Xiang Liu

About Me

Hi there! I’m a 2nd year undergraduate student studying Computer Science and Mathematics at Stony Brook University. I’m very fortunate to be advised by Professor Jorge-Mendez Mendez in the Learning & Intelligence Lab, and Professor Yi Liu in the AI Research for Science (AIRS) Lab.

Currently, I’m interested in Generative Models such as using Large Language Models to assist drug discovery and Diffusion Models at generating action parameters to successfully execute long-shot plans for robots. I’m always exploring different interests and finding questions to solve.

I plan to pursue a Ph.D in Computer Science and continue AI research, because of my passion for technological innovations and interest in how the human mind works. This intersection leads me to expand AI models’ capabilities at solving complex problems across different domains and achieving different tasks close to humans do. More importantly, how to incorporate new technologies into people’s daily lives as products/tools to creative positive impacts. These ambitions guide my research interests! (Also because I’m partially influenced by my favorite TV show Person of Interest)

Research Goals

• Embodied Intelligence: How machines perceive/understand the world around it, and how it can make decisions in this situation?
• Task and Motion Planning: How can machines plan/reason to execute long horizon tasks? This is particularly for general robotics, but the problem of planning is what Machine Learning community also cares about
• Understanding Physical World: How can models learn the physical world around it, i.e. the physics and know what will happen to the real world after executing an action. Another important aspect for robotics, and also applicable in video/image generations.

News

• [Apr. 2025] I was accepted into the URECA Summer Research Program at Stony Brook University for Summer of 2025. I will receive funding for my project on using Diffusion Models to assist plan execution of Robots in simulator environments and will be presenting this in the April 2026 Symposium!
• [Apr. 2025] I was invited as a student presenter at the 2nd Annual SUNY AI Symposium hosted in University of Buffalo! I presented by summer research poster and met many professors and PhD students.
• [Aug. 2024] Completed my first Summer Research Program SOAR at Stony Brook University funded by SUNY. My project utilized Neural Operators for weather forecasting in the United States. Check out here!

Miscellaneous

• Outside of research, I’m quite involved on campus as a College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Peer Mentor where I mentor 3 first-year students each year to help them adjust to college life and “figure out what to do their college lives”.
• I am also a Resident Assistant (RA but not that research RA) at H Community where 1,300+ first-year students live in. I host large events like Halloween Celebration called Werewolfie, Lunar New Year Celebration, Friendsgiving … that gained over 600 attendees with over $2k budget went into planning. My goal is to make college dorms home to students, and it’s a truly enjoyable and collaborative experience!

Advices

I am very grateful for all the amazing advices I have read/watched/learned online. Many of them are from people I look up to and have shaped my philosophy, how I do research, and how I want to live my life. I hope they might help you as well.

• You and Your Research –Richard Hamming
• The Last Lecture –Randy Pausch
• Doing well in your courses –Andrej Karpathy
• Lessons from Undergrad –Trenton Bricken
• “Think as an amateur, execute as an expert” – Book written by Takeo Kanade in Japanese. Translated to Chinese and Korean
• Positive Psychology Course taught by Tal Ben-Shahar at Harvard 2008
• 给中国学生的七封信 –李开复 (Seven Letters For Chinese Students –Kai-Fu Lee)
• The days are long but the decades are short –Sam Altman

Last Updated: May 7, 2025. This site is new and still under construction.