Biographies

Puneet Jain is an engineer/artist pursuing his PhD at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada where his research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), eXtended Reality (XR), Artificial Intelligence, and Disability Studies. Puneet is also a research fellow at Immersive Arts Space at Zurich University of the Arts in Switzerland where he is a core researcher for Swiss National Science Foundation funded research project ‘Probing XR futures’ under supervision of Artist/Researcher Dr. Chris Salter.

During his PhD, in his artistic-research practice, he investigates how XR technologies can be made accessible by working in close collaboration with disabled communities, particularly people living with quadriplegia. Furthermore, he is actively involved in using the developed assistive XR technologies with disabled artists and activists to create immersive storytelling that re-shapes, re-imagines, and provokes the common misconceptions around disabilities. One such project, Crip Sensorama, an XR artwork by Puneet was exhibited at the Ars Electronica Festival for Art, Technology, and Society in Linz, Austria, in September 2024.

Puneet also holds a Master’s degree in Computational and Data Science from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. Previously, he worked as an Associate Data Scientist at SAP Labs, India, and as a Research Fellow at the Intelligent, Inclusive, Interaction Design Lab at IISc Bangalore, under the guidance of Dr. Pradipta Biswas.