Andrea Colaco

Engineering lead developing the backbone for intelligent assistants that feel native to spatial environments, especially as we navigate the frontier. ➡️ Android XR Launch (Galaxy XR): Launched industry’s first AI-native headset, Galaxy XR, powered by Android XR (October 2025). Led early state incubation to product execution of flagship AI experiences (Gemini Live and Circle-to-Search) and novel interactions (multimodal input and spatial user interface). 🏆SIGCHI special recognition award 2025 for industry-academia collaboration on AI-driven interaction framework. ➡️ Google I/O 2025 Engineering Lead: Directed the technical execution for on-stage and sandbox demos, showcasing cutting-edge AI integration across smart glasses and headsets. ➡️ Agentic AI & Wearables: Successfully landed the XREAL Aura live demo (December 2025), pioneering the integration of agentic AI capabilities in lightweight, portable form factors. ➡️ Project Astra on Glasses: Led engineering for the External Trusted Tester program, bridging the gap between advanced research and real-world user interaction (2024). ➡️ XR Ecosystem Advocacy: foundations for XR Unlocked (December 2024), driving the developer conversation around the future of spatial computing. Publications 📄 From video to conversations: Egocentric instructions for task assistance arXiv:2602.01038 📄 EgoTrigger: Toward Audio-Driven Image Capture for Human Memory Enhancement in All-Day Energy-Efficient Smart Glasses, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2025 📄 Programmable Reality, Frontiers in Virtual Reality 2025

Led rapid prototyping investigations for multi-modal and multi-device XR interactions. Responsible for early experiences leveraging conversational AI agents with multimodal input (camera, speech and screen share). Culminated in scaling these investigations to productized Android XR headsets.

Portal AI Engineering Lead: responsible for smart camera framing via people detection and scene understanding model training, and on-device optimization. Introduced new real-time ML capabilities including background segmentation and face tracking for delightful real-time AR features. Founded and led Portal's New Tech Incubation Group: introduced multi-camera and 3D display system for lifelike 3D video presence. Co-lead for video superresolution efforts to improve video quality under challenging network conditions. Publications HIME: Efficient Headshot Image Super-Resolution with Multiple Exemplars, IEEE Conference on Application of Computer Vision 2023

New Tech Incubation Lead Led a 0-->1 effort for a camera-less active near infrared 6dof tracking system to ship the first 6dof controllers with Daydream's VR headset Lenovo Mirage solo.

Nest Labs

Introduced a camera-less sensing system and low power computational techniques for 3D object tracking. System used NIR sensors and underlying techniques extend to other frequencies such as ultrasonic and radar sensors. Startup was acquired by Google.