Boyuan Chen

Assistant Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Boyuan Chen's research focuses on Robotics, Computer Vision, and Machine Learning. He is also broadly interested in AI for science. At Duke, he leads the General Robotics Lab.

He is interested in developing "generalist robots" that learn, act, and improve by perceiving and interacting with the complex and dynamic world. Ultimately, he hopes that robots and machines can be equipped with high-level cognitive skills to assist people and unleash human creativity.

Boyuan Chen obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Columbia University with Hod Lipson.

Appointments and Affiliations

  • Assistant Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
  • Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • Assistant Professor in Computer Science

Contact Information

Education

  • B.S. Jilin University (China), 2016
  • M.S. Columbia University, 2018
  • Ph.D. Columbia University, 2022

Research Interests

Robotics, computer vision, machine learning, AI for science

Courses Taught

  • NEUROSCI 493: Research Independent Study 1
  • ME 592: Research Independent Study in Mechanical Engineering or Material Science
  • ME 591: Research Independent Study in Mechanical Engineering or Material Science
  • ME 555: Advanced Topics in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 494: Engineering Undergraduate Fellows Projects
  • ME 492: Special Projects in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 491: Special Projects in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 490: Special Topics in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 394: Engineering Undergraduate Fellows Projects
  • ME 392: Undergraduate Projects in Mechanical Engineering
  • ME 391: Undergraduate Projects in Mechanical Engineering
  • EGRMGMT 591: Special Readings in Engineering Management
  • EGR 393: Research Projects in Engineering
  • ECE 899: Special Readings in Electrical Engineering
  • ECE 590: Advanced Topics in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 494: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 493: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 392: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 391: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 292: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • ECE 291: Projects in Electrical and Computer Engineering
  • COMPSCI 891: Special Readings in Computer Science
  • COMPSCI 590: Advanced Topics in Computer Science
  • COMPSCI 394: Research Independent Study
  • COMPSCI 393: Research Independent Study
  • COMPSCI 391: Independent Study

In the News

Representative Publications

  • Guo, G., J. Goldfeder, L. Lan, A. Ray, A. H. Yang, B. Chen, S. J. L. Billinge, and H. Lipson. “Towards end-to-end structure determination from x-ray diffraction data using deep learning.” Npj Computational Materials 10, no. 1 (December 1, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-024-01401-8.
  • Hu, Yuhang, Boyuan Chen, Jiong Lin, Yunzhe Wang, Yingke Wang, Cameron Mehlman, and Hod Lipson. “Human-robot facial coexpression.” Science Robotics 9, no. 88 (March 2024): eadi4724. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.adi4724.
  • Chen, Boyuan, Robert Kwiatkowski, Carl Vondrick, and Hod Lipson. “Fully body visual self-modeling of robot morphologies.” Science Robotics 7, no. 68 (July 2022): eabn1944. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abn1944.
  • Chen, Boyuan, Kuang Huang, Sunand Raghupathi, Ishaan Chandratreya, Qiang Du, and Hod Lipson. “Automated discovery of fundamental variables hidden in experimental data.” Nature Computational Science 2, no. 7 (July 2022): 433–42. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-022-00281-6.