Sensorimotor neuroscientist · University of Birmingham

Diar Abdlkarim

Movement, understood.

I study how the brain moves the body — and build the technology that proves it.

One question. Three instruments.

01

Record the brain.

EEG captures the neural signature of a movement — before the hand even begins to move.

02

Feel the touch.

Psychophysics reveals how skin senses contact, force and texture — and how touch shapes what we do next.

03

Capture the motion.

Markerless motion capture measures action to the millimetre. No suits. No markers. Just movement.

Portrait of Diar Abdlkarim
About

From neural signal to shipped product. I work every step of that path.

My research asks a deceptively simple question: how does the brain command the body to act in the real world? Answering it means closing the loop between perception and action — reading neural signals, probing the sense of touch, and measuring movement with precision.

I founded and lead the University of Birmingham's markerless Movement Lab. At Meta, I helped build the hand tracking now integral to Quest. And as Co-Founder & Director of Motion Dynamics, I turn the science into hardware, haptics and XR software — then teach it to other scientists.

£1.5M+Research funding contributed
CHI 2025ACM Best Paper Award
1 labFounded, built & led
Meta · Reality Labs

Hand tracking.
Imperceptibly precise.

At Meta, I characterised the noise and jitter of camera-based hand tracking — then used psychophysical methods to measure exactly what the eye can detect. Those thresholds informed the filtering that holds jitter below perceivable levels, in the hand-tracking pipeline that ships on every Quest headset.

Hands tracked by Meta Quest headset cameras
Noise, characterised Jitter, below perception Ships on every Quest
Leadership

The conditions for new science.

Facilities, collaborations and companies that let new science happen — and the people mentored to deliver it.

Infrastructure

The Movement Lab

I designed, specced and established a state-of-the-art markerless motion-capture facility — now a shared research asset used across groups at the University of Birmingham, and a magnet for collaborators and grant co-investigator roles.

Supervision

A new research line

I opened an independent direction applying kinematic assessment to sign-language acquisition, and mentor the PhD researcher delivering it — reflected in our co-authored publications.

Convening

Funded PhD capacity

I initiated a cross-college neuroscience × immersive-simulation collaboration — and converted it into a funded PhD studentship, bringing new research income and people into the group.

Impact

Lab to world

Through Motion Dynamics, the Kenilworth Revealed AR heritage project and training courses for scientists, the research leaves the lab — as products, skills and community.

Research

Four threads. One loop.

From the brain to the fingertip and back again.

01

Brain imaging with EEG

Reading how motor plans are formed, predicted and corrected — while people act in naturalistic, real-world tasks.

02

The science of touch

How the hand senses contact, force and texture — and how tactile feedback shapes the next movement.

03

Motion capture & tracking

Fine-grained sensorimotor measurement with markerless mocap and hand-tracking hardware, at experimental precision.

04

Immersive technologies

XR, HCI and human–robot systems that close the perception–action loop in real time — for research and rehabilitation.

Research spotlight

Touch, engineered.

Two flagship projects in haptics — feeling the world around you in VR, and feeling through a robot's hand.

Haptic belt system: a belt of voice-coil actuator units driven by a Raspberry Pi, worn while walking through a virtual environment in a Meta Quest 3 headset
Haptics · First-author · ACM CHI

Feel the room you can't see.

A wearable belt of voice-coil actuators that renders unseen obstacles as touch around the waist — restoring awareness of the real environment while fully immersed in VR. First-author work published at CHI 2026, the premier venue in human–computer interaction.

Voice-coil haptics Environmental awareness CHI 2026

Read the paper

Remote grasping system diagram: an operator wearing a VR headset and fingertip haptic thimbles controls a simulated remote robot gripper holding an unknown object
Human–robot interaction · Preprint

Remote grasping you can feel.

A teleoperation system in which fingertip haptic thimbles relay contact and slip from a remote robot gripper — so human dexterity can handle fragile, unknown objects at a distance. Currently available as a preprint.

Fingertip haptics Slip rendering Teleoperation
Selected work

Ideas you can hold.

Hardware, software and studies that turn sensorimotor science into things people can use.

Kenilworth Revealed augmented-reality heritage experience
AR · Heritage

Kenilworth Revealed

AR that lets visitors step into Kenilworth's history — university innovation, delivered to the community.

Meta Quest markerless hand tracking
Meta · Quest

Markerless Hand Tracking

Camera-based hand tracking, now integral to the Quest line.

Obi Robotics advanced hand-tracking glove
Hardware · Motion Dynamics

Obi Robotics Glove

Every finger, tracked at high rate — with integrated haptics for precise XR and robotics control.

Fingertip indentation feedback device
Haptics

Fingertip Indentation Device

Physical button-press sensations, rendered with controllable indentation.

Immersive VR pool with wrist haptics
XR study

VR Pool + Haptics

A billiards task with impact-synchronised wrist feedback.

Desktop clinical vibrotactile assessment device
Clinical

Vibrotactile Assessment Rig

Precise vibrotactile stimuli, measured fingertip force.

Publications

Peer-reviewed. Field-tested.

Selected work across HCI, sensorimotor neuroscience and XR.

2026

Belt and Whistles — Adding Lower Body Collision Awareness for MR Experiences

Abdlkarim, Mukherjee, Giunchi, Di Luca, Ofek
CHI
2024

A framework to assess the accuracy of VR hand-tracking systems

Abdlkarim, Di Luca, Aves, Maaß, Yeo, Miall, Wing, Hermosillo
Behavior Research Methods
2025

Text Entry for XR Trove (TEXT)

Bhatia, Mughrabi, Abdlkarim, Di Luca, Gonzalez-Franco, Ahuja, Seifi
CHI · Best Paper
2024

Development and validation of the ISV & ISPLD databases

Biotti, Sidnick, Hatton, Abdlkarim, Wing, Treasure, Happé, Brewer
Behavior Research Methods
2024

Hovering Over the Key to Text Input in XR

Gonzalez-Franco, Abdlkarim, Bhatia, Seifi, Ahuja, Di Luca
ISMAR
2024

Viewing angle matters in British Sign Language processing

Watkins, Abdlkarim, Winter, Thompson
Scientific Reports
2022

Robot, Pass me the Tool: Handle Visualisation for HRI

Ortenzi, Filipovica, Abdlkarim, Pardi, Takahashi, Wing, Di Luca, Kuchenbecker
HRI
Funding & awards

Backed to build.

Grants, awards and translation funding across research and enterprise.

CHI 2025

ACM Best Paper

Text Entry for XR Trove (TEXT) — a review of text input techniques.

£1.5M

EPSRC ARME

Named postdoc delivering XR music system integration & studies.

£15k

Google Research

Gift to explore ten-finger text entry for VR/AR.

£30k

ICURe Explore

Innovate UK market validation for the AR musician system.

Finalist

ICURe Exploit

Selected as a finalist; the fund was later withdrawn nationally.

£5k

BBSRC Touch Test

Portable tactile neuropathy assessment proof-of-concept.

EPSRC

PhD Studentship

Immersive biofeedback for upper-limb rehabilitation.

+ more

Full record

See the funding page ›

Courses for scientists

Learn it in days.
Not years.

Intensive, hands-on training taught from real lab experience. Two cohorts a year. Small groups. You leave with something that works.

Not sure which fits — or want a course delivered to your lab?

Explore the courses
Schools & outreach

The past, rebuilt for the classroom.

Working with schools to bring immersive technology into children's learning — filming costumed historians against green screens and reconstructing historical environments in 3D, so pupils can step into the history they study.

Diar demonstrating a mixed-reality headset to schoolchildren dressed in period costume
In the classroom

Headsets meet history lessons

Pupils — dressed for the period themselves — explore immersive reconstructions in school sessions.

Costumed historical reenactors filmed against a green screen
Green screen

Filming the past

Costumed historians, keyed out and composited into 3D scenes.

Augmented-reality view of the reconstructed Kenilworth gatehouse, seen through a glowing portal on site
3D reconstruction

Lost buildings, rendered

Historical environments rebuilt in 3D and viewed in AR, on site.

Filming costumed reenactors performing a historical scene in a school hall
Production

A school hall becomes a film set

Scenes performed by reenactors, captured for the digital reconstructions children explore.

New venture · Seeking partners & funding

Growing minds,
away from screens.

A research-led venture on how fine-motor and cognitive development intertwine in early childhood — and how technology can guide young children back toward the physical world during the stages that matter most.

Contact

Say hello.

Collaborations, PhD supervision, speaking, consulting — or a conversation about how the brain moves the body. To join a course, use the course sign-up page.