Portrait

Yufei Ding | 丁昱菲

Robotics · Knight-Hennessy Scholar @ Stanford · Zhi Class @ PKU

About

I am a first-year PhD student in Computer Science at Stanford University, currently rotating with Prof. Jeannette Bohg and Prof. Shuran Song. Before Stanford, I received my B.S. in Artificial Intelligence from Zhi Class at the School of EECS, Peking University, ranking 1st in GPA. I have been fortunate to work with Prof. He Wang at Peking University, Prof. Jeannette Bohg at Stanford through the UGVR program, and Prof. Yue Wang and Prof. Daniel Seita. My research lies in robotics and 3D vision, with a recent focus on learning from humans and dexterous manipulation. I care deeply about robot data, not only its scale, but what it teaches.

My work is driven by a few questions:

  1. What makes data effective for robot learning?
  2. How do data distribution and scale shape generalization?
  3. What representations allow models to use data most efficiently?
  4. How can human data bridge the embodiment gap to become robot skills?
  5. What does a robot need to sense, not just see, to be truly dexterous?

Research

unilatent teaser
UniLatent: Cross-Embodiment Transfer via Latent Observation Alignment

CoRL 2026

UniLatent reuses robot demonstrations across embodiments by aligning visual observations in a shared latent space rather than translating pixels. Alignment is supervised entirely by simulation renderings, requiring no target-robot demonstrations. In experiments, policies trained on one arm transfer zero-shot in simulation and few-shot on real hardware.

videogen teaser
Rethinking Video Generation Model for the Embodied World

ICML 2026

We introduce a comprehensive robotics benchmark, RBench, designed to evaluate robot-oriented video generation across five task domains and four distinct embodiments.

sofar teaser
SoFar: Language-Grounded Orientation Bridges Spatial Reasoning and Object Manipulation

NeurIPS 2025 Spotlight

We introduce semantic orientation and propose a multi-modal model that facilitates spatial understanding in robot manipulation.

Open6DOR teaser
Open6DOR: Benchmarking Open-instruction 6-DoF Object Rearrangement and A VLM-based Approach

IROS 2024 Oral Presentation
CVPR 2024 @ VLADA Oral Presentation
ICRA 2024 @ 3D Manipulation Spotlight

We present Open6DOR, a benchmark and zero-shot method for open-instruction 6-DoF object rearrangement, integrating 3D awareness to enable complex manipulation.

RoboVerse teaser
RoboVerse: Towards a Unified Platform, Dataset and Benchmark for Scalable and Generalizable Robot Learning
RoboVerse Team
RSS 2025

We propose RoboVerse, a comprehensive framework for advancing robotics through a simulation platform, synthetic dataset, and unified benchmarks.

DexGraspNet 2.0 teaser
DexGraspNet 2.0: Learning Generative Dexterous Grasping in Large-scale Synthetic Cluttered Scenes
Jialiang Zhang*, Haoran Liu*, Danshi Li*, Xinqiang Yu*, Haoran Geng, Yufei Ding, Jiayi Chen, He Wang
CoRL 2024

We synthesized a large-scale dexterous grasping dataset in cluttered scenes and designed a generative framework to learn grasping in the real world.

Simulately teaser
Simulately: Handy information and resources for physics simulators for robot learning research.
Open-source Project · Selected into CMU 16-831t

We build an open platform that gathers comprehensive information of robotics and physics simulators for cutting-edge robot learning research.



Experience

Stanford University
2025.06 - 2025.08
Visiting Scholar through the UGVR Program
Research Advisor: Prof. Jeannette Bohg


2026.09 - Present
PhD Student
Major: Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley
2025.01 - 2025.05
Visiting Student
Research Institute: BAIR
GALBOT
2023.10 - 2025.01
Research Intern
Research Advisor: He Wang
Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
2023.06 - 2023.09
Summer Research Intern
Research Team: OpenMMLab
Zhi Class
2022.09 - Present
Class Leader
GPA Ranking : 1st
Academic Advisor: Prof. Baoquan Chen
Peking University (PKU)
2022.09 - 2026.06
Undergraduate Student
Major: Intelligence Science and Technology (Artificial Intelligence)

Honors and Awards

  • 2026: Knight-Hennessy Scholar, Stanford University

  • 2025: AGI Rising Star

  • 2025: Best Poster Award, PKU AI Tech Day

  • 2025: Sky9 Fellowship, Sky9

  • 2024: Huatai Securities Technology Scholarship
  • 2024: Outstanding Student Leader of Peking University
  • 2024: SenseTime Scholarship (Youngest)
  • 2024: Outstanding Presentation Award @ School of EECS Research Exhibition
  • 2023: SenseTime Scholarship - Most Promising Award
  • 2023: Exceptional Award for Academic Innovation of Peking University (Youngest)
  • 2023: National Scholarship (Highest honor for undergraduates)
  • 2023: Merit Student of Peking University
  • 2023: Grand Finalist in Peking University Pro-Am English Debate Competition
  • 2023: Second Prize in Ubiquant Programming Competition
  • 2022: Peking University Freshman Scholarship
  • 2022: Outstanding Graduate Award of Shenzhen Middle School
  • 2020: First Prize in Chinese Physics Olympiad (CPhO), Guangdong Province
  • Service

  • Leader of Zhi Class, Cofounder of its wechat public account and website
  • Chairman of the Academic Committee of Intelligence Science and Technology (ACIST)
  • Founder of the EECS Survival Manual, which assists students at Peking University in exploring and achieving their goals by offering comprehensive information and guidance
  • Founding member of NodeAI, a public community that connects top-tier AI learners, practitioners and leaders.
  • Reviewer of multiple conferences and workshops.

  • Miscellaneous

    Apart from academic studies and research, I have a wide range of interests, including dancing, piano, and English debates.

  • I'm a member of FL Dance Crew at Peking University.

  • I have been playing the piano🎹 for 10+ years and has earned Distinction in ABRSM Practical Grade 8 (highest level), as well as multiple awards in piano competitions.

  • I enjoy English debate🎤, and I'm a member of SpeechCrafter at Peking University. I was awarded Grand Finalist in 2023 PKU Pro-Am English Debate Competition with my partner Tianhua Yang.

  • I have a real passion for reading📚, with particular interests in British literature, sociology, and philosophy. I founded a Reading Club at Peking University, where we organize regular reading workshop and invite distinguished scholars to deliver lectures & host discussions. We're actively looking for participants (both readers and speakers) on a broad range of reading topics, so please feel free to contact me if you're willing to join! Previous workshops could be found here.

  • We host the Zhi Talk series, inviting scholars from both academia and industry to share their research and personal experiences. If you're seeking an open platform to share your ideas, join us and make your voice heard!