Welcome! This is Yixuan Yang's Homepage.


Hi there! 🤖

[email protected]

[email protected]

Hi there from Yixuan! I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. During my first year at Duke, I was fortunate to be advised by Professor Boyuan Chen in the General Robotics Lab. I am interested in Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation in Dynamic Environments driven by advanced AI algorithms, Humanoid Robot, Reinforcement Learning, Collaborative Robots, and Combinatorial Optimization Problems. My research aims to truly unlock the potential of robotic intelligence — enabling robots to become genuinely autonomous embodied-AI agents that enhance and enrich human life 🤖🦾.

I received my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China. During my undergraduate studies, I was proud and fortunate to be supervised (Academic Advisor) by Chair Professor Xin Yao (Fellow, IEEE). In the Fall 2022 semester, I studied at the University of California, Berkeley as an exchange student and was honored to receive a recommendation letter from Professor Igor Mordatch. In my junior and senior years, I had the opportunity to be a visiting student in Professor Xinlei Chen's research group at Tsinghua University (Tsinghua University - UC Berkeley Research Institute).

News

  • [2025-03] I got my first citation in Google Scholar! 😆
  • [2024-08] I officially started my Ph.D. journey at Duke University! 🚀
  • [2024-05] 🎉 I was awarded the Guo Xie Bi Rong Fellowship (¥10,000), Class of 2024. (only 4%)
  • [2024-05] 🎉 I was awarded as an Outstanding Undergraduate Graduate (only 25%), Class of 2024 (SUSTech), as well as a Distinguished Graduate (only 2 out of 245 students) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.
  • [2024-03] 🎉 The paper "Learning-Based Problem Reduction for Large-Scale Uncapacitated Facility Location Problems" got accepted to the conference CEC 2024 held in Yokohama, Japan.
  • [2023-12] 🎉 The paper "Poster: Olfactory Sensing in Turbulent Airflow via Collaborative Robots" got accepted to the conference HotMobile '24 held in San Diego, United States.
  • [2023-05] I became a visiting student in Professor Xinlei Chen's lab. I worked with several Ph.D. and MS students in the project Gas Source Localization driven by Collaborative Robots.
  • [2023-01] I joined Chair Professor Xin Yao (Fellow, IEEE)'s Lab, and started doing research in large-scale UFLP Problem.
  • [2022-08] 🛫 I arrived at the United States to be an exchange student at UC Berkeley 😎. Hi California!!! (Cal's weather is soooooo fantastic!!! ☀️🥹)
  • [2022-05] I attended the Summer Workshop 2022 in the School of Computing at National University of Singapore (NUS). We used Unity to develop a networked 2D Game.
  • [2021-04] I independently developed my very first computer science project in Java — a Minesweeper game! I received a perfect score for the course project. (Friendly reminder: ChatGPT didn't exist back then! 🤗)
  • [2020-08] Excited to start my undergraduate studies in a very youthful and energetic university - Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China!
    (Always claimed to rank 8th in Mainland China 🤪🤣.)
  • [2020-01] 😷🤒 Due to COVID-19, schools were shut down and I was locked down at home while preparing for the Gaokao.
  • [2016-08] Honored to join Shimen High School (石门中学) (known as the best high school in Foshan 😎)! My colorful high school journey kicked off!
  • [2013-08] I began my junior high journey at Shimen Experimental School (石门实验学校) (now renamed Shishi Experimental School), joining the English Specialty Class as a new student! (Originally, I was supposed to attend Nanhai Experimental Middle School (南海实验中学), but due to an unexpected twist of fate, I ended up at Shimen instead.)
  • [2012-04] I got my Wechat account (much earlier than other people 😝)!
  • [2008-10] When I was in second grade, I called the Foshan mayor's hotline 12345 to suggest building a footbridge connecting my home to the shopping mall across the road — and six months later, it was actually built.
  • [2007-09] I started my elementary school journey in Nanshi Fuxiao (南师附小)!
  • [2007] I got my first Tencent QQ account 🐧!
  • [2004-05 ~ 2007-06] I spent a wonderful childhood at Beilei Kindergarten (Chancheng) and Huayuan Kindergarten (Guicheng) 👦!
  • [2001-05] I was born in this beautiful planet 🌏 (2001/05/30)!

Research & Publications

You can also check my Google Scholar profile.

  • Automated Lab: Scientific Lab Manipulation driven by Humanoid Robot (UNDER DEVELOPMENT)

    Advised by Professor Boyuan Chen in General Robotics Lab.
    Keywords: Humanoid Robot, Unitree G1, Deep Reinforcement Learning, Imitation Learning, Manipulation

    THIS PROJECT/PAPER IS NOT PUBLISHED YET (CAN NOT DISCLOSE MORE DETAILS DUE TO FUNDING AGENCY RESTRICTIONS)

Signature Projects

You can view further details of my selected projects in my CV.
  • Unsolvable Robotic Task Detection Using Synthetic Data Driven By LLM (LLaVA)

    Final Project: Duke ECE 590/ME 555 - Robot Learning (2024 Fall)
    Advised by Professor Boyuan Chen.

    [Paper] [Github]
  • Minesweeper++: A Feature-Rich Game Development with Java Swing GUI

    Final Project: SUSTech CS102A - Introduction to Computer Programming (Language: Java) (2021 Spring)
    Advised by Professor Yepang Liu.

    [Github]

Courses Taken At Duke

Reviewer

Teaching

Teaching assistant at Fuqua School of Business, Duke University:

  • DECISION 520Q/618: Data Science for Business - Fall 2024

Miscellaneous

I am someone who is always eager to explore and enjoy the life!
If you are interested in my colorful life, please click HERE! (REMINDER! If you're in mainland China, you may need a VPN 🪜 to access this link!)

This site was last edited on Jul 12, 2025.