I am a Sr. Research Scientist at Adobe Research, where I research, design, and prototype AI-native creative tools that expand creators’ agency—helping them shape their own workflows and expression, and use dynamic media as a powerful medium for thinking, communication, and design. Over the past 12+ years I’ve led 0→1 creative tools that reached millions — Autodesk Sketchbook Motion (Apple’s iPad App of the Year, 2016) and the inaugural motion features in Adobe Fresco (2021) — and contributed motion lines and secondary effects to Adobe Character Animator, part of the 2019 Emmy Engineering Award–winning team.
The work bridges product and research – translating research prototypes into shipped features, and seeding internal technical and incubation initiatives that have grown beyond my own team. I’ve published 35+ papers at CHI / UIST / SIGGRAPH, 8 best-paper/honorable mention awards, 50+ patents filed.
Before Adobe: Autodesk Research, Microsoft Research, Japan Science and Technology Agency. PhD from NUS under Dr. Shengdong Zhao; undergrad at BUET. I also animate, draw, and write comics — I wrote my PhD thesis as one.
We are always looking for motivated PhD students for internships. If you are interested in Human-AI interaction, creative expression, AR/VR, or 3D design in general, feel free to contact me directly.
Updates
- Thrilled to join Lines & Minds (SIGGRAPH 2026) workshop as a speaker.
- Notational Animation and MoSound got honorable mention awards at CHI 2026. Congrats to Xinyu and Jialin!
- Several VLM-powered motion graphics paper. Vivian presented LogoMotion at CHI 2025. Sam’s Narrative Motion Blocks got Best Paper award at DIS 2025.
- Excited to share our ongoing work Project In Motion at Adobe Sneaks, presented by LiYi!
- 2 papers at UIST 2024. Among them, Augmented Physics won Best paper award! DrawTalking is open sourced now.
- Serving as a CHI 2025 PC member.
- Gave a Keynote at ACM C&C 2024.
- Gave a talk at UCSD’s Design@Large Series.
- Formed a new working group/community Dynamic Abstraction.
Research Projects / Tools (selected)
- AI-interfaces: Notational Animation, Narrative Motion Blocks, LogoMotion, Augmenting Physics diagrams
- Dynamic Drawings: Draco, Kitty, Motion Amplifiers, Energy Brushes, Vignette, Mixed-initiative UI, Embodied Math
- AR: Rapido, Pronto, RealitySketch
- LiveStreaming: StreamSketch, VisPoll
- Storytelling: SandCanvas, SketchStory, Body-Driven Graphics
- 3D design: DreamSketch, ChronoFab, SymbiosisSketch, MagicalHands, Auto-complete sculpting,
Rubaiat Habib Kazi 