Yixiao (Jimmy) Fang

I’m a second-year M.S./Ph.D. student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Currently, I’m a member of the Human-Centered Autonomy Lab advised by Prof. Katie Driggs-Campbell.

Before attending graduate school, I obtained my bachelor’s degree also at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where I majored in Electrical Engineering and minored in Computer Science.

In my academic journey, I specialize in exploring methods to enhance the spatial awareness and decision-making abilities of autonomous systems to safely navigate in dynamic and unstructured environments, by leveraging techniques in machine perception, machine learning, and real-to-sim-to-real in robotics.

In industry, I had spent time at Zoox Inc., honorably supervised by Eric Schafer and Dr. Phillipe Burlina to work on generative sensor simulation for autonomous vehicles. Earlier, I was at LifeFoundry Inc., working on real-time vision-based perception system for AGVs.

Feel free to explore my work and reach out if you’re interested. I’m always excited to connect with others in robotics, AI, and tech innovation!