wantingyao.jpg

Wanting Yao

/ˈwen-tɪŋ/

I’m currently a first-year robotics master student at GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Previously, I worked with Prof. Yanchao Yang at University of Hong Kong as an undergraduate research intern. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Automation with the honor of Outstanding Graduate from Zhejiang University in 2025.

My research interest lies in control theory and robot learning, particularly learning from demonstrations for everyday manipulation tasks. I hope to develop efficient and scalable machine learning algorithms that enhance robots’ ability to interact with the dynamic physical world.

News

Sep 18, 2025 Our paper Hyper-GoalNet is accepted to NeurIPS 2025! 🎉
Aug 26, 2025 Join GRASP Lab and begin my master’s journey at UPenn.
Jun 30, 2025 Graduated from Zhejiang University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering.
Jul 01, 2024 Started the Summer Research Training program at HKU IDS.

Selected Publications

  1. NeurIPS
    HyperGoal.png
    Hyper-GoalNet: Goal-Conditioned Manipulation Policy Learning with HyperNetworks
    Pei Zhou, Wanting Yao, Qian Luo, Xunzhe Zhou, and Yanchao Yang
    The Thirty-ninth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2025

Miscellaneous

🍪 I love baking and trying out new recipes, and I’m part of the Penn Baking Club.

🚣🏻‍♀️ I'm also a huge sports fan! I enjoy running, swimming, and outdoor activities like kayaking and hiking. I also love playing badminton, ping-pong, and occasionally tennis. If you share interests with me, feel free to reach out!