PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Lin Shao

Also known as Shao Lin, 邵林

Lin Shao is a roboticist whose research covers robot perception and manipulation, reinforcement learning and differentiable physics simulation. After a geochemistry degree at Nanjing University in 2014, he earned a Stanford Ph.D. in 2021 under Jeannette Bohg and Leonidas Guibas. His UniGrasp model, published in 2020, transferred grasps between multifingered robot hands, his SAM-RL system was a Best System Paper Award finalist at RSS 2023, and his D(R,O) Grasp paper won the Best Paper Award in Robot Manipulation & Locomotion at ICRA 2025. In December 2024 he co-founded RoboScience as its chief scientist, and in 2026 his Bi-Adapt paper became a finalist for the ICRA Best Paper Award. He is an Assistant Professor of computer science at the National University of Singapore and co-chairs the Technical Committee on Robot Learning of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2014–2021

    Stanford PhD under Jeannette Bohg

    He earns a B.S. in geochemistry from Nanjing University in 2014, then an M.S. in 2017 and a Ph.D. in 2021 at Stanford University. Jeannette Bohg advises his doctorate, with Leonidas Guibas as co-advisor.

  2. 2020

    UniGrasp for multifingered hands

    As first author, he publishes UniGrasp in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters in 2020. The deep neural network selects contact points from an object's point cloud and transfers between multifingered robotic hands, with more than 90% successful real-world grasps on known two-fingered and three-fingered grippers. Also in 2020, he completes Concept2Robot, a project that combines natural language and video to learn robotic manipulation tasks and counts among the early vision-language-action works.

  3. 2023

    SAM-RL at RSS 2023

    SAM-RL, a sensing-aware model-based reinforcement learning system built with Jun Lv, Cewu Lu and colleagues, is accepted to Robotics: Science and Systems in 2023 and becomes a Best System Paper Award finalist. It updates its model by comparing images rendered with differentiable physics-based simulation to real images, and it handles robotic assembly, tool manipulation and deformable object manipulation.

  4. Since December 2024

    Co-founding RoboScience

    RoboScience, a Beijing-based company building general embodied-intelligence robots, is set up in December 2024 with Tian Ye, previously Apple's machine learning tech lead, as chief executive and Lin Shao as chief scientist. An angel round of nearly CNY 200 million led by JD.com follows in July 2025, and a Pre-A round of several hundred million RMB announced in February 2026 advances its VLOA vision-language-object-action model.

  5. May 2025

    Best paper at ICRA 2025

    His paper D(R,O) Grasp wins the Best Paper Award in the Robot Manipulation & Locomotion category at ICRA 2025, held in Atlanta in May 2025. The framework takes a robot hand's description and an object point cloud and predicts stable grasps for diverse robot hands, with an average 87.53% success rate in simulation across three dexterous hands.

  6. 2026

    Bi-Adapt at ICRA 2026

    Bi-Adapt, a framework from Lin Shao and collaborators for few-shot bimanual adaptation to novel categories of 3D objects, is selected as a finalist for the ICRA 2026 Best Paper Award. It learns bimanual affordance representations from online videos, images, foundation models and robot demonstrations, then adapts them across robot embodiments.

  7. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at NUS

    He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore, where his group develops algorithms and systems for robot perception and manipulation. Reinforcement learning, differentiable physics simulation and large foundation models for robotic manipulation are among his research interests. The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society's Technical Committee on Robot Learning counts him as a co-chair, and he is an Area Chair for RSS 2026 and CoRL 2026.

Career

  1. NowNational University of SingaporeAssistant Professor
  2. From 2024RoboScienceChief Scientist

Education

  1. 2021Stanford UniversityPh.D.
  2. 2017Stanford UniversityM.S.
  3. 2014Nanjing UniversityB.S.

From the biography.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Lin Shao. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes National University of Singapore. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  3. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes National University of Singapore. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes National University of Singapore. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Lin Shao yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. SHAO Lin - NUS Computing comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Lin Shao linsats.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. [1910.10900] UniGrasp: Learning a Unified Model to Grasp with Multifingered Robotic Hands arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. RoboScience Raises Several Hundred Million RMB in Pre-A Round to Advance VLOA Model | EqualOcean equalocean.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. [2210.15185] SAM-RL: Sensing-Aware Model-Based Reinforcement Learning via Differentiable Physics-Based Simulation and Rendering arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. JD.Com Leads Fourth China Robotics Fundraiser This Month in Backing RoboScience www2.yicaiglobal.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Assistant Professor Shao Lin Receives Best Paper Award at ICRA 2025 - NUS Computing comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. [2410.01702] D(R,O) Grasp: A Unified Representation of Robot and Object Interaction for Cross-Embodiment Dexterous Grasping arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. NUS Computing Robotics Research Shortlisted for ICRA 2026 Best Paper Award - NUS Computing comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 21 October 2026.