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.
* indicates equal contributions. See my Google Scholar page for an up-to-date list.
Learning to Control Free-Form Soft Swimmers
Changyu Hu, Yanke Qu, Qiuan Yang, Xiaoyu Xiong, Kui Wu, Wei Li, Tao Du. NeurIPS 2025
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
TopoGaussian: Inferring Internal Topology Structures from Visual Clues
Xiaoyu Xiong, Changyu Hu, Chunru Lin, Pingchuan Ma, Chuang Gan, Tao Du. ICLR 2025
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
Solid-Fluid Interaction on Particle Flow Maps
Duowen Chen, Zhiqi Li, Junwei Zhou, Fan Feng, Tao Du, Bo Zhu. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2024 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2024)
An Impulse Ghost Fluid Method for Simulating Two-Phase Flows
Yuchen Sun, Linglai Chen, Weiyuan Zeng, Tao Du, Shiying Xiong, Bo Zhu. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2024 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2024)
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
Second-Order Finite Elements for Deformable Surfaces
Qiqin Le, Yitong Deng, Jiamu Bu, Bo Zhu, Tao Du. SIGGRAPH Asia 2023 (Conference track)
Learning Preconditioners for Conjugate Gradient PDE Solvers
Yichen Li, Peter Yichen Chen, Tao Du, Wojciech Matusik. ICML 2023
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
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
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
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
Fluidic Topology Optimization with an Anisotropic Mixture Model
Yifei Li, Tao Du, Sangeetha Grama Srinivasan, Kui Wu, Bo Zhu, Eftychios Sifakis, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2022 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2022)
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
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)
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)
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)
DiffPD: Differentiable Projective Dynamics
Tao Du, Kui Wu, Pingchuan Ma, Sebastien Wah, Andrew Spielberg, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2022 (SIGGRAPH North America 2022)
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
Advanced Soft Robot Modeling in ChainQueen
Andrew Spielberg, Tao Du, Yuanming Hu, Daniela Rus, Wojciech Matusik. Robotica 2021
Fusion 360 Gallery: A Dataset and Environment for Programmatic CAD Reconstruction
Karl D.D. Willis, Yewen Pu, Jieliang Luo, Hang Chu, Tao Du, Joseph G. Lambourne, Armando Solar-Lezama, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2021 (SIGGRAPH North America 2021)
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)
Underwater Soft Robot Modeling and Control with Differentiable Simulation
Tao Du*, Josie Hughes*, Sebastien Wah, Wojciech Matusik, Daniela Rus. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 2021 (RoboSoft 2021)
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)
Functional Optimization of Fluidic Devices with Differentiable Stokes Flow
Tao Du, Kui Wu, Andrew Spielberg, Wojciech Matusik, Bo Zhu, Eftychios Sifakis. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2020 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2020)
Efficient Continuous Pareto Exploration in Multi-Task Learning
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
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)
InverseCSG: Automatic Conversion of 3D Models to CSG Trees
Tao Du, Jeevana Priya Inala, Yewen Pu, Andrew Spielberg, Adriana Schulz, Daniela Rus, Armando Solar-Lezama, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2018 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2018)
Computational Multicopter Design
Tao Du, Adriana Schulz, Bo Zhu, Bernd Bickel, Wojciech Matusik. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2016 (SIGGRAPH Asia 2016)
[Project] [Paper] [Code (design)] [Code (control)] [Hardware]
Convolutional Wasserstein Distances: Efficient Optimal Transportation on Geometric Domains
Justin Solomon, Fernando de Goes, Gabriel Peyré, Marco Cuturi, Adrian Butscher, Andy Nguyen, Tao Du, Leonidas Guibas. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2015 (SIGGRAPH North America 2015)
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