACM SIGCOMM 2024 and ACM/IEEE SEC 2025.