7/3/2025 Lilli Bresnahan
Written by Lilli Bresnahan
Dr. Bo Chen, a postdoctoral fellow in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been selected by the ACM MobiSys’25 Rising Star Forum Program committee as a Rising Star at the 23rd ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys’25), a top international conference within the field. His research contribution, “Intelligent Network Infrastructure for Extended Reality” has been accepted and presented in the Rising Star forum. For his presentation, he won the Best Presentation Award in the postdoctoral category.
Chen’s research focuses on making AI-based extended reality systems practical by introducing a new AI-system co-design methodology. This method features system optimizations driven by AI models’ measurements and AI algorithms inspired by the extended reality system’s context analysis. He accomplished his research by understanding emerging AI technologies, integrating them into real-world applications, investigating bottlenecks through in-depth benchmarking, and designing new solutions that leverage the expertise from both AI and systems.
Chen was one out of 24 researchers chosen to be Rising Stars. The MobiSys 2025 forum invites applications from PhD and postdoctoral students worldwide.
“This award strengthens my faith in building the intelligent network infrastructure for XR, and I will continue pursuing this direction,” Chen said.
The MobiSys Forum is an opportunity to allow early career researchers to network with other Rising Stars and leading experts in their own research groups. It also provides a constructive environment to discuss the Rising Stars’ work with a panel of experienced researchers, according to the website.
Klara Nahrstedt, a Maybelle Leland Swanlund Chair and Professor in the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, the Director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory and Chen’s postdoctoral fellow advisor, watched the progression of his research.
She said as a postdoc, he explored new areas of immersive computing, algorithms, and infrastructure for extended reality; researched AI techniques for new video content such as free-view-video, neural video and 360 video; and advanced AI-supported streaming of multi-view videos.
“Bo has innovated greatly on the multi-modal multi-view content in diverse mobile systems and mobile networks using novel AI techniques to compress and stream multi-modal content over diverse wireless networks,” Nahrstedt.
Nahrstedt said that Siebel School, CSL and her lab, the Multimedia Operating and NETworking (MONET) system group, have strong computing researchers, so the Rising Star recognition and Chen’s award strengthens the national presence and excellence of the Siebel School, CSL and the research group in the mobile computing/networking area.
“Bo’s research is bringing new insights from immersive and XR computing to mobile computing and networks as more and more mobile devices are becoming AR/VR/XR devices,” Nahrstedt said.
The ACM MobiSys 2025 Rising Star Forum was held on June 23 in Anaheim, California.