Mar Gonzalez-Franco

Computer Scientist + Neuroscientist


2022
I am a Senior Research Manager at Google creating a new generation of Immersive tech. I lead the Blended Interaction Research and Devices (BIRD) lab inside Google AR & VR. The BIRD aims to bring more of the real into the virtual and bridge better 2D and 3D. We explore multi-device and multi-modal futures with a focus on AI/ML enabled novel experiences, diffusion models etc. From foundational work to full products. We prototype fast, we demo and we change the outlook of the future.

2016-2022
I was a Principal Researcher in the EPIC (Extended Perception Interaction and Cognition) team at Microsoft Research. Transferred Research to products used in daily basis by millions of people around the world, such as the Avatars and Together mode in Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Soundscape, as well as features on Hololens and Xbox. In my quest to reach even more, I have also released multiple tools and open source libraries such as the Microsoft Rocketbox avatars, or the MoveBox or HeadBox toolkits to democratize avatar animation. The release of Avatars in Teams was awarded Times invention of the year in 2022. And it is to date the largest deployment of avatars in any platform for productivity, available to the 270 million users of MS Teams.
2015 - 2016
I joined the start-up world as a Senior Research Scientist, and built mathematical models to create reputation standards at Traity. A Start-up with $4.7 million series A round and over 4.5M users. Alumni of Silicon Valley 500 Startups and Seedcamp.

2014 - 2015
I created and led the Immersive Technologies lab in the UK to research AR, VR, HMDs and Mixed Reality in the context of aeronautic manufacturing. My prototypes were demoed to several VPs, and the CTO, and later spun into the Holographic Academy of the Design Office in the UK.


2014
Postdoctorate at the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group, in the University College London supported by an UK ESRC grant (Reference ESL0031041). Reproduced a Virtual Milgram experiment to explore the banality of evil: a new understanding of conformity and atrocity inside Immersive Virtual Reality (CAVE). Would people obey to authority and electroshock an avatar (Scientific American).

2008 - 2014
PhD, MSc at the Universitat de Barcelona
2010-2014 PhD in Immersive Virtual Reality and Clinical Psychology under the supervision of Prof. Mel Slater, affiliated as a visiting student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MediaLab.

2008-2010 MSc in Biomedical Engineering, focus on signal processing. Master Thesis completed in the Neural Engineering Lab at Tsinghua University. Master Research Student at Institut Guttmann and UPC Creb.

During my PhD I produced anarchic hand experiences into healthy humans (link), as well as stabbed their virtual hands (link). Altogether to explore how our brain perceives our body and search the underlying mechanisms that determine what is real and what is not. Technologically I was using real-time computer graphics, HMDs and body tracking systems.

2004 - 2008
BSc double Major Computer Science and Multimedia Engineering at La Salle - Universitat Ramon Llull. Graduated top class with Best Academic Curricula Award, (GPA 9.22/10, 16 honour mentions).
2007-2008 Digital Image Processing Teaching Assistant at the Department of Communication and Signal Processing.
2006-2008 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program at the Architecture Representation and Computation group.
bio
Dr. Mar Gonzalez-Franco is a Computer Scientist and Neuroscientist. She is currently a Research Scientist Manager at Google where she leads the Blended Interactions and Devices Research lab working on a new generation of Immersive technologies and generative AI, focused on input interactions and experiences. Her team has envisioned Android XR multimodal and multidevice interactions to the OS and unified input vocabularies. Before working at Google, she was a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research where she built new features for products such as Xbox, Hololens, Soundscape and Teams. Her main tech transfer at Microsoft, was Avatars on MS Teams that is available on daily basis to over 260 million users, and won Times Invention of the year 2022. Her technical work has produced over 40 patents (some pending), and +10 open-source projects including some of the most used avatar libraries (Microsoft Rocketbox, UCF-Google VALID), and Immersive AI pipelines and Datasetss (XR-Objects, Diffseg, PARSE-Ego4D). Apart from her technological contributions, she is a prolific scientist with over 100 publications and does regular service as program committee, chair and reviewer in top venues (ACM, IEEE, Nature Publishing, Royal Society, AAAS Science) and governments (UN, EU, NSF, NSERC). She was awarded the IEEE VGTC VR New researcher award in 2022, and the NAE early-career engineer.
research interests
Over the years my work has evolved in three ways> (1) to continue exploring the wonders of VR and spatial computing; (2) to create new devices and explore what these technologies do to our perceptual systems, most prominent is my work exploring new haptic devices and spatial audio; and (3) to advance Immersive Tech by creating and adopting AI for scene/activity understanding and content generation.

My interest on impacting larger audiences made me pivot from academia into industrial laboratories and after having been at the MIT, Tsinghua, UB and UCL; I created and led an immersive tech lab at Airbus Group; joined the Startup Traity working on the creation of reputation standards for a user base of 4.5M. From 2016-2022 I was with Microsoft Research. Since 2022 I am a Research Scientist and Manager at Google.

publications

FILTERS:
AI/ML
interaction
perception
avatars
faces
AR
audio
accessibility
haptics
devices
review
locomotion
motor control
theory
latency
EEG
open source
(show all)
2025
Text Entry for XR Trove (TEXT): Collecting and Analyzing Techniques for Text Input in XR
ACM CHI 2025
Arpit Bhatia, Moaaz Hudhud Mughrabi, Diar Abdlkarim, Massimiliano Di Luca, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Karan Ahuja, Hasti Seifi.
[web][pdf]

EmBARDiment: an embodied AI agent for productivity in XR
IEEE VR 2025
Riccardo Bovo, Steven Abreu, Karan Ahuja, Eric J Gonzalez, Li-Te Cheng, Mar Gonzalez-Franco
[web]

Beyond the Phone: Exploring Context-Aware Interaction Between Mobile and Mixed Reality Devices
IEEE VR 2025
Fengyuan Zhu, Xun Qian, Daniel Kalmar, Mahdi Tayarani, Eric Gonzalez, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, David Kim, Ruofei Du


Everyday AR through AI-in-the-Loop
CHI Workshop 2025
Ryo Suzuki, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Misha Sra, David Lindlbauer



2024
Guidelines for Productivity in Virtual Reality
ACM Interactions
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Andrea Colaco
[pdf]

Hands-on, Hands-off: Gaze-Assisted Bimanual 3D Interaction
UIST 2024
Mathias N Lystbæk, T Mikkelsen, R Krisztandl, Eric J Gonzalez, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Hans Gellersen, Ken Pfeuffer
[video] [pdf] [doi] [github]

UIST 2024
Mustafa Doga Dogan, Eric J Gonzalez, Andre Colaco, Karan Ahuja, Ruofei Du, Johnny Lee, Mar Gonzalez-Franco*, David Kim *


2024 IEEE ISEMV
Mar Gonzalez-Franco*, Diar Abdlkarim*, Arpit Bhatia, Stuart Macgregor, Jason A Fotso-Puepi, Eric J Gonzalez, Hasti Seifi, Max Di Luca, Karan Ahuja


IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
Ken Pfeuffer, Hans Gellersen, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


2024 ISMAR
ChengYao Wang, Hyunju Kim, Payod Panda, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Andrea S Won


2024 ISMAR
ChengYao Wang, Eyal Ofek, Hyunju Kim, Payod Panda, Andrea S Won, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Frontiers in Virtual Reality
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Anthony Steed, Christopher C Berger, Ana Tajadura-Jiménez


Geometry Fidelity for Spherical Images
ECCV 2024
Anders Christensen, Nooshin Mojab, Khushman Patel, Karan Ahuja, Zeynep Akata, Ole Winther, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Andrea Colaco
[video] [pdf] [doi]

Parse-ego4d: Personal action recommendation suggestions for egocentric videos
arXiv 2024
Steven Abreu, Tiffany D Do, Karan Ahuja, Eric J Gonzalez, Lee Payne, Daniel McDuff, Mar Gonzalez-Franco
[pdf]

Virtual Games, Real Interactions: A Look at Cross-reality Asymmetrical Co-located Social Games
CHI LBW 2024
Alexandra Kitson, Sun Joo Ahn, Eric J Gonzalez, Payod Panda, Katherine Isbister, Mar Gonzalez-Franco
[pdf]

Intent-driven input device arbitration for XR
CHI LBW 2024
Eric J Gonzalez, Ishan Chatterjee, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Andrea Colaço, Karan Ahuja,


Ecological Validity and the Evaluation of Avatar Facial Animation Noise
IEEE VR 2024 - ANIVAE
Marta Wilczkowiak, Ken Jakubzak, James Clemoes, Cornelia Treptow, Michaela Porubanova, Kerry Read, Daniel McDuff, Marina Kuznetsova, Sean Rintel,Mar Gonzalez-Franco


XDTK: A Cross-Device Toolkit for Input & Interaction in XR
IEEE VR 2024 - ANIVAE
Eric J Gonzalez, Khushman Patel, Karan Ahuja,Mar Gonzalez-Franco


WindowMirror: An Open-Source Toolkit to Bring Interactive Multi-Window Views into XR
IEEE VR 2024 - ANIVAE
Riccardo Bovo, Eric J. Gonzalez, Li-Te Cheng,Mar Gonzalez-Franco
[github]

Implicit Modulation of Limb Movements in Immersive Virtual Reality for Motor Rehabilitation
ICNR 2024
A Maselli, M Matamala-Gomez,Mar Gonzalez-Franco
[pdf]


2023
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
Antonella Maselli, Eyal Ofek, Brian Cohn, Ken Hinckley, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


ACM UIST 2023
Ryo Suzuki, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Misha Sra, David Lindlbauer


Frontiers in VR
Tiffany Do, Steve Zelenty, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ryan P McMahan


IEEE ISMAR 2023
Vrushank Phadnis, Kristin Moore, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


ACM DIS 2023
Payod Panda, Molly Jane Nicholas, David Nguyen, Eyal Ofek, Michel Pahud, Sean Rintel, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ken Hinckley, Jaron Lanier


ACM CHI 2023
Yujie tao, Cheng Yao Wang, Andy D Wilson, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


ACM CHI 2023
Jeremy Gordon, Alex Fiannaca, Melanie Kneisel, Ed Cutrell, Amos Miller, Mar Gonzalez-Franco



2022
IEEE ICIR 2022
Cheng Yao Wang, Oron Nir, Sai Vemprala, Ashish Kapoor, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


TechRxiv 2022
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Eyal Ofek, Christian Holz, Antony Steed, Jaron Lanier, Bill Buxton, Ken Hinckley, Mike Sinclair


CHIWORK 2022
Payod Panda, Molly Jane Nicholas, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Kori Inkpen, Eyal Ofek, Ross Cutler, Ken Hinckley, Jaron Lanier


ACM CHI 2022
Tiffany Liu, Javier Hernandez,Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Antonella Maselli, Melanie Kneisel, Adam Glass, Jarnail Chudge, Amos Miller


IEEE VR 2022
Matias Volonte, Eyal Ofek, Ken Jakubzak, Shawn Bruner, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Microsoft Report
Jaime Teevan, Nancy Baym, Jenna Butler, Brent Hecht, Sonia Jaffe, Kate Nowak, Abigail Sellen, Longqi Yang, Marcus Ash, Kagonya Awori, Mia Bruch, Piali Choudhury, Adam Coleman, Scott Counts, Shiraz Cupala, Mary Czerwinski, Ed Doran, Elizabeth Fetterolf, Mar Gonzalez-Franco,Kunal Gupta, Aaron L Halfaker, Constance Hadley, Brian Houck, Kori Inkpen, Shamsi Iqbal, Eric Knudsen, Stacey Levine, Siân Lindley, Jennifer Neville, Jacki O’Neill, Rick Pollak, Victor Poznanski, Sean Rintel, Neha Parikh Shah, Siddharth Suri, Adam D. Troy, Mengting Wan



2021
ACM UIST 2021
Eric J Gonzalez, Eyal Ofek,Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Mike Sinclair


ACM UIST 2021
Ryo Suzuki, Eyal Ofek, Mike Sinclair, Daniel Leithinger,Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Nature Communications
Anthony steed, Eyal Ofek, Mike Sinclair, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
Karan Ahuja, Eyal Ofek,Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christian Holz, Andy Wilson


Scientific Reports 2021
Gregory Dane Clemenson, Antonella Maselli, Alex Fiannaca, Amos Miller, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


ACM CHI 2021
Massimiliano di Luca, Hasti Seifi, Simon Egan, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


IEEE VR 2021
Abbey Singh, Ramanpreet Kaur, Peter Haltner, Matthew Peachey, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Joseph Malloch, Derek Reilly


Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2021
Tabitha C. Peck, Mar Gonzalez-Franco



2020
Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2020
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Eyal Ofek, Ye Pan, Angus Antley, Anthony Steed, Bernhard Spanlang, Antonella Maselli, Domna Banakou, Nuria Pelechano, Sergio Orts-Escolano, Veronica Orvalho, Laura Trutoiu, Markus Wojcik, Maria V. Sanchez-Vives, Jeremy Bailenson, Mel Slater, Jaron Lanier


IEEE AIVR 2020
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Zelia Egan, Matthew Peachey, Angus Antley, Tanmay Randhavane, Payod Panda, Yaying Zhang, Derek F Reilly, Tabitha Peck, Andrea Stevenson Won, Cheng Yao Wang, Anthony Steed, Eyal Ofek


IEEE AIVR 2020
Brian Cohn, Antonella Maselli, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


ACM Symposium on Applied Perception 2020 (SAP '20)
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Mike Sinclair, Eyal Ofek


IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2020
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Anthony Steed, Steve Hoogendyk, Eyal Ofek


IEEE VR 2020
Robert Gruen, Eyal Ofek, Anthony Steed, Ran Gal, Mike Sinclair, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


IEEE VR 2020
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Brian Cohn, Dalila Burin, Eyal Ofek, Antonella Maselli


ACM UIST 2020
Robert Kovacs, Eyal Ofek, Alexa Fay Siu, Sebastian Marwecki, Christian Holz, Mike Sinclair, Mar Gonzalez-Franco



2019
ACM UIST 2019
Mike Sinclair, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christian Holz


ACM CHI 2019
Jaeyeon Lee, Mike Sinclair, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Eyal Ofek, Christian Holz


UIST 2019
Sebastian Marwecki, Andrew D. Wilson, Eyal Ofek, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christian Holz


ISMAR 2019
Martez Mott, Ed Cutrell, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christian Holz, Eyal Ofek, Richard Stoakley, Meredith Ringel Morris


IEEE Transactions on Haptics 2019
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christopher C Berger


ACM CHI 2019
Parastoo Abtahi, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Eyal Ofek, Anthony Steed


IEEE VR 2019
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Parastoo Abtahi, Anthony Steed



2018
PLoS ONE 2018
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Mel Slater, Megan E. Birney, David Swapp, S. Alexander Haslam, Stephen D. Reicher


ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP) 2018
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christopher Berger


Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2018
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Tabitha C Peck


Science Robotics 2018
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Christopher C Berger, Eyal Ofek, Ken Hinckley


Frontiers in Neuroscience 2018
Christopher Berger, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ana Tajadura-Jimenez, Dinei Florencio, Zhengyou Zhang



2017
Scientific Reports 2017
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Antonella Maselli, Dinei Florencio, Nikolai Smolyanskiy, Zhengyou Zhang


ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST) 2017
Daniel McDuff, Chrisophe Hurter, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Frontiers in Psychology 2017
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Jaron Lanier


Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2017
Nikolai Smolyanskyi, Mar Gonzalez-Franco


Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2017
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Rodrigo Pizarro, Julio Cermeron, Katie Li, Jacob Thorn, Windo Hutabarat, Ashutosh Tiwari, Pablo Bermell


ACM on Multimedia Conference 2017
Jacob Thorn, Rodrigo Pizarro, Bernhard Spanlang, Pablo Bermell-Garcia, Mar Gonzalez-Franco



2016
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2016
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Ana Bellido Rivas, Kristopher J Blom, Mel Slater, Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells


NeuroImage 2016
Gonçalo Padrao ,Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Maria V Sanchez-Vives, Mel Slater, Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells



2015
International Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces (ITS) 2015
Rodrigo Pizarro, Mark Hall, Pablo Bermell-Garcia,Mar Gonzalez-Franco


3DUI 2015
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Mark Hall, Devon Hansen, Karl Jones, Paul Hannah, Pablo Bermell-Garcia



2014
Frontiers in Robotics and AI 2014
Bernhard Spanlang , Jean-Marie Normand , David Borland , Konstantina Kilteni , Elias Giannopoulos, Ausiàs Pomés, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Daniel Pérez Marcos, Jorge Arroyo-Palacios, Xavi Navaro Muncunill , Mel Slater


MIT PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 2014
Sameer Kishore, Mar Gonzalez-Franco, , Christoph Hintemüller, Christoph Kapeller, Christoph Guger, Mel Slater, Kristopher J Blom


Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX) 2014
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Philip A Chou


Experimental Brain Research 2014
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Tabitha C. Peck , Antoni Rodríguez-Fornells, Mel Slater



2013
Experimental Brain Research 2013
Joan Llobera,Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Daniel Perez-Marcos, Josep Valls-Sole, Mel Slater, Maria V Sanchez-Vives



2011
IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) 2011
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Peng Yuan, Dan Zhang, Bo Hong, Shangkai Gao



2010
IEEE VR 2010
Mar Gonzalez-Franco, Daniel Perez-Marcos, Bernhard Spanlang, Mel Slater


awards
2025 ACM SIGCHI Award: Industry-Academia collaboration for pioneering Input and Interaction guidelines in XR OS.
2025 SXSW Finalist Interactive Innovation Award: Augmented Object Intelligence - XRObjects
2024 Social Sciences Foo Camp - Invited Attendee (O’Reily Media and Alfred P Sloan Foundation)
2023 Tech Trend Report - Metaverse People To Watch (Future Today Institute, SXSW)
2022 Times Magazine Best Inventions of 2022 for Avatars in Teams
2022 IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality New Significant Researcher Award
2022 NAE Early-Career Innovative Engineer (National Academy of Engineers)
2021 ACM Senior Member
2021 (Spain) Generation Next Technology and Science top 10. MujerHoy
2020 IEEE Senior Member
2019 (Spain) MAS Technology Award
2019 Business Insider ES – Tech Expert under 35
2018 SXSW Finalist Innovation Awards - CardioLens
2018 (Spain) Los 100 de COTEC, Foundation led by the former Spanish Science Minister that includes 100 influential scientists in different fields.
2016 US First Preference EB-1 Employment Immigration for Outstanding Professors and Researchers, USA
2015 US O-1A Visa for Individuals with Extraordinary Ability or Achievement in the Field of Sciences, USA
media
CNET: “I Tried Google and Samsung's Next-Gen Android XR Headsets and Glasses, and the Killer App Is AI” (2024)
BBC: What we can learn from the ancient art of wayfinding (2023)
Financial Times: Microsoft takes on Facebook by launching metaverse on Teams (2021)
Scientific American: How GPS Weakens Memory—and What We Can Do about It (2021)
Engadget: Microsoft explores realistic VR haptics with a wrist-mounted gadget (2020)
Nature Materials: Zombie Materials (2018)
ABC, Australia: “Virtual Reality addiction threat prompts cautious approach as VR nears 'smartphone-like' take-off” (2017)
VICE, Motherboard: “Virtual Reality Makes Avatars More Important Than Ever” (2016)
TechCrunch: “Microsoft researchers sound off on the next decade in tech” (2016)
Inverse: “VR isn’t going to be like LSD… its going to be much better” (2016)