About the Founder

Hi — I'm Kavin, a high-school student, and I built the research project SignBridge and the app Gesturely. I started this because of a gap that bothered me: American Sign Language and English have completely different grammar, and most automated systems that try to bridge them end up garbling the grammar and throwing away what the signer actually meant. I wanted to build something that preserves meaning, not just words.

What I've built

SignBridge is the research underneath everything: high-density pose estimation to read signing, a language model that chooses between candidate signs based on whether the whole sentence makes sense, and a new way to measure translation quality end to end (I call it CTQI). I also experimented with hardware — a wearable, lanyard-style camera (an ESP32-S3 module streaming to a Raspberry Pi) — because a handheld phone can't really capture someone signing.

Gesturely is where that research becomes something people can use: a live two-way conversation tool, a way for students to learn and practice ASL and get real feedback, and a kiosk mode for service counters.

What I keep learning

The biggest lesson hasn't been technical. Every time I've talked with the Deaf community — at events, centers, and with researchers — I've been reminded that technology like this only matters if it's built with the community, not just for it. That shapes how I work now, and it's where I want to keep going: future directions like haptics, recognizing the hearing person's speech just as smoothly, and capturing the rhythm and movement that carry so much meaning in sign language.

If you want the full story — the fairs, the publications, and the milestones along the way — it's all on the blog.