portrait

Tao Du 杜韬

Assistant Professor
Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS)
Tsinghua University
Email: taodu@tsinghua.edu.cn | Google Scholar | OpenReview

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS), Tsinghua University. I work on interesting computational design problems at the intersection of computer graphics, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Before joining Tsinghua, I was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT CSAIL, advised by Wojciech Matusik and Daniela Rus. I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT under the supervision of Wojciech Matusik. I obtained my Master's in Computer Science from Stanford University and my Bachelor's in Computer Software from Tsinghua University.

To prospective students: We are looking for students interested in extending our recent works on unconventional swimming and flying to join our group. If you have a relevant background in computer science, math, physics, mechanical engineering, or biomimetics, please feel free to drop me an email. Tsinghua undergraduate students interested in joining our group are welcome to take my Spring course Physics-based Simulation or book a time slot in my open office hours to discuss potential research opportunities.


Publications

* indicates equal contributions. See my Google Scholar page for an up-to-date list.

Learning Sparse Approximate Inverse Preconditioners for Conjugate Gradient Solvers on GPUs

Zherui Yang, Zhehao Li, Kangbo Lyu, Yixuan Li, Tao Du, Ligang Liu. NeurIPS 2025

[Project] [Paper (coming soon)]

TopoGaussian: Inferring Internal Topology Structures from Visual Clues

Xiaoyu Xiong, Changyu Hu, Chunru Lin, Pingchuan Ma, Chuang Gan, Tao Du. ICLR 2025

[Project] [Paper]

NeuralFluid: Neural Fluidic System Design and Control with Differentiable Simulation

Yifei Li, Yuchen Sun, Pingchuan Ma, Eftychios Sifakis, Tao Du, Bo Zhu, Wojciech Matusik. NeurIPS 2024

[Paper]

ScissorBot: Learning Generalizable Scissor Skill for Paper Cutting via Simulation, Imitation, and Sim2Real

Jiangran Lyu, Yuxing Chen, Tao Du, Feng Zhu, Huiquan Liu, Yizhou Wang, He Wang. CoRL 2024

[Project] [Paper]

QuasiSim: Parameterized Quasi-Physical Simulators for Dexterous Manipulations Transfer

Xueyi Liu, Kangbo Lyu, Jieqiong Zhang, Tao Du, Li Yi. ECCV 2024

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv] [Code] [Slides]

Second-Order Finite Elements for Deformable Surfaces

Qiqin Le, Yitong Deng, Jiamu Bu, Bo Zhu, Tao Du. SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 (Conference track)

[Project] [Paper]

Learning Preconditioners for Conjugate Gradient PDE Solvers

Yichen Li, Peter Yichen Chen, Tao Du, Wojciech Matusik. ICML 2023

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv]

Learning Neural Constitutive Laws from Motion Observations for Generalizable PDE Dynamics

Pingchuan Ma, Peter Yichen Chen, Bolei Deng, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Tao Du, Chuang Gan, Wojciech Matusik. ICML 2023

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv] [Code]

DexDeform: Dexterous Deformable Object Manipulation with Human Demonstrations and Differentiable Physics

Sizhe Li*, Zhiao Huang*, Tao Chen, Tao Du, Hao Su, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Chuang Gan. ICLR 2023

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv] [Code]

Sim2Real for Soft Robotic Fish via Differentiable Simulation

John Z. Zhang, Yu Zhang, Pingchuan Ma, Elvis Nava, Tao Du, Philip Arm Wojciech Matusik, Robert K. Katzschmann. IROS 2022

[Paper] [arXiv]

Automatic Co-Design of Aerial Robots Using a Graph Grammar

Allan Zhao, Tao Du, Jie Xu, Josie Hughes, Juan Salazar, Pingchuan Ma, Wei Wang, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik. IROS 2022

[Paper]

Fast Aquatic Swimmer Optimization with Differentiable Projective Dynamics and Neural Network Hydrodynamic Models

Elvis Nava, John Z. Zhang, Mike Yan Michelis, Tao Du, Pingchuan Ma, Benjamin F. Grewe, Wojciech Matusik, Robert K. Katzschmann, ICML 2022

[Paper] [arXiv]

DiffCloth: Differentiable Cloth Simulation with Dry Frictional Contact

Yifei Li, Tao Du, Kui Wu, Jie Xu, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2022 (SIGGRAPH North America 2022)

[Project] [arXiv]

RISP: Rendering-Invariant State Predictor with Differentiable Simulation and Rendering for Cross-Domain Parameter Estimation

Pingchuan Ma*, Tao Du*, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Wojciech Matusik, Chuang Gan. ICLR 2022 (Oral)

[Project] [Paper]

Contact Points Discovery for Soft-Body Manipulations with Differentiable Physics

Sizhe Li*, Zhiao Huang*, Tao Du, Hao Su, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Chuang Gan. ICLR 2022 (Spotlight)

[Project] [Paper]

Dynamic Visual Reasoning by Learning Differentiable Physics Models from Video and Language

Mingyu Ding, Zhenfang Chen, Tao Du, Ping Luo, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Chuang Gan. NeurIPS 2021

[Project] [Paper] [Code]

Advanced Soft Robot Modeling in ChainQueen

Andrew Spielberg, Tao Du, Yuanming Hu, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik. Robotica 2021

[Paper]

DiffAqua: A Differentiable Computational Design Pipeline for Soft Underwater Swimmers with Shape Interpolation

Pingchuan Ma, Tao Du, John Z. Zhang, Kui Wu, Andrew Spielberg, Robert K. Katzschmann, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2021 (SIGGRAPH North America 2021)

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv] [Code]

PlasticineLab: A Soft-Body Manipulation Benchmark with Differentiable Physics

Zhiao Huang, Yuanming Hu, Tao Du, Siyuan Zhou, Hao Su, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Chuang Gan. ICLR 2021 (Spotlight)

[Project] [Paper] [Code]

Efficient Continuous Pareto Exploration in Multi-Task Learning

Pingchuan Ma*, Tao Du*, Wojciech Matusik. ICML 2020

[Project] [Paper] [arXiv] [Code] [Talk] [Slides]

Learning-in-the-Loop Optimization: End-to-End Control and Co-Design of Soft Robots through Learned Deep Latent Representations

Andrew Spielberg, Allan Zhao, Yuanming Hu, Tao Du, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik. NeurIPS 2019

[Paper]

Learning to Fly: Computational Controller Design for Hybrid UAVs with Reinforcement Learning

Jie Xu, Tao Du, Michael Foshey, Beichen Li, Bo Zhu, Adriana Schulz, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2019 (SIGGRAPH North America 2019)

[Project] [Paper] [Code]


Thesis

Differentiable Simulation Methods for Robotic Agent Design

Ph.D. thesis

[Thesis] [Video]


Service

Program Committee: SIGGRAPH North America 2024, SIGGRAPH Asia 2023, 2025
Journal paper reviewer: TOG, TVCG, IJRR, T-RO, RA-L
Conference paper reviewer: SIGGRAPH North America, SIGGRAPH Asia, NeurIPS (Outstanding Reviewer in 2021-2025), ICML (Outstanding Reviewer in 2022), ICLR, RSS