About MirageDoodle
MirageDoodle is revolutionizing community engagement in urban development through augmented reality technology. Our mission is to create more inclusive, transparent, and efficient public engagement processes that empower communities and accelerate approval timelines.
Our Founders
Xuanshu Lin
Co-Founder
Lin's background in Urban Planning and Human Computer Interactions brings extensive experience in urban planning and technology enhanced community development. With a passion for inclusive design and equitable city planning, he co-founded MirageDoodle to bridge the gap between developers, planners, designers, and communities through innovative augmented reality solutions. Lin has led multiple augmented reality aided community engagement events testing the effectiveness of augmented reality+community engagement.
George Zhai
Co-Founder
George leads MirageDoodle's technological innovation with deep expertise in AI. He spearheads the architecture of embodied AI safety for personal autonomous vehicles at GM, ensuring safe and intelligent real-world interactions. George excels at rapidly engineering novel solutions, from robot autonomy to highly cost-effective automation. His unique blend of hardware insight and AI-driven software mastery powers MirageDoodle's cutting-edge platform for community engagement.
Our Advisor
Vardhan Dongre
Founding Advisor
Vardhan is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UIUC, where his research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. He is particularly interested in conversational generative agents that can interact with both digital and physical worlds for real-world applications. With his deep expertise in AI systems and cutting-edge research experience, Vardhan provides invaluable guidance to MirageDoodle's technical development and strategic direction. His insights help ensure our platform leverages the latest advances in AI to create more intelligent and responsive community engagement experiences.
Our Vision
At MirageDoodle, we envision a future where urban development is truly collaborative, where every stakeholder's voice matters, and where communities are empowered to actively shape their environments. Through our augmented reality platform, we're making this vision a reality by transforming traditionally complex and exclusive processes into engaging, accessible, and meaningful experiences for all.
Our Journey
An urban planner meets an engineer – an unlikely pairing perhaps, but that's where our story begins, back at the University of Illinois. Though our paths diverged after graduation – Lin pursuing Masters' at the University of Michigan, George diving into engineering at General Motors – fate, or perhaps just Michigan geography, kept us merely 40 minutes apart.
Fast forward to 2025. A celebratory drive back from Chicago, filled with reflections after seeing friends get engaged, became an unexpected catalyst. Sharing visions for a future where technology could bridge communication gaps in city development, the idea for MirageDoodle sparked. As if on cue, a full rainbow stretched across the Michigan sky – a sign, we felt, of the vibrant, collaborative future we wanted to help build. That journey marked the beginning of ours...