PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Yuke Zhu

Yuke Zhu focuses on developing intelligent algorithms for generalist robots and embodied agents to reason about and interact with the real world. He completed dual degrees from Zhejiang University and Simon Fraser University in 2013, a master's degree in computer science at Stanford University in 2015, and a Ph.D. in computer science there in 2019. Fei-Fei Li supervised the dissertation Closing the Perception-Action Loop. He shared the 2019 ICRA best conference paper award for Making Sense of Vision and Touch, and in 2022 he received an NSF CAREER Award and coauthored MineDojo, which NeurIPS named an outstanding datasets and benchmarks paper. As of October 2026, he is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin, director of the Robot Perception and Learning Lab, and a director and distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA Research, where he co-leads the Generalist Embodied Agent Research group.

Works
219
Citations
15,991
h-index
46

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 17 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2013–2019

    Degrees in computer science

    He receives a B.S. in computer science from Simon Fraser University and a B.E. in computer science and technology from Zhejiang University in 2013, through a dual-degree program. He completes an M.S. in computer science at Stanford University in 2015 and a Ph.D. in computer science there in 2019. Fei-Fei Li supervises the dissertation Closing the Perception-Action Loop.

  2. 2019

    Best paper at ICRA

    Michelle A. Lee, Yuke Zhu, Krishnan Srinivasan, Parth Shah, Silvio Savarese, Li Fei-Fei, Animesh Garg, and Jeannette Bohg receive the 2019 ICRA Best Conference Paper Award for Making Sense of Vision and Touch: Self-Supervised Learning of Multimodal Representations for Contact-Rich Tasks.

  3. December 2019

    Welcome to Texas Robotics

    In December 2019, Texas Robotics welcomes him as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science.

  4. March 2022

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In March 2022 he receives an NSF CAREER Award as an assistant professor, director of the Robot Perception and Learning Lab, and a core faculty member of Texas Robotics. The project sets out to build new algorithms and tools for intelligent robot manipulation in the real world.

  5. 2022

    MineDojo at NeurIPS

    In 2022, NeurIPS names MineDojo: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale Knowledge an outstanding datasets and benchmarks paper. He coauthors the Minecraft framework, which includes a simulation suite with thousands of diverse open-ended tasks and an internet-scale knowledge base of videos, tutorials, wiki pages, and forum discussions.

  6. 2025

    An early career award

    In 2025 he receives the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award in Robotics and Automation. The citation covers robot learning, embodied artificial intelligence, and open-source software platforms for robot learning.

  7. As of October 2026

    Associate professor and NVIDIA

    He is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Robot Perception and Learning Lab. He is also a director and distinguished research scientist at NVIDIA Research, where he co-leads the Generalist Embodied Agent Research group. He focuses on developing intelligent algorithms for generalist robots and embodied agents to reason about and interact with the real world.

Sources and credits

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  1. UT Experts : University Communications : The University of Texas at Austin experts.utexas.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  2. Closing the perception-action loop : towards general-purpose robot autonomy | Stanford Digital Repository purl.stanford.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  3. ICRA 2019 Best Paper Award Recipients Announced! - IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Website ieee-ras.org. Checked 17 October 2026.
  4. Yuke Zhu | UT Austin Computer Science cs.utexas.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  5. Welcome New Faculty | Texas Robotics robotics.utexas.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  6. Professors Greg Durrett and Yuke Zhu Awarded NSF CAREER Awards | UT Austin Computer Science cs.utexas.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  7. Announcing the NeurIPS 2022 Awards – NeurIPS Blog blog.neurips.cc. Checked 17 October 2026.
  8. Building Generally Capable AI Agents with MineDojo | NVIDIA Technical Blog developer.nvidia.com. Checked 17 October 2026.
  9. 2025 IEEE Robotics and Automation Awards Announced - IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Website ieee-ras.org. Checked 17 October 2026.
  10. Yuke Zhu Earns IEEE Early Career Award for Groundbreaking Contributions in AI and Robotics | UT Austin Computer Science cs.utexas.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.
  11. Yuke Zhu yukezhu.me. Checked 17 October 2026.
  12. Toward Generalist Humanoid Robots: Recent Advances, Opportunities, and Challenges - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University ri.cmu.edu. Checked 17 October 2026.