Dhawal Sirikonda

I am a PhD candidate at Dartmouth working with Prof. Adithya Pediredla in the Rendering and Imaging Science Lab (RISc). I build next-generation ultra-fast LiDAR sensors and novel imaging systems for high-speed perception and communication applications. My research focuses on designing computational imaging systems by leveraging diverse sensor modalities (including event cameras, RGB-D sensors, and emerging hybrid sensing architectures). My current work explores novel acousto-optic imaging systems for fast scanning and communication applications. I am particularly interested in harnessing both machine learning and non-machine learning methods for robust real-world sensing applications. Prior to my PhD, I completed my Master’s working with Prof. PJ Narayanan at the intersection of 3D Vision and Real-Time Graphics.

view my CV

research interests

Some things I'm interested in:

• Sensors (ToF, motion contrast, etc.)
• ML for imaging
• Processing sensor data
• HPC and automation for real-world applications

personal

some personal facts:

• I like capturing low-light images.
• Listening to music (less lyrical).
• Driving (I enjoy driving long distances).
• I collect a lot of superhero merchandise and am fond of bubble tea.
• I am borderline dyslexic (or maybe mildly dysgraphic, as ChatGPT suggests), so I occasionally (debatable 😬) invent new spellings for words like friend → freind or field → feild. And yes, this page has been corrected by ChatGPT.

publications

* = Equal contribution

• Underwater Optical Backscatter Communications using Acousto-Optic Beam Steering SIGGRAPH Asia (ACM ToG), 2025 (To appear)
  Atul Rohit Agarwal*, Dhawal Sirikonda*, Atharv Agashe, Ziang Ren, Dinithi Silva-Sassaman, Charles Carver, Alberto Quattrini Li, Xia Zhou, Adithya Pediredla.
• Structured light with a million light planes per second ICCP (TPAMI), 2025
  Dhawal Sirikonda, Praneeth Chakravarthula, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Adithya Pediredla.
• GSN: Generalisable Segmentation in Neural Radiance Field AAAI, 2024
  Vinayak Gupta, Rahul Goel, Dhawal Sirikonda, P. J. Narayanan.
• FusedRF: Fusing Multiple Radiance Fields XRNeRF CVPR Workshop, 2023
  Rahul Goel, Dhawal Sirikonda, Rajvi Shah, P. J. Narayanan.
• Interactive Segmentation of Radiance Fields CVPR, 2023
  Rahul Goel*, Dhawal Sirikonda*, Saurabh Saini, P. J. Narayanan.
• Real-Time Rendering of Arbitrary Surface Geometries using Learnt Transfer ICVGIP, 2022
  Dhawal Sirikonda, Aakash KT, P. J. Narayanan.
• Learnt Transfer for Surface Geometries HPG (Poster), 2022
  Dhawal Sirikonda, Aakash KT, P. J. Narayanan.
• StyleTRF: Stylizing Tensorial Radiance Fields ICVGIP, 2022
  Rahul Goel*, Dhawal Sirikonda*, Saurabh Saini, P. J. Narayanan.
• PRTT: Precomputed Radiance Transfer Textures arXiv, 2022
  Dhawal Sirikonda, Aakash KT, P. J. Narayanan.
• Transfer Textures for Fast Precomputed Radiance Transfer EuroGraphics (2-page Poster), 2022
  Dhawal Sirikonda, Aakash KT, P. J. Narayanan.
• Neural View Synthesis with Appearance Editing from Unstructured Images ICVGIP, 2021
  Pulkit Gera, Aakash KT, Dhawal Sirikonda, P. J. Narayanan.
• Appearance Editing with Free-viewpoint Neural Rendering arXiv, 2021
  Pulkit Gera, Aakash KT, Dhawal Sirikonda, Parikshit Sakurikar, P. J. Narayanan.

patents

• Underwater Optical Backscatter Communication Using Acousto-Optic Beam Steering U.S. Patent Application No. 63/913,085 · Filed November 6, 2025 Pediredla et al.
• Event-Enhanced Histopathology Apparatus U.S. Patent Application No. 63/837,253 · Filed July 2, 2025 Pediredla et al.

talks & presentations

• Interactive Segmentation of Radiance Fields

  NECV 2023 · New England Computer Vision Workshop, Dartmouth College, NH, USA

• Structured Light with a Million Light Planes per Second

  ICCP 2025 · IEEE International Conference on Computational Photography, Toronto, ON, Canada

  NECV 2025 · New England Computer Vision Workshop, University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA, USA

• Underwater Optical Backscatter Communications using Acousto-Optic Beam Steering

  SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 · ACM SIGGRAPH Asia Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, Hong Kong SAR

projects

• Using AO to Sculpt and Steer Light Planes at High Speeds for Scanning Applications

  Research Project

  This project focuses on leveraging Acousto-Optic (AO) techniques to dynamically sculpt and steer light planes at high speeds, enabling efficient and precise scanning applications.

• Underwater Communication

  Research Project

  This project explores the use of Acousto-Optic (AO) sculpting techniques to enhance underwater communication systems.

• Object Retrieval from Radiance Fields

  Research Project (with Dr. Rajvi Shah)

  Interactive object and sub-scene retrieval from scenes represented as Radiance Fields. The work involves growing high-confidence object content to encompass intricate details, aiming for accurate retrieval.

• Real-time Rendering of Implicit Surfaces using Precomputed Radiance Transfer

  Thesis · CVIT, IIIT-H, 2022

  A simple yet fast approach to address the lack of storage schema in the functional representation of surfaces for the incorporation of Precomputed Radiance Transfer (Spherical Harmonics) for both glossy and diffuse materials.

• Exploring Storage Schemas for Transfer Vector Storage

  Research Project · IIIT-H, 2022

  Exploration of storage schemas (UV and vertex attributes) to find optimal sampling and interpolation strategies for artifact-free renders.

• Appearance Editing and Novel View Synthesis of Captured Data

  Research Project · CVIT, IIIT-H, 2021

  Extends Novel View synthesis pipelines to accommodate appearance edits. Uses differentiable rendering to separate appearance, followed by a disentangled rendering framework.